This undated photo provided by the Dallas Zoo shows Patrick. The Dallas Zoo on Monday announced they planned transfer the anti-social gorilla to the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, S.C. for a more solitary existence.
A male gorilla at the Dallas Zoo will be moved to a new zoo for troubled animals after officials concluded that he, in short, is a jerk and especially mean to female gorillas.
Patrick, a 430-pound Western lowland gorilla, has never gotten along with female gorillas, Reuters reports. Zoo officials said Patrick has bitten and sneered at every female he’s met in his 18 years in captivity. Zoo officials even gave him his own bachelor pad, but Patrick will soon lose that private man-cave to the new gorilla on the block — Zola, a break-dancing gorilla.
Patrick’s new home, the Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens in Columbia, S.C., specializes in working with gorillas with behavioral problems. Patrick will initially be separated from the other gorillas, all male, but zoo officials are hopeful that one day they can all bro out together in a wooded, lady-free enclosure.
But Patrick’s abusive behavior can apparently be traced back to a troubled childhood. Separated from his mother at the Bronx Zoo, Patrick was raised with another male at the Toronto Zoo.
Here’s hoping Patrick can work through some of his lingering resentment and get some closure on his painful past.
[Reuters]