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GRAHM JONES/COURTESY COLUMBUS ZOO AND AQUARIUM
★Animal ★
Colo
The matriarch WHEN SHE WAS BORN, Colo was the city’s golden girl, the world’s first captive-born gorilla, a spoiled princess dressed in frilly dresses and hats and celebrated in the pages of Life magazine. Even today, Colo is best known for her remarkable 1956 birth, but she might have ended up as just a historical footnote—instead of the city’s most beloved animal—if it weren’t for what happened after the initial excitement died out. The Columbus Zoo, quite frankly, was learning on the fly with Colo. Keepers did some things right—around-the-clock care as an infant, for instance. But there were grave mistakes, too. The zoo wisely introduced Colo to another gorilla, Bongo, a wild-born animal brought to Columbus to be Colo’s mate, at an early age, but created tension by putting the pair together in a 12-by-15-foot cage with a cement floor, tile walls and no place to escape the public eye. When Colo gave birth to three offspring—Emmy, Oscar and Toni—all were taken away from her to be hand-reared by humans, just as Colo was. She wasn’t trusted to raise her own children. Slowly, the zoo realized its missteps. Colo’s life improved
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when she and the other gorillas moved into a new “gorilla villa” in the early 1980s. The exhibit offered more space and an outdoor play area with ropes and climbing areas. It also allowed the gorillas to live together in groups, as they would in the wild, and go off display whenever they wanted to. Most importantly, the zoo changed how it cared for newborn gorillas. Keepers no longer would take away infants from their mothers automatically. And if they had to do so, they tried to make sure other gorillas, not keepers, would care for the babies. Amazingly, Colo became the zoo’s first surrogate, caring for her grandson JJ. Despite her misguided upbringing, Colo’s instinctive nurturing survived. “She knew she was a gorilla,” says Dusty Lombardi, a former gorilla keeper who’s now in charge of animal care at the zoo. “People had a hard time figuring that out.” Near the end of 2011, Colo was the world’s oldest living gorilla, the matriarch of a family of 31. Her health is good— she has arthritis, but that’s her only ailment. When asked how long Colo might live, Lombardi wouldn’t hazard a guess. Again, Colo is in uncharted territory. —Dave Ghose