Limbe Wildlife Centre

Category: Chimpanzee | Date: Sep 17 2008 | By: limbewildlifecentre

Running a sanctuary is hard work and it is not always easy to make time to write about it. We have had some sick animals in the last months, which is normal in the rainy season, but it seems that we have had the worst now. Because of the relative cold the bananas did not ripe well, so we had to find alternatives and cook lots of potatoes and cocoyams. That is back to normal too. This summer we have also been busy with four very successful Holiday Workshops and now we are starting up the next school year’s Outreach Program.

As I have some time now, I would like to tell you about Gah. People who watch the series ‘Going Ape’ will remember the baby chimpanzee that was completely paralysed when he came to the Limbe Wildlife Centre. When his mother was shot he had received bullits in his spine. Only with a lot of veterinary care, physiotherapy and patience of our quarantine keepers, Gah slowly started to move again. First his arms, later his legs, but he will always have a silly walk.

Gah is now almost 4 years old now and a few months ago we decided that it was time for him to move on from the baby group to the youngsters group. Most young chimps make this transition without any problems, but for Gah it was hard. Chimpanzees always play rough with eachother and Gah did not respond well to this. We started the introduction with the smallest chimpanzee: Mbu. She had spent a long time with Gah in the infants group and right away they became friends again. But after that it became more difficult, because all the others just banged on Gah’s head to see how he would respond to that. Having Mbu as a friend did not help, because she was too small to interfere with any of the others. At some point we had to take a step backwards and begin again. Each time we added one chimpanzee to the couple Mbu and Gah and observed how it went. When they were fine for a few days we added another. It took a long time, but the result is that now all the chimpanzees accept Gah as part of the group. Okay, he has a silly walk and does not run very fast, nor climb very high, but he is just Gah. They don’t bother him now very much anymore. Slowly he is developing a friendship with George, who is normally very oriented towards people. George normally spends most of his time sitting in front of the fence looking at the visitors and the keepers. It is good for him too, to have a new friend.

Best wishes,

Simone de Vries (Assistant Manager)

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