Go bananas for a gorilla birthday bash!

Hello everyone, I hope you all enjoyed your 4^th of July holiday! It’s Allie from the Gorilla Care Team here, and this month is also significant because we will celebrate two very important gorilla birthdays. In our big family troop we will be throwing a birthday party for both Taz and … wait for it … FLOYD! Can you believe that Floyd will be turning 3? It seems like just yesterday we gorilla keepers were eagerly checking our nest camera on our phones to see when Lulu would be giving birth. Taz, our silverback (mature male) of the family troop, will be turning 33. The easiest way to remember their ages is that Taz is 30 years older than Floyd.

 To celebrate a gorilla’s birthday, we try to pull out all the stops and make the celebration unique for each individual. We want their party to be especially tailored to them.

 Floyd loves playing with wood wool (think hay that is made of fine wood shavings), so we will want to give him lots of it out in their habitat. If you have not seen footage of Floyd spinning around holding wood wool, I highly suggest that you do so! Floyd also loves stuffing his little cheeks full of grapes! Taz also really enjoys fruit; however, if you have ever seen him during a fruit feed, you might have noticed that he catches most of it. That is because Taz does not like any of his fruit to touch the ground. He is very particular about avoiding dirt on his fruit. To give both gorillas the birthday party they deserve, we will make plenty of ice treats with grapes and a variety of other food items! 🙂

 Please join us Saturday July 23, and 10 a.m. at Gorilla Habitat 3, and feel free to share memories of these two over the short and many years they have lived here at Zoo Atlanta! If you’re a gorilla fan from afar, be sure to check out Gorilla Cam, and tune into our social networks on Floyd’s actual birthday on July 25.

Allie C.
Keeper II, Gorillas