Ambam (gorilla)

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Ambam (born April 14, 1990 in Bekesbourne, Kent ) is a male gorilla in the animal park of Port Lympne in the English county of Kent, who became an Internet celebrity in January 2011 because of an 18-second video on YouTube .

The silverback was born in 1990 in the nearby Howletts Animal Park ; both parents were caught in the wild. When Ambam was one year old, he contracted a serious illness and had to be separated from his mother Shamba prematurely. After his recovery a few months later, he was integrated into a group of young male gorillas with whom he grew up. With four of them - all of Ambam's half-brothers - he was taken to the nearby Port Lympne zoo at the age of eight, where he has lived as a member of a bachelor group ever since. Ambam itself is the largest and, at around 220 kg, the heaviest gorilla in the park.

He gained international fame through a behavior that is very rare in gorillas, namely walking upright over an unusually long period of time. Gorillas move mainly in the ankle gait and are only able to walk upright to a certain extent and in exceptional cases. Ambam, on the other hand, often roams through his enclosure on two legs even when the function of his arms is not restricted (e.g. by transporting food). According to the zoo, he shows this behavior of his own free will and was not trained to do so. One possible explanation for the upright posture would be the better view of the keepers and the overview of the food scattered in the enclosure.

As part of the EAZA's breeding program ( EEP ) for gorillas, Ambam was to be brought to the Ouwehands Dierenpark in Rhenen in the Netherlands in 2013 , where it will find its future home with three other male gorillas from Port Lympne. The new construction of the gorilla enclosure there dragged on, however, and Ambam's group disintegrated before it opened; because of too strong rivalries between the adult gorilla men, they could no longer be kept together. Rhenen received six other bachelors from Howletts instead. Ambam still lives - now with two other, unrelated silverbacks - in Port Lympne. With a total of twenty gorillas in three groups (as of September 2014), the zoo is home to one of the largest captive populations in the world.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Video: Gorilla Walks Like A Man!
  2. ↑ a b Info about Ambam on the homepage of the Aspinall Foundation ( Memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  3. ↑ http://www.rtvutrecht.nl/nieuws/950252