An Ohio zoo staff was shocked when their "male" gorilla gave birth

[Carla_Sinclair]

Originally published at: An Ohio zoo staff was shocked when their "male" gorilla gave birth | Boing Boing

…

[smulder]

[Brainspore]

@Carla_Sinclair

To prevent another silly – and perhaps embarrassing – surprise

Sounds like it was a Sully surprise.

[HMSGoose]

So it sounds like Sully went with a homebirth if the whole medical staff missed the delivery. No one thought to ask the dula?

[Scientist]

Gorilla pregnancies last ~9 months, like humans. That is a long time not to check in on the health of a gorilla that in theory is under daily evaluation.

@Carla_Sinclair

Zookeepers also blamed their confusion on Sully’s health, which has always been good, giving them no reason for a close-up examination.

[Surprise_Puma]

Gorillas are renowned among penis/teste-studiers (my job is weird) for having rather small endowments, so they’d have to look pretty close to see. They make up for it by being able to thoroughly pummel any of the smartass and well-endowed bonobos who may be tempted to mock them. But you’d think that the caretakers would be looking pretty closely and pretty often what with the whole critically endangered thing. Check the health of your apes, yo!

[DiveGirl]

Now I have questions about the origin of your username…is the surprise related in any way to your work?!

[Surprise_Puma]

Oh, I am so tempted to make up something fun! But alas, it’s just a phrase I started using to describe a stupid storyline development after watching Jack Bauer’s daughter randomly meet a mountain lion in the first season of 24. My work is on sexual behaviors (criminal ones specifically) in men but us shrinks do love our comparative analysis of sexual behaviors in other animals.

[smulder]

[DiveGirl]

Ahhh, Kimbicile! She was my most/least favorite!

[algomeysa2]

“ok, about 10 months ago we started to suspect Sully might be gay… he was pretty close with this other dude gorilla.”

[KathyPartdeux]

It’s one of the more interesting things to find out on your wedding night.

[KarlS]

@Surprise_Puma

Gorillas are renowned among penis/teste-studiers (my job is weird) for having rather small endowments, so they’d have to look pretty close to see.

I think I learned about that when a woman who was a big fan of King Kong did the math to prove that fucking him would be perfectly safe and reasonable.

[euansmith]

Assigned Male at Birth, eh?

[simonize]

@Surprise_Puma

but us shrinks do love our comparative analysis of sexual behaviors in other animals.

Animals can sometimes give us a smokey mirror of our irrational behaviors. Because people will make up some crazy rationalizations to explain why they did what they did.

[simonize]

Between the car brand and the topic I instantly thought of this tune
Warren Zevon - Gorilla, You’re A Desperado - YouTube

[Kaleberg]

Walt Kelley once had a character in his Pogo comic strip ask Porky, the porcupine character, how one tells a boy porcupine from a girl porcupine. Porky replied that “That should only be of interest to another porcupine”.