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Letters: Philly Zoo a caring home for gorillas

ISSUE | PHILADELPHIA ZOO A caring, nurturing home for gorillas The Philadelphia Zoo's gorillas, our closest-living relatives (with chimps and bonobos), cannot survive in their wild, natural habitat today ("Birth marred by a life in captivity," Monday).

Honi, a 21-year-old western lowland gorilla, holds her newborn baby during its debut at the Philadelphia Zoo Wednesday, August 31, 2016.
Honi, a 21-year-old western lowland gorilla, holds her newborn baby during its debut at the Philadelphia Zoo Wednesday, August 31, 2016.Read moreDAVID MAIALETTI / Staff Photographer

ISSUE | PHILADELPHIA ZOO

A caring, nurturing home for gorillas

The Philadelphia Zoo's gorillas, our closest-living relatives (with chimps and bonobos), cannot survive in their wild, natural habitat today ("Birth marred by a life in captivity," Monday).

The zoo has moved from displaying individual animals in small, barren cages, to large, open, group-living spaces that provide fresh air and an abundance of natural and man-made materials to ensure their physical and mental well-being. It is preserving the few surviving apes in their natural habitat, while displaying others in settings that allow face-to-face encounters daily (through safe glass) with thousands of people of all ages. Through such interaction, we recognize that gorillas are as gentle, caring, and social as we are.

As a former university professor, I found that assigning students a half-hour of independent, direct observation of a primate species in a zoo was worth a month of film footage and mountains of reading. The same is true for zoo visitors.

Critics of gorillas in captivity should try volunteer work with the zoo and its efforts to protect this precious species.

|R.F. Sutton, president, Philadelphia Society, Archaeological Institute of America, Merion Station