NEWS - PUBLIC SUBMITS NAME SUGGESTIONS FOR ZOOS NEWEST ADDITION

Public submits name suggestions for zoo's newest addition 

 

February 20, 2012 4:45 PM

ANGEL McCURDY / Daily News

GULF BREEZE — The number of name suggestions coming in for the newborn gorilla is too high to count, says Gulf Breeze Zoo director Kayte Wanko.
“I think we’ve gotten about a million and a half,” she joked. “We’ve decided to take 20 or 30 of the most popular names and then let people vote from there.”
Suggestions topping the chart are Quinn, after zoo founder Pat Quinn; Monkeydoodle; Caesar, from “Planet of the Apes”; or naming the 7.4-pound boy after the doctors who delivered him almost one month ago — Griffin or Dyson.


“Some of the names we’ve gotten I can’t even pronounce,” Wanko said. “We’ve also gotten entries that are clearly named after the person, like Steve or Bradley; and then we’ve gotten girl names, which we’ve had to scrap because we can’t have a huge male gorilla with a girl name.”
Voting for the name will begin Feb. 29 and the gorilla will have a name by mid-March.
Five-year-old Andrew Vieira ran up to the exhibit and asked a zoo employee the sex of the baby.
“I knew it,” he shouted after learning the gorilla is a boy. “I guessed it was a boy before we left the house.”
Andrew’s family soon joined him in staring through the glass at the gorilla, lying on the stomach of a resting zoo worker.
“If I could name him, I’d name him Spiderman,” Andrew said.
The baby gorilla is expected to reach anywhere from 300 to 500 pounds when he becomes an adult, which will be in 12 to 13 years. For now, the zoo is taking round-the-clock care of the primate.
“He’s doing great,” Wanko said. “He’s eating really well, he’s moving on his own — well, he’s scooting on his own.”
Wanko said the gorilla’s upper arm strength has continued to grow, which is demonstrated anytime the zoo worker inside the nursery moves.
“He clings onto our legs, our shirts. He doesn’t let go,” Wanko said.
Inside the nursery, officials working with the small gorilla work to exhibit few human traits.
“We always walk on our knees, we never use utensils in there, and we don’t talk. We just make gorilla noises,” Wanko said. “When he’s about five months, we’ll put him back with the other gorillas.”
Wanko said the baby’s mother, Rwanda, does not recognize the baby as her own. She was raised in a zoo, so her natural instincts for mothering are lacking.
“We are trying to act just like a mother gorilla would whenever we interact with him,” she said. “We do stay the night in the nursery, which now means a feeding every three hours on a good night.”