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The Fort Worth Zoo has a new baby elephant. Maybe you’ve seen her, or maybe you’ve just glimpsed the “Biggest Baby in Town” ad campaign. Maybe you’ve watched one of the sickeningly adorable YouTube videos of the elephant toddling around by her mother or spritzing herself with water. Perhaps you even went online and participated in the baby-naming contest, forever burdening the poor creature with the name “Belle.”
All that attention has no doubt made the Dallas Zoo rather jealous, which explains the arrival Thursday of gorillas Shana and Zola from the Calgary Zoo.
The ostensible reason for the transfer was that the 11-year-old brothers weren’t welcomed by their fellow western lowland gorillas in Canada. According to the Calgary Sun, Kakinga, a 34-year-old silverback, “didn’t take too well to the younger males,” leaving them isolated.
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His jealousy is understandable. While Shana has led a quiet, retiring life, Zola is famous, having achieved Internet stardom when a video of him breakdancing in a puddle (the funk music was added later) went viral.
Maybe the fame made Zola insufferable. Maybe Kakinga was simply reluctant to give up the spotlight. However it was, the brothers are in Dallas now, exploring their surroundings during a month-long quarantine. Only after that’s over will we know how Dallas’ primates will cope with their famous interloper.
