An infant gorilla in the Bwenge group, which shares Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park MOUNTAIN GORILLA VETERINARY PROJECT
In late June 2009, a small group of mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park began to fall ill. One by one, 11 of the dozen apes started exhibiting severe respiratory problems. Within days of the park researchers’ noticing the outbreak, one adult female and her 4-year-old son went missing from the group. When wildlife veterinarian Jean-Felix Kinani and his colleagues went looking for the pair, they found the mother lying dead, face down on the ground. Her 4-year-old son sat beside her, “vocalizing, calling other gorillas,” Kinani recalls. Kinani helped treat the young male gorilla with the antibiotic ceftriaxone, returned him to the group, and brought the mother’s body back to the lab for necropsy.
Kinani found stones in the dead gorilla’s stomach, which ...
