Gentle Binti Just Did What Gorillas Do

Primate experts are not surprised that Binti the gorilla cuddled the boy who had tumbled into her zoo enclosure. Gorillas have the intelligence and emotions of a 3- or 4-year-old child, one primatologist says, and can show empathy.

Chicago's hottest new celebrity weighs 165 pounds, has grayish-black hair and loves attention.

It's Binti Jua, the 8-year-old western lowland gorilla at the Brookfield Zoo who became an instant celebrity two weeks ago when she saved a 3-year-old boy who fell into her enclosure. With her own baby clutching her back, the gorilla picked up the unconscious boy, cradled him in her arms, and gingerly carried him to a doorway where paramedics could reach him.

The boy is expected to recover.

"It's incredible. It's all over the world," said zoo spokeswoman Linda Rucins. "It's a good story, and it's making people feel good."

This touching encounter has also created a buzz among primatologists, 1,400 of whom were at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for the International Primatological Society's annual symposium when the incident occurred.

"Everybody was very excited that there was an incident that focused attention not only on gorillas, which are an endangered species, but on the issue of animal thinking, which is what we were at the meeting for," said H. Lyn Miles, a primatologist at the University of Tennessee who has trained an orangutan, Chantek, to sign more than 200 words.

Though Binti's actions seemed so human, so maternal, the consensus among primatologists was that Binti was just acting like, well, a gorilla.

"It's a predictable pattern of behavior," said Kenneth Gould, who works with primates at the Yerkes Research Center in Atlanta. "Gorillas normally do not approach a strange individual aggressively. They are going to be curious. Usually they are quite gentle in their approaches."

It helped that Binti, whose full name is Swahili for "Daughter of Sunshine," was raised by humans at the San Francisco Zoo. Born in captivity and rejected by her mother, she was bottle-fed, carried in a sling, and cuddled much like a human infant.

She was so accustomed to humans that when she became pregnant at the Brookfield Zoo trainers had to teach her to care for a primate baby by giving her a gorilla doll to carry. Any nurturing behavior was rewarded, which experts theorize may have something to do with her recent heroics.

Melinda Pruett-Jones, the zoo's curator of primates, said as soon as the boy crashed to the ground, trainers signaled all seven gorillas in the enclosure to leave. Binti carried the boy to the door she normally goes out.

The trainers then sprayed water hoses at the feet of the other gorillas to keep them away from the boy, and directed them to another door.

"They were just paying attention to what their keepers were telling them to do," Pruett-Jones said. "None of them were aggressive. They were probably frightened and confused."

Though Binti may have been responding to cues to leave, that doesn't explain why she took the boy. She "was very gentle and she was very instinctively maternal," Pruett-Jones said.

A remarkably similar incident occurred about eight years ago at a zoo in England, said John Kearns, director of the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center. When a little boy fell into a gorilla enclosure, a giant ape sat next to him, lifted his shirt, and gently stroked his back.

The boy who fell into Binti's pen was not a threat because he was motionless. If he had been screaming or wildly running around, things might have turned out differently, the experts said.

Primatologist Miles said she believes gorillas have the intelligence and emotions of a 3- or 4-year-old child. Her ape, Chantek, can show empathy, among other emotions. When Miles showed up one day with a bandaged foot, Chantek dabbed it with a paper towel and signed the word "hurt."