The young adolescent western lowland gorilla, who was a mascot for the 2015 NatWest Island Games, will be travelling from Jersey to Pairi Daiza Zoo in Belgium. Indigo, whose name was chosen during an auction by the Indigo Lighthouse Group which raised £10,000 for Durrell, is the son of the Zoo’s silverback, Badongo. He will be joining a group of young male ‘bachelor’ gorillas, including his uncle, Lomako, and a young male of a similar age from Dublin.
The zoo confirmed that one of the older unrelated females in the group, Kishka, is ‘getting a little tired of his boisterous attitude’. However, Durrell’s deputy head of mammals, Gordon Hunt, confirmed that Indigo has reached the age where he would be leaving the group if he were living in the wild.
He said: ‘This stage of Indigo’s life is an important time for him to move on. When western lowland gorillas reach six to nine years old, they are at their most adaptable age to deal with this kind of change.
‘In the wild, gorilla groups are quite dynamic — they are family units, but individuals often leave, particularly the young males, and other gorillas come and join the group.
‘They will form a temporary bachelor group, as they would do in the wild before they find a female or form their own family group.
‘We are sad to see him go, but we’re optimistic that he will have a good future in Belgium.’
Islanders can visit the zoo to see Indigo prior to his departure on 23 March.
