European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 13, 1981, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 20 the stars and stripes january 1981  w pm emf my enclosures with wite though orangutans were More Fertile than gorillas and there were Only 63 births among 781 captive animals in modern living Fertility of captive apes Success is greater when female has her Way weigh up to 300 or weight 200 orangutan pair separated by Wall with opening beneath that Large enough to permit female to enter males but prevents him from entering in Captivity the male generally can easily reach the female he dominates her and in doing so possibly diminishes chances of successful by Bayard Webster new York times scientists investigating Why the great mans closest have such Low rates of reproduction in Captivity have found that the Large primates May be More like humans than previously in addition to having chromosomal Lan Guage learning abilities and other signs of human like gorillas and orangutans in Captivity Nave also been found to have Fertility the findings were reported at a recent conference in Atlanta initiated by primatology its who Are concerned about the Low and possibly declining Fertility of captive anthropoid the findings made by scientists at several primate research centers in the United states have revealed sexual behaviour patterns that Are puzzling and not fully understood but which some scientists feel May have significance for students of human the exam Ples include the following an apparently infertile female when Sepa rated from her lifelong mate and then introduced to a became is a female accepted As a Leader by her male proved to be More fecund than male dominated v an adult female was moved with her mate from their Small Cage to a More spacious enclosure with a More varied and interesting she immediately became v a pair of caged together for Many had produced the female was recently put in a Cage where she was separated from her much larger mate by a Limite Access Wall with  her crawl into his quarters when she wanted to but prevented him from entering her As a preliminary tests she had coitus Only when she sought it and when her hormone Levels were Best for ovulation and in experiments with five female orangutans in the limited Access three have become Ronald associate professor at the Yerkes primate research Center of Emory University in Atlanta who is conducting the orangutan said that such findings were not regarded As definitive behavioural clues but we can Only speculate about the significance to humans of these and not All of the animals responded the same Way in test he but it seems to me he noted that the general dominance of males and the restriction of females in Small enclosures to play a role in infertility in All three species of great apes and possibly could have a bearing on human what were seeing in the orangutan Experiment is a reversal of the usual situation where male and female Are housed in a single enclosure where the male is Domi in such situations the male intimidates the be who has no option other than to acquiesce to the males or to be savaged by when the female is in such a tests seem to indicate that her hormonal Levels Are not usually optimal for Nadler we think the male Domi Nance activities May mitigate the hormonal and that there May be evidence that there is a similar hormonal effect in and the fact that female apes have limited options because of their smaller size and Lack of space Points up the belief that human females Are limited in ways they can express themselves by social and cultural restrictions and traditional expectations of a male dominated Nadler the three Day the first devoted to great ape was attended by some Iso 200 directors and wildlife experts who had become concerned about the decline in the Fertility of captive great since All three anthropoid ape species Are now endangered in the the plight of the captive animals be comes More important As the Success of future Breeding programs depends on their Many of the participating scientists emphasized the importance of preserving the both la Captivity and in the David a National institutes of health researcher who is organizing a National Chimpanzee Breeding pointed out that language and behaviour research depends on All three species for new knowledge about animal because of their close relation to the great apes contribute to the study of blood and other types of human the difficulties of conducting censuses of chimpanzees and gorillas in their native habitats in Africa and of orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra have resulted in imprecise but scientists generally agree that there Are approximately orangutans and Between and gorillas in the Diane who has spent 13 years observing Goril Las in told the conference there were now Only some 220 Mountain a subspecies that lives in the volcanic mountains of Rwanda and Twenty years ago the Mountain Gorilla population to talled Between 400 and 500 As estimated by the wildlife scientist George since no Overall censuses of the great apes were at tempted until the last few population decreases have not been accurately but observers have noted declines in numbers where the species had previously been seen in All three Are now on the endangered in there Are some 500 chimpanzees and 800 although the number of births has been rising As the number of captive apes available records show that the birth rate for All three species has remained fairly with gorillas showing a slight upturn in 1979 in the United Benjamin curator of primates at the Chi Cago zoological reported to the hosted by the Yerkes primate research that infertility was most serious among he said biomedical data from 44 american institutions that have captive gorillas show that up to 50 percent of the males Are sterile or we know that in some cases we have physiological sterility in others we know that we have behavioural prob Beck adding that in the last two years Only 13 of 62 adult male gorillas in 48 United states zoos and biomedical centers had sired the problem is Beck because Goril Las mate Only a few times a and the female nurses or tends her offspring for four years after during which time she does not Beck also noted though gorillas can live into their their Best infant bearing years Are Between the Ages of 7 and while infertility seems to be greatest among Only a very Small percentage of captive male chimps have but there is Little widespread evidence of infertility among orangutans or other Beck and other scientists told the conference that they Felt organic infertility was Only a part of the in addition to Little understood behaviour they pointed to such factors As obesity and exposure to viral diseases and environmental pollutants that May someday explain ape though Little is now known about their highly suspect among the possible causes of infertility Are past practices of american zoos that have hand raised great ape infants in cases where the natural parents were not aping their such practices increase the likelihood of survival of the infants out also deprive them of learning experiences from their parents that make them sexually Han raising of infant apes May have kept animals of both sexes ignorant about Normal sexual postures and Beck a human raised animal tends to be fearful of another of his he has to overcome that fear and learn to communicate with his most scientists at the conference agreed that artificial insemination in Vitro fertilization could prove useful in helping to raise the reproduction rates of captive great Kenneth head of the division of reproductive biology at the Yerkes Center and co organizer of the reported that four great apes three chimpanzees and one Gorilla had been born using artificial he told the conference that the birth of the Gorilla had been brought about by sending Frozen sperm from a Yerkes Gorilla by air plane to the Memphis where a borrowed female from the Brookfield zoo in Chicago was resulting in the first birth of a Gorilla by artificial