Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Newborn joy for Gana the gorilla after baby tragedy - Update

With fierce pride Gana the gorilla gently cradles her tiny baby. Her powerful forearm presses the wrinkly, virtually hairless child to her chest. Her visible joy is in marked contrast to the grief she demonstrated last year on losing her baby Claudio.

Last August, she could be seen clinging to the child's lifeless body at Germany's Munster Zoo, cradling him and holding the body in the air as she tried to revive him.



In some of the most moving pictures ever taken of animals in captivity, Gana was seen fiercely guarding the body of three-month-old Claudio as she apparently refused to believe he was dead.

Initially puzzled, Gana stared at the body, bewildered by its lifelessness. For hours the distraught mother gently shook and stroked the child, vainly seeking to restore movement to his lolling head and limp arms.



Visitors to the zoo openly wept as they witnessed her actions. And she refused to let keepers near his body for days after he died in her arms from a heart defect.

But as of last month Gana, aged 12, is a mother again and has been happily cradling her newborn, whose sex is unknown, and giving it rides on her back.

Previously.

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