Originally published at: Watch this amazing interaction between a mother gorilla and a human mom with a baby | Boing Boing
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Videos like this, while amazing and sweet, also make me really appreciate David Attenborough for not endlessly gushing and repeating himself over something that is happening.
I wonder how often ‘Oh my god’ comes up in a scatter plot of youtube videos.
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And now I feel bad for Kiki and her baby, living in captivity…
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I prefer rehabs and sanctuaries that help an animal flourish before being released into the wild. While it’s cool to see exotic animals in person a lot of them do get depressed in captivity
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Me too, but gorillas are currently critically endangered in the wild. At least this zoo is opening a new, larger, more natural gorilla habitat this summer.
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I also think there’s something to the idea that people who rarely travel to e.g. Africa will be more proactive in conservation if they’ve seen a gorilla up close. If someone has studied this effect, I’d be delighted to see some numbers, one way or the other.
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Certainly the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, while it has had plenty of issues, is going the way of fewer animals in larger enclosures. eg. they got rid of their hippos to make a bigger enslosure for the elephants. A few years ago, when I was walking down the hill in the morning, the elephants were all impatiently gathered around the gate separating the two different parts of their area, waiting for the door to be opened. As I was going up the hill later in the day, they were all gathered around the other side of the gate, impatiently waiting for it to open to go back. I remember thinking “They’re giant cats, if there is a door, they want to be on the other side of it.” Of course boredom will do that, and even with the big enclosure, their area is TINY compared to how far they range in the wild. But it beats pacing back and forth in a cage.
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I tried to cheer up by imagining Kiki was thinking funny thoughts:
Is that your baby? Bless it’s heart, I’m sure the fur will come in any day now…
Wow, mine’s already so active - walking and climbing. Yours will get there, too. I’ve heard good things about Gymboree…
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The video is better with the sound off
There is no audio from the enclosure, no interview with Kiki afterward 
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I very much get the impression that for once the gorillas are as interested in the human side of the glass as the humans normally are in the gorilla side.
It is a shame that normally we have so little to interest them.
I also had to keep reminding myself that it isn’t “how human like their responses/hands/whatnot are”, but “how gorilla like our responses still are, how gorilla like our hands are” and so on.
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