Awwwww! Let's just hope the Bronx Zoo doesn't name either of the new baby gorillas "Cliven"

Photos by Julie Larsen Maher for the Wildlife Conservation Society

Do gorillas have Mother's Day? I don't know, but I don't think Mom needs words to clue us in to how enthusiastic she would be about anyone or anything presuming to mess with Junior. Speaking of whom, judging by those big gorilla-eyes, he or she (we'll explain below) certainly seems to have this "camera" thing pretty well figured out.

by Ken

I'm playing catch-up on this story; we always like to stay on top of stories that are bound to make readers go, "Awwwww." However, thanks to The Frisky's Jessica Wakeman, who tipped me off to the coverage by the Gothamist blog, we can pass on the news of the Bronx Zoo's reveal of its two new baby gorillas, as unveiled to a hard-boiled press corps that I'm sure went, as if with one voice, "Awwwww."


The New York Daily News's Barry Paddock reported a couple of days ago:

The city just got a little wilder with the birth of two baby gorillas at the Bronx Zoo.

The western lowland gorillas are the first born at the Wildlife Conservation Society-run zoo in eight years.

The babies will have plenty of company. They’ll be on display, weather permitting, with the 18 other gorillas at the zoo's Congo Gorilla Forest, the largest group of gorillas anywhere in North America.

One baby was born April 17 to a 33-year-old mother named Julia. The other was born March 10 to 19-year-old Tuti. Ernie is the 31-year-old first-time papa of both babies.

Both mothers have given birth at the zoo before.

Because zookeepers haven't closely examined the babies, their gender is not yet known.

Gothamist adds that since "it's unclear so far if the gorillas are male or female,"

no names have been given, but the press release does offer up this cute fact: "The gestation period for a gorilla is 8.5 months and newborns weigh approximately 4 to 5 pounds. Gorilla infants are held by their mother for the first four months of their life." It's adorable:

Now nobody -- or at least nobody I would care to hang out with -- wants to see pictures of baby snakes or crocodilians or insects, but once we pass into the cute-and-cuddly sector of the Animal Kingdom (I'm not sure of the exact zoological classification), we're in the realm of "Awwwww." Now we may not think of lions and tigers, or bears and horsies and gorillas, as c-and-c, but give us a Mama Lion or Tiger or Bear or Horsie or Gorilla (or of course Mama Doggie or Pussycat) doing what she does with her young-uns, and it's instant "Awwwww." My understanding is that National Geographic has, since its inception, assigned one of its most trusted photo editors to the all-important mother-and-child beat.

The mother-and-child relationship many not always be perfectly executed, either in our species or in any of the others, but the basic plan, of Mother doing whatever she has to do to make Child's passage into this dangerous world as safe and habitable as possible, remains one of Mother Nature's most endearing.

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