Word: gorillas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Clarke's in New York, telling people his story, telling them how they would make a book and a movie out of it. And they did. Jake LaMotta was the kind of guy who always seemed to get what he wanted, mostly because he went after it like a gorilla with a hard...
...Common criminals would sound like common criminals were there no Machine Gun, Killer or Mad Dog among them. Not that all gangster names are so picturesque. Nathan Kaplan's monicker was "Kid Dropper" for reasons too awful to contemplate. And Al Capone was known as the Millionaire Gorilla, though it is hard to picture some floozie chucking him under the chin and cooing, "Come on, you big, bad Millionaire Gorilla...
Poor Omega. Once the pride of the Brookfield (Ill.) Zoo, he is now an outcast. Rejected by two female companions, the hefty 450-lb. gorilla sits alone in his cage, forlornly munching on alfalfa or taking a lackadaisical swing on the rubber tire hanging from his ceiling. Omega's problem is that he is sterile...
Along with chimpanzees and orangutans, gorillas are man's closest kin. They are also remarkably susceptible to human ailments, including mumps, measles, even ordinary colds; and although Omega has never seemed seriously ill, his sperm count is now nil. No one is sure why. It could be his weight (obesity can interfere with gorilla lovemaking); it could also be years of sexual inactivity. Whatever the reason, says Primate Curator Benjamin Beck, Omega's condition is all too common among gorillas in captivity, and that has scientists worried...
These "second-generation" gorillas have an even lower reproductive rate than the ones brought in from the wild. Part of the problem, according to primatologists who met in Atlanta last month to discuss gorilla fecundity, is that baby gorillas have often been hand-raised by solicitous zookeepers. So they never learned the requisite gorilla social graces, including the nuances of courtship. Says James Doherty of New York's Bronx Zoo: "You get a gorilla that thinks he's people and not a gorilla...