On Saturday, April 23, Miroslav Bobek’s phone started to ring. The zoologist-on-duty had called: “Female gorilla Shinda began to give birth.” He couldn’t believe it. On multiple levels, Shinda having a baby was just miraculous.
Bobek is the director of the Prague Zoo. Neither he, nor anybody among the zoo’s staff had known Shinda was pregnant, according to his April 23 Facebook post.
Pictures and videos of the mother and the baby, both looking healthy, went viral. Yet while people cheered at the sight of the ape family, many were asking how the zoo had no idea.
Don’t they monitor the animals’ health? Don’t they have experts to discern such important changes?
How Did it Happen?
As Bobek explained, Shinda was one special gorilla.
She was born in 1991 in the Zoo Apenheul in Netherlands. But then she lived with her father in Australia. That’s when a preconception body was implanted under her skin so she would not become pregnant with her father.
The preconception body should have already lost its effectiveness, but Shina still couldn’t get pregnant. In 2001, she came to the Prague Zoo.
In Prague, Shinda managed to get pregnant a few times, but always miscarried. Also, she has always been overweight since she came, leading to repeated speculations whether she was actually pregnant.
