- Working in the zookeeper industry for over 21 years, Chad never knew he’d become a gorilla’s dad!
- After a difficult birth, one of the gorilla’s under Chad’s care rejected its baby and refused to bond with it
- Chad needed to act quickly and decided to become the little gorilla’s dad
- Chad Staples, from Mogo Wildlife Park, NSW, shares his story below….
The gorilla scooped up her newborn baby and started cleaning him.
“Now we wait for her to pass her placenta,” I said to my curator Althea.
Having worked in the industry for 27 years, I was the director of three zoos, including Mogo Wildlife Park.
We’d planned the pregnancy of Kipensi and now, in October 2022, she’d just given birth, with the father Kisane by her side.
Four hours later, to our dismay, Kisane picked up the baby.
Read more: We smuggled our surrogate across the border
The dads aren’t supposed to touch the newborns and though he was very gentle, it put the mother into further distress, preventing her from passing the placenta.
We tried everything we could to distract the father to get him to put the baby down, like offering him toys that he would need both hands to use, but nothing worked.
It took 14 hours, with us watching the whole time, before he finally put the baby down.
We rushed in and the mother was placed under anaesthesia to operate and get the placenta out.
By now it was late at night and the baby hadn’t had any milk.
“I’ll watch him overnight and feed him,” I said.
I lived on site, so I took him home.
Every two hours, I bottle fed the baby gorilla and as soon as the sun came up, I took him back to the enclosure to bond with his mother.
She’d woken up from surgery and I hoped she’d rush to her baby’s side.
Only she stepped right over him and ignored him.
“That’s not good,” I groaned.
We gave them two hours to re-bond, before finally going in.
Seeing the baby’s colour had changed, we rushed in vets and human doctors to treat him.
He’d developed sepsis pneumonia and required 24-hour care, so I kept him at home on life support.
A week later, he was much better, but too much time had passed for him to be able to return to his family.
“I’ll hand raise him,” I decided.
I called him Kaius, which means “blessing.”
I’d hand raised other animals before, including a lion cub, but Kaius was the most demanding.
He could use his hands and feet to pull off his nappies and clung onto my back as I walked around.
He took over my life, but it was incredibly rewarding.
I documented our lives together on social media and received hundreds of thousands of messages of support from around the world.
When he got to six months, I deliberately started spending less time with him.
Another gorilla at the zoo, a female in her 40’s called G-anne, had been separated from the others after an operation, so we trialled seeing if she would be a suitable carer for Kaius, by placing him in a cage near hers, so they could get used to each other’s sounds and smells.
In August 2023, when Kaius was 11 months old, I opened the door that separated them and watched with bated breath.
To my enormous relief, G-anne made first contact and their bond slowly grew.
Kauis now follows her around like a shadow, and G-anne has a new lease on life.
We only allow our zoo visitors to see them one hour a day, but they’re already proving to be a popular attraction.
I bottle feed him through a fence now and eventually he won’t need me at all.
It’s hard to believe that one day he will be a 200kg silverback.
Until then, I love being his surrogate dad.
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