Bushman (Gorilla)
Bushman (* 1928 , † 1. January 1951 in Chicago ) was a Western Lowland Gorilla .
Life
The exact circumstances in which Bushman fell into human hands are unknown. It can be assumed, however, that his mother was injured or killed by hunters, and it is said that he was taken into the care of missionaries. There are at least two versions of this. After one he ended up as an orphaned young animal in Cameroon to the missionary family Hope. In the 1930s, the young gorilla was sold to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago for $ 3,500 when the Hope family left Africa. The clergyman Dr. Johnson. He brokered the monkey to the animal collector Jules L. Buck, who in turn offered it to the zoo and transported it to Chicago in 1930.
According to the second version, the name of the dealer who brought the gorilla to the Chicago zoo was somewhat different, namely WL Buck, known as "Pa Buck", and he later visited the monkey again and again in Chicago. This Pa Buck is said to have claimed to the zoo that he bought the monkey from natives at Yakadouma . The zoo director Marlin Perkins only got to know the more detailed history of the monkey's origins on a trip to Africa in 1948, and a missionary also played a role here: Dr. Albert Irving Good and his wife bought the little gorilla in 1928 from Africans who caught it in the Yakadouma area and hired a woman to look after the young animal. Then they would have received an offer to buy from Pa Buck, but initially turned it down. But after they realized that sooner or later the monkey would get too big to keep as a pet, and because they needed money for stained glass windows for a church, they agreed to do so. They would have made an agreement with Buck to share the profits from the sale of the monkey to the zoo - in this version of $ 3,000 - and use that money to buy the windows.
If the great ape in the missionary family, whether it was called Hope or Good, had lived a life of relative freedom and lived in close contact with people, it had to get used to being caged in the zoo. In 1940 Winifred Hope, who, if the Hope version of his background is correct, had looked after him as a child, visited him at the Chicago Zoo and was very disappointed with the housing conditions.
The impression she got back then was probably a bit one-sided: The young gorilla was looked after at the zoo by Eddie Robinson and other guards, who looked after him intensively and also played a lot with him outside the cage in the first few years. The monkey showed a peaceful and calm disposition, but grew to an impressive size that ultimately made it necessary to keep a distance from him and to keep him behind closed doors. There have been reports of explosive situations in which it was difficult to keep him in check - and once with the use of a baby alligator - and to get him back behind his cage doors.
Bushman was of great interest to zoologists and biologists, as little was known about gorillas and their keeping up to that time. Robinson worked hard for the animal and so Bushman survived much longer in human care than had previously been the case with gorillas. Other zoos followed what was learned in Chicago. Among other things, Bushman in Chicago received an outdoor enclosure with climbing facilities and a shower.
Bushman was visited by an estimated one million zoo visitors during his lifetime: He was the first gorilla in Chicago and, according to the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, was considered the most outstanding and valuable single zoo animal of its kind worldwide. He won the hearts of zoo visitors at a time when great apes were often marketed as wild monsters in the King Kong style , as happened to his conspecific Buddy , who is said to have been smaller than Bushman. Bushman's fans sometimes went so far as to wear the same clothes every time they visit the zoo in order to be recognized by the monkey. During the Second World War , it was considered a symbol of strength that should raise the morale of the troops. As a result, he once received an extraordinary toy: a tire from Adolf Hitler's car.
Bushman was ailing from 1950 and died of a heart condition on New Year's Day 1951 at the age of 22 or 23. Its empty cage was adorned with flowers by thousands of grieving zoo visitors. The body was given to the Field Museum of Natural History , where taxidermists created a lifelike specimen of the gorilla. It is located (as of January 2020) at the east entrance of the museum. Bushman was portrayed very realistically in a four-footed position. The preparation was carried out using a method that Leon Walters had developed at the Field Museum. In addition to Walters, Joseph Krstolich and Frank Wonder were involved in the preparation of the preparation. T. also adhered to the methods of Carl Akeley . This also included a plaster cast of the clay model and the use of synthetic resin for details such as hands, feet and head of the animal in order to reproduce its properties in detail. In 2016, the preparation was carefully examined by Shelley Reisman Paine, Lisa Goldberg and Tom Gnoske so that it could be preserved as unchanged as possible for the future. It was then moved to its current location at the east entrance of the museum. On the website of the museum you can read: "Bushman's unique story is one of many that enrich our understanding of the natural world and our place in it."
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Beth Stebner: Hello, old friend! Moment 92-year-old woman visits the gorilla she cared for as a girl living in Africa (but he's a little stiffer this time around) , March 19, 2013 on www.dailymail.co.uk
- ↑ a b Bushman the Gorilla , March 7, 2019 at www.fieldmuseum.org
- ↑ a b c d S.M. O'Connor: Bushman at Lincoln Park Zoo and The Field Museum , Jan. 2, 2018 on inthegardencity.com
- ↑ Bushman on de.findagrave.com