Gorillas Hold "Wake" at Zoo

Although I'm a "raccoon" I've always been deeply affected by our cousins, the apes. I'm not a huge fan of zoos, but seeing primates at the zoo especially breaks my heart.  Here's a story about a community of gorillas who recently mourned their matriarch, Babs, at the Brookfield Zoo.   It's too bad that they had no choice but to mourn in public. 

This story reminds me of one the best books I read this past year (really, in a very long time): Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism by Dawn Prince-Hughes. Prince-Hughes grew up with undiagnosed autism, struggling to make sense of the world and her place in it.  It was only by observing, and later working with gorillas at a zoo, that she learned how to become a part of a human community.  It was an awesome and beautiful book in every way.