Baby Boom

For a month, the baby was alone in her new home. She didn’t smile. She seemed sad.

Now, 4-month-old Zoe is chortling up a storm and trying to swing from a trapeze. With two other baby chimpanzees--who tickle her and tug at her big ears--Zoe is thriving in the Los Angeles Zoo nursery, where she has lived since her mother abandoned her at Lion Country Safari in West Palm Beach, Fla. (She endured a one-month quarantine while veterinarians kept watch.)

Zookeepers are raising all three babies apart from adult chimps.

Randy Fulk, curator of research at the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, N.C., says the situation is unusual but understandable.

“That’s a last-ditch effort,” said Fulk, who tracks chimpanzees for the American Zoo and Aquarium Assn. “You do everything you can to keep babies with the mothers.” Los Angeles Zoo keepers removed Jean and Jake from the zoo’s renovated group exhibit after roughhousing young male chimps accidentally killed a 4-month-old chimp in May.

Zoo officials acknowledge that visitors have questioned their decision to take the two baby chimps from their mothers. And after a story about it ran in The Times last August, one angry reader wrote, “Has anyone thought to separate these ‘roughhousing males’ rather than interfere between mother and baby chimps?”

“Absolutely,” said Jennie McNary, curator of mammals. “I understand why people would react that way. We had many discussions on what to do. We ended up losing the one infant. We felt for the sake of Jean and Jake that it was important for us to [remove them].”

The older young males, she added, were not being aggressive. “They were acting like young male chimps . . . and in the process got too rough.”

Removing the male adolescents would have upset the group dynamics, McNary said.

“You’re talking about a group of chimps that has been together for many years. If you pull out these young males, you’re removing them from their moms as well.”

At Lion Country Safari, Zoe’s case was different, said spokesman Fred Volpe . Zoe’s mother, Doll, was the mother of seven others and previously had lived in a research laboratory.

“Laboratory animals do not make good parents,” he said. “She had Zoe and wanted no part of her.”

Officials at Lion Country Safari, which had no other baby chimps, started looking for a zoo that might take Zoe on loan. Chimps are social animals and should not be raised alone, Volpe said.

Curators at the L.A. Zoo agreed, and in late October, Zoe arrived at Los Angeles International Airport, accompanied by her handlers and a moose toy. (The FAA gave special permission for Zoe to sit in the passenger cabin, where she snagged a window seat.)

In the next year or so, Jean and Jake will rejoin the 13-member chimp exhibit. Zoe’s situation will be reevaluated; if she’s not fitting in at the L.A. Zoo, she could go back to Lion Country Safari or to another animal park. For now, keepers are starting to introduce the chimps to their future home through limited visits. They want the babies to get used to the sights and sounds of the exhibit before they see or interact with the other chimps.

Meanwhile, the staff changes their diapers, bottle feeds them and cradles them in rocking chairs, while zoo visitors look on through the nursery’s display windows.

Jean, 8 months old, and Jake, 7 months old, treat Zoe “just wonderfully,” said keeper Katherine Jaynes, a care-giver for the chimps. “I think they both realize she’s a baby, that she doesn’t have the motor skills they have, and they’re more gentle with her.” Once, Zoe turned on her back, couldn’t get up and started crying; Jean and Jake rushed to her side to comfort her.

Zoe wobbles after the other two chimps, who like to show off on the trapeze, and tries to imitate them--she’ll stretch for the rung and lift her feet up off the ground.

Said McNary: “They’re all like little kids together.”

Los Angeles Zoo information: (323) 644-6400 or https://www.lazoo.org.

Renee Tawa can be reached at renee.tawa@latimes.com.