WBEZ | Lincoln Park Zoo

Baby gorilla seriously injured at Chicago zoo

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:54:00 -0600

A 3-month-old gorilla has been seriously injured at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo while in an enclosure with other gorillas.

Zoo President Kevin Bell says they're not sure what caused the injury, although it appears to have been inflicted by another gorilla. Bell says there were no previous signs of violence from the group.

The baby gorilla named Nayembi suffered cuts to her face last week. Zoo workers quickly separated the mother and baby from the rest of the group.

Zoo officials are cautiously optimistic about a recovery.

The zoo has its own hospital where the gorilla is being treated.

A statement on the Lincoln Park Zoo's website says that in an encouraging sign the gorilla is playing during the day and getting plenty of sleep at night.

Chicago museums see 2012 bump in attendance

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:25:00 -0600

Attendance increased by about 600,000 at Chicago-area zoos and museums last year.

Fifteen Chicago-area attractions are members of the Museums Work for Chicago group, which released attendance data on Thursday. The group says attendance was 15.1 million during 2012. That's up from 14.4 million during 2011, when attendance remained steady from 2010.

Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo topped the list with 3.5 million visitors. Brookfield Zoo had 2.3 million visitors and the Shedd Aquarium had 2.1 million. The Chicago Children's Museum saw a 10 percent increase and the Chicago History Museum had a 9 percent increase.

The year Chicago lost Bushman on New Year's Day

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:15:00 -0600

New Year’s Day 1951.

Time magazine had called him “the best known and most popular civic figure in Chicago.” Now he was dead, and the city mourned.

His name was Bushman. He was a gorilla.

Bushman was a two-year-old, 38-pound baby when he was brought to Lincoln Park Zoo in 1930. He had been purchased from a West African missionary for $3,500. Gorillas were still a rarity in America, and Bushman was soon drawing crowds.

Things were pretty casual in the beginning. Visitors to the zoo would often see Bushman and his keeper tossing a football around on the park lawn. But as the gorilla grew bigger and less docile, he had to be kept locked in his cage. Bushman eventually topped out at 6'2" and 547 pounds.

Despite living his life in captivity, Bushman had a sunny disposition. He was gentle to the mice he might catch and he never attacked a keeper. Reclining in his cage, he munched grapes like a Roman emperor while downing endless quarts of milk. School children loved him. On his birthday he always received a cake or three from some class on a field trip.

The Lord of Lincoln Park became the most famous zoo animal in the country. Bushman was featured in magazines and newsreels, on t-shirts and postcards. Like any celebrity, he sometimes lost patience with the paparazzi, and would throw food at photographers. “He got a kick out of seeing them scatter,” his keeper laughed.

In the summer of 1950, Bushman suffered a heart attack. At 22 he was not very old for a gorilla and had always been in excellent health. When news got out that he might be dying, Chicagoans rushed to the zoo. In one week, over a quarter million people filed silently past his cage.

By October Bushman had recovered. He seemed his old self. One day he managed to get out of his cage and roamed through the ape house for over three hours. Nobody could convince him to end his vacation. Then he saw a garter snake and retreated to safety.

On New Year's Morning 1951, one of the keepers found Bushman dead in his cage. This time the heart attack had been fatal. The news of his passing was reported on the front pages of all the city's newspapers.

After an autopsy Bushman's body was stuffed. Today he is in permanent residence at the Field Museum.

The bird man of Lincoln Park Zoo

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 12:39:00 -0500

Lincoln Park Zoo opens at 7 a.m.

By then, most of its animals have snorted, stretched, wiggled, flapped and, without benefit of any coffee, otherwise roused themselves for another day of exhibiting their easy wonder.

Kevin Bell, my guest later in the show, does have coffee in the morning: One cup; he needs it. He gets to the zoo at 6 a.m.., something he has done almost every day for nearly four decades, ever since he was 23 and came here from New York to become curator of birds—the youngest curator in the zoo's history.

Birds were the zoo’s first animals. They arrived in 1868, a pair of mute swans that were a gift from New York City's Central Park. They came by train; it took two days.

Many things have changed at the zoo during the last 144 years, but one wonderful thing has not: It's free, one of only three major U.S. zoos (the others are in Washington, D.C., and St. Louis) that charge no admission.

Those two swans soon multiplied to 13, and by 1874 the animal population swelled to 48 birds and 27 mammals. That year a bear was bought for $10 and the Lincoln Park Zoological Gardens was officially formed, making our zoo-though arguments come from Philadelphia—the first in the U.S.

It has grown—more animals, more land-over the years. But it has always bee—and remains—a special slice of the city.

A zoo, especially one as accessible and democratic as Lincoln Park's, sits in a pleasant spot in one's memory and provides a strong thread through one's life. It is a place where virtually every Chicago-area child is taken by his parents and where, in turn, these children take their children and their children and on and on through the generations.

It is an early morning last week. Outside, people stroll. Inside and outside, animals prowl. Lincoln Park Zoo shakes its furry, feathered self to life.

Kevin Bell is there, of course.

Bell says, "For a little while, my time is my own. This hour is mine, and I spend it with the birds.”

We are outside and a couple of tiny sparrows, prosaic city birds free to scurry about the trees above Bell's head, make some funny noise—you know, that chirping noise that always sounds happy. They fly off and Bell watches them, until they are but specks in the city sky.

Chicago zoo helps vaccinate dogs in Tanzania

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:51:00 -0500

Officials with a Chicago zoo say they've vaccinated a million dogs in Tanzania as part of a project to eliminate rabies and save endangered carnivores in the Serengeti National Park.

The Lincoln Park Zoo says its project began in 2003 and the zoo's Serengeti Health Initiative team has worked in villages in northern Tanzania to administer the donated vaccines.

Zoo officials announced their one millionth vaccination in a news release Wednesday.

Steve Thompson is the zoo's vice president of conservation. He says the populations of already-endangered carnivores like lions and African wild dogs were declining as native species were contracting rabies from local domestic dogs.

Zoo officials estimate that the vaccinations have saved about 150 humans from rabies infections as well.

JoJo the gorilla moves from Chicago zoo to 'burbs

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:34:00 -0500

JoJo the silverback gorilla is leaving Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo for a new home in the suburbs. And zoo officials hope he'll start a family once he's there.

The 31-year-old is being moved from the city's North Side to Brookfield Zoo in the western suburbs. There are female gorillas at Brookfield who zoo officials hope the 485-pound ape will mate with. Two female gorillas are also leaving Lincoln Park Zoo as part of a breeding program. They'll go to zoos in Kansas City and Columbus, Ohio.

A goodbye birthday party will be held for JoJo on April 10.

In more moves, two young male apes will arrive at Lincoln Park this summer to share a habitat with two other males who live there.

Chimps in Super Bowl ads cause controversy

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:32:00 -0600

Chicago-based CareerBuilder is coming under fire for its latest Super Bowl ad featuring chimpanzees. This is not the first year CareerBuilder has featured chimpanzees as actors in its ads, and it's not the first time Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo has spoken out against the ads.

But this is the first year a study has been published showing that chimps used in entertainment has a negative impact. Brian Hare at Duke University led the study.

"Seeing chimpanzees in TV like this actually makes people think they're great pets - that they're not endangered," Hare said.

Hare said the bigger issue, though, is the international reach of Super Bowl ads. He said people watching in countries where endangered chimps live put the animals in further peril.

"If they see that there's a market, that there's people who are interested in these animals, that people in the United States dress them up and want to treat them as pets - it will not be but one second before they're out going to collect some so they can then sell them," Hare said.

Hare added that there is already a great apes trade active in Africa, but that this exposure does not help matters. Hare would like CareerBuilder to explore other options like using animation.

Career Builder said the chimps were treated humanely and that the ads are effective.

Daily Rehearsal: Simon Callows is 'Being Shakespeare'

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:04:00 -0600

1. British actor Simon Callow will be bring the well-reviewed Being Shakespeare to CST (it runs at the Broadway Playhouse as part of World's Stage, their program that hosts companies from outside Chicago), "a virtuosic solo performance that weaves together excerpts from William Shakespeare's plays and poems, breathing new life into his unforgettable characters and the real man behind the legend." Those of you who have Netflix Instant might remember Callow also as that older hilarious gentleman who (spoiler for a movie that came out in 1994) dies suddenly in Four Weddings and Funeral. Being Shakespeare will run for a week only, April 18–29, 2012.

2. Watch Doyle and Debbie on Conan last night:

3. American Players Theatre’s Artistic Director David Frank is retiring (in a few years), and they've announced that he will be replaced by Brenda DeVita, current Associate Artistic Director. According to Board of Directors President Barbara Swan, this move has been in the works for awhile. And for DeVita: "I love my job. I love artists. What could be better?” Frank: "Brenda DeVita has been fulfilling ninety percent of a typical artistic director’s job for several years and the results, including the recent lavish praise for APT’s work from the regional and national press, speak for themselves." So what have you been doing Frank? Kelly Kleiman has praised the Spring Green-based theater in the past, especially last summer's Crime and Punishment.

4. Dates for upcoming Jeff awards have been announced: Non-Equity is Monday June 4 at the Park West here in Chicago; Equity on October 15 at Drury Lane Oakbrook Terrace. Snag an invite early.

5. We must have missed it when three men attempted to live in like hummingbirds at the Lincoln Park Zoo this past summer -- and not for a performance art piece. If you were also spending your hours elsewhere, catch all the action on their new series Live Like An Animal: Human Hummingbird, which airs Tuesday, Jan. 17 on Nat Geo WILD:

"The television hosts Lloyd Buck, Matt Thompson and James Cooper constructed the human-scale bird nest over several days at the zoo... To mimic the hummingbirds’ diet of flower nectar, they subsist on a sickly sweet concoction, triggering a dramatic sugar overload and subsequent wild behavior. Matt attempts to entice ladies at the zoo with a less-than-impressive hummingbird courtship dance, and at the end of their adventure living like human hummingbirds a major threat to the nest rolls in: a storm."

Questions? Tips? Email kdries@wbez.org.

Clever Apes: Toolmakers

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:19:00 -0500

As we human beings have come up against our limits throughout history, we’ve managed to invent tools that can overcome them. Using tools we can fly, restart a human heart, photograph galaxies and amoebae. Tools are so central to our humanity that we used to think they defined us: “Man the Toolmaker.”

That notion began to unravel in the 1960s, as Jane Goodall discovered that humans aren’t the only clever apes around. Chimps, too, make and use tools. It was an existential turning point: As Goodall sponsor Louis Leakey famously responded, “Now we have to redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

That line has only gotten fuzzier since then, thanks in part to work done on chimps and gorillas at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. In this installment of Clever Apes we’ll meet a few of these crafty primates, and consider what the tools can teach us about the toolmakers.

Listen here:

Then we’ll pivot to another tool that probes – in this case, one that analyzes art (and, it turns out, artists). It’s an X-Ray fluorescence spectrometer, but we prefer to call it the “science gun.” We see it in action at the Art Institute of Chicago, thanks to conservation scientist Francesca Casadio.

Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the Clever Apes podcast, follow us on Twitter, find us on Facebook.

Scientist concludes animals, not just humans, have culture

Fri, 27 May 2011 20:00:00 -0500

Do animals have culture? If you’re talking about chimps and you’re asking Dr. Elizabeth Lonsdorf of Lincoln Park Zoo, she’ll tell you yes. It’s an unorthodox and somewhat controversial opinion in her field of primatology but it’s a professional opinion she’s developed after years of studying chimps in her lab and in the wild.

When Lonsdorf spoke recently at Northwestern University she talked about observations she and her colleagues have made about tool use among chimps. Before Jane Goodall, the godmother of chimp research, observed her charges using long strands of grass to extract tasty insects from a large anthill, it was thought that only humans made tools.

Lonsdorf’s group has taken Goodall’s research a step further by identifying differences in tool use among various chimp populations, differences that can’t easily be explained by geography, or access to resources - differences she’s inclined to label as cultural.

They may not be discussing Satre or writing poetry, but you may be surprised at what these little guys are up to. You can hear Lonsdorf’s descriptions of some startling (and ballsy) chimp behavior, and her argument for why that constitutes culture, in the audio excerpt above.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Dr. Elizabeth Lonsdorf spoke to an audience assembled by the Chicago Council on Science and Technology in April. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.