Where There’s a Will, Chimps Will Find a Way, Babies Show

It is a whodunit unlike most: Instead of a missing body, there’s one too many.

And the case at the Los Angeles Zoo involves a birth, not a death. The mystery now on everyone’s mind is, who is the father of 6-year-old Yoshiko the chimp’s newborn daughter.

Only Yoshiko, who delivered her surprise Sunday, knows for sure.

No one even knew she was pregnant, although she had put on a little weight. Adding to the mystery, all the zoo’s male chimps have had vasectomies. All, that is, except for Toto, a 44-year-old male who has never shown any interest in the opposite sex, and Glenn, who is 4 and too young to be messing around.

A blood test, to be performed some months from now, will determine the father and solve the mystery.

The questions began when assistant chimp keeper Mark Apha arrived at work about 7:30 a.m. Sunday and saw blood on the floor of the new $5-million Chimpanzee of the Mahale Mountains exhibit.

“Oh my goodness,” gasped Apha, “one of the chimps has been wounded.” That was before he spotted Yoshiko quietly grooming her newborn daughter.

Apha ran to a telephone to call his boss, chimp keeper Vicki Bingaman. He was out of breath when he delivered the news. His boss was underwhelmed.

Bingaman, who had notice that Yoshiko was plump and wondered if she was pregnant, had quickly told herself, “No way.”

After the fact, she accepted the news, saying: “Nothing they do surprises me anymore.”

The chimps have defied the zoo’s aggressive birth control program before.

Birth control was started four years ago because the Los Angeles Zoo was well represented on the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn.’s species revival plan. In essence, the zoo already had plenty of chimps.

But zookeepers underestimated the mating power of chimps that frolic under the bright Southland sun. Yoshiko’s girl was the third chimp born in spite of birth control therapies involving hormones, Norplant, and, finally, vasectomies.

The first baby to arrive was Glenn, a 4-year-old whose mother overcame the birth control pills that had been stuffed in her food, such as bananas.

But the females share food with males in the family. So much for that plan.

Ripley, named after the Ripley’s Believe It or Not museum, was the second baby. Norplant did not stop her. That birth two years ago even surprised Bingaman.

And now this, the Sunday birth. Bingaman said there might be a plausible explanation. “We had a urologist who came in to assist our local veterinarian with the vasectomies.”

So what happened? “Well, the vets had never performed a vasectomy. Let me tell you, it’s not easy. It’s much harder to do it with chimpanzees than it is with humans.”

She spared us the details.

Bingaman wanted to name Yoshiko’s baby Blue Moon, because she was born under January’s second full moon. The zoo had other ideas, said spokeswoman Judy Shay.

On Monday, officials asked for a $25,000 donation to name the baby. Jeanette Vachon of Rolling Hills leaped at the chance.

As to how to stop births in the future, Bingaman hasn’t a clue. “They have minds and bodies of their own,” she said.