Gorilla Spends Her Final Moments Hugging The Man Who Saved Her As A Baby

Stunning, moving, and heartbreaking. These are just a few words to express the anguish and grief portrayed in a recent snapshot. Ndakasi, an orphaned gorilla, is pictured with Andre Bauma, a childhood friend and park ranger. Bauma sits with Ndakasi as she takes her final breath in the moving image.

Ndakasi is not a typical mountain gorilla. She was well-known. You may recall a shot of her standing with another park ranger from just a few years ago. Mathieu Shamavu posted a photo of himself with Ndakasi in April 2019 with the comment “Just another day at the office.” Shamavu gets to see things we can only imagine as a full-time ranger at Congo’s Virunga National Park. Fabulous posing gorillas is one of those things.

Ndakasi has always been a character, and she exhibited human emotion. “An ape’s skill at reading an expression of happiness indicates that they can read meaning in the emotional expressions on human faces, suggesting that despite 6 million years of separate evolution, apes and humans share a common emotional language,” says David Buttelmann of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Every day, we learn more and more about the commonalities between primates and humans. It’s understandable that Ndakasi and her park ranger pals formed such a strong emotional bond.

Ndakasi is a gorilla who was rescued. When Virunga rangers discovered her hugging the remains of her dying mother, who had been shot by armed militia just hours before, she was only two months old. Ndakasi, 14, died in the arms of her best friend after spending over a decade in the care of rangers. “Our beloved gorilla died following a prolonged illness in which her condition gradually worsened,” the park said.

In Bauma’s embrace, the loving gorilla softly passed away. It was Bauma, who had held the gorilla as an infant after she had lost her mother 14 years before.

It was an honor to nurture and care for such a sweet creature, especially given Ndakasi’s childhood suffering,’ says the author. Bauma explained. ‘One could argue she inherited her mother’s name, Nyiransekuye, which means “someone who is delighted to welcome others.”

Daily Mail
“It was Ndakasi’s kind attitude and intelligence that made me comprehend the link between humans and Great Apes, and why we must do everything we can to conserve them.” I am honored to call Ndakasi a friend. I adored her as if she were a child, and her upbeat nature made me grin every time I saw her. All of us at Virunga will miss her, but we will be eternally grateful for the richness Ndakasi gave to our lives during her stay at Senkwekwe.”

Daily Mail – Bauma

Many people ask why Ndakasi was not released back into the wild. She didn’t have a tribe of her own because she didn’t have a family. She was too susceptible to return to the Congolese forests because of this, as well as a lengthy recuperation period.

The only remaining mountain gorillas in their natural habitat can be found in parts of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. Armed troops, on the other hand, are fighting one another in the eastern Congo. Ndakasi was rescued in this territory, which is home to some of the last mountain gorillas.

Virunga National Park is doing everything it can to maintain these magnificent species’ native habitat, but it cannot do it alone. One component of their duty is to keep wildlife safe. They also ensure the safety of tourists. “Virunga’s management has had to take exceptional efforts to keep its visitors safe from the on-and-off conflict in the region, protecting them with a highly trained guard of elite rangers and sniffer dogs, and working closely with communities surrounding the park,” according to the Daily Mail.

Virunga accepts donations at any time to maintain its park available to the public. For more information on how you can help, go to their website.

Source: kingdomstv.com