Where did the gorillas you look after come from?

Where did the gorillas you look after come from?

Daniel Simmonds (Zookeeper) gives expert video advice on: How similar are gorillas to humans?; How heavy are gorillas?; How strong are gorillas? and more...

One of the gorillas we've got here is actually very important, a dramatically important animal, and that's Bobby our silverback, because he was actually born in the wild. It's important to stress that it's strictly illegal to take gorillas or indeed any animals from the wild and put them in a zoo. But Bobby the gorilla was actually taken illegally from the wild as a youngster by poachers and sold to an Italian circus where he lived for the first few years of his life very sadly. But he was then rescued by the Italian zoo and has eventually made his way over here to ZSL London Zoo where he's doing really, really well. But generally speaking all zoo gorillas are born in captivity, and the other two gorillas we have here were indeed born in captivity.