Female and male gorillas look very similar until the age of eight.
In the US state of Ohio, zoo workers were surprised when a male gorilla gave birth to a cub. The matter was reported by, among others, the American CNN.
An 8-year-old gorilla named Sully has lived in the Columbus Zoo for four years already. Sully is an extremely endangered western on the plateau.
Sully was thought to be male until “the gorilla care team found him holding an unexpected baby gorilla early Thursday,” the zoo wrote on its website Wednesday.
According to the zoo, the mistake is explained by the fact that males and females look very similar before the age of eight. Only after that do the male gorillas grow bigger than the females, their backs become silvery and they develop their characteristic head humps.
Sully came to the zoo healthy and has not needed any medical procedures that would have been revealed earlier. Likewise, the zoo where Sully was born had kept its distance from the animal, because Sully was healthy and his mother took good care of him.
The pregnancy was also missed, because external signs of pregnancy are rarely seen in gorillas. Newborn gorillas are smaller than human babies, and gorillas have big bellies, the zoo says.
According to the zoo, the cub appears to be a healthy female.
– The veterinary and animal care teams have not yet approached the baby, which gives them time to communicate with each other and the other gorillas, but the welfare of the animals is going to be checked soon, the zoo’s website said.
The zoo welcomes the baby, and both mother and baby Sully stay at the zoo to live with the other gorillas in the herd.