My Girl Bonane

Lots of exciting things have been happening in the Gorilla Sector of Virunga National Park lately. The Rangers are back to their very important work of patroling and monitoring the gorillas after 15 long months of fighting within the Park.

The Rangers are in the process of conducting a census of the habituated gorilla families, which consists of counting everything from new births to migrations between the families. It was during one of the patrols that the Rangers came upon one of my favorite gorillas, Bonane. We all thought Bonane was a male, but on this patrol Bonane was spotted with a baby. Bonane, it turns out, is a female.

Bonane is the gorilla I feature with the title of this blog. That picture of her just captures me. Her eyes are so beautiful and enchanting. Her face seems so soft and warm, somehow. She's a gorgeous gorilla and I so guess it's only fittng that she is a female. In one of my earlier posts, I expressed concern for the gorillas safety due to the heavy conflict within the gorilla sector. I wondered if Bonane would ever live to be a silverback in charge of his own family. Well, thanks to the Rangers and the fact that they share everything with us, I now know the answer to that question, don't I! Bonane will never be a silverback in charge of his own group, but she will be a beautiful mother and hopefully raise lots of babies and live a long healthy life.

One of the concerns I have is who the father of Bonane's baby is. When the fighting broke out 15 months ago, Bonane was a member of the Kabirizi family. When the Rangers spotted her with her baby she had migrated to the Humba family. Is Humba the father of Bonane's baby? On one of Dr. Lucy Spellman's more recent posts on Gorilla Doctors http://gorilladoctors.wildlifedirect.org/2008/12/04/sad-week-in-rwanda/ she states the following: "Since I’ve worked here, infanticide has been the outcome every time an infant sired by a male in another group has been born to a newly transferred female." It will be close to impossible to know who the father of Bonane's baby is, due to the fact that the Rangers have not been with the gorillas for 15 months. They don't know when Bonane migrated. I guess a big clue will be how Humba treats Bonane's infant. Humba is known to be the mellowst silverback in the habituated groups. There's just no telling. This picture of Bonane with the cut on her arm was taken recently. She sustained this cut getting in the middle of an altercation between the silverbacks Humba and Kabirizi. Hopefully, her baby made it through the altercation okay.