BABY ON BOARD; CHIMP SEPARATED FROM ZOO'S TROOP.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

A 3-week-old female chimpanzee born at the Los Angeles Zoo has been taken away from her mother to protect the baby from aggressive male chimps who killed a 4-month-old female chimp last week.

The zoo staff took the 4-pound baby from 12-year-old Gracie on Thursday and relocated her to the zoo's newborn nursery, where she will be bottle-fed and raised by humans for 18 months to two years, said Jennie McNary, the zoo's curator of mammals. To ease the loss of her mother, the baby - which has not yet been named - was given a plush chimpanzee toy with Gracie's scent on it. Since her relocation, the baby has been holding tightly to the toy, McNary said.

``Nobody wanted to do this, but we didn't have another option,'' she said. ``This was our only choice.''

Zookeepers considered segregating Gracie and her baby from the other chimps but decided that would both cause a rift in the 14-member Chimpanzees of Mahale Mountains troop and cause Gracie great distress.

``To pull her out from her family group would be harder on her,'' McNary said. ``It would isolate her, and she would panic.''

Gracie is a bit depressed at the loss of her baby but is being comforted by Yoshi, whose baby was killed last week. Gracie's baby is doing well in the nursery.

Zoo Director Manuel A. Mollinedo said the current arrangement gives the infant chimp the best chance of survival.

Regina, another female chimp, is pregnant and due to deliver sometime this summer. Zookeepers are trying to pinpoint her delivery date so her baby can be taken to the nursery shortly after birth to safeguard it, too.

Zoo visitors can see Gracie's baby through a glass wall in the nursery, which has an incubator, a crib and a rocking chair. Most of the time, the baby will be held by keepers, who will care for her 24 hours a day. Such body-to-body contact is important, zookeepers say, because infant chimps constantly cling to their mothers for up to one year.

The decision to remove the baby from the zoo's chimpanzee community came after young male chimpanzees snatched the baby from Gracie, and Jerrard, a 9-year-old chimp, grabbed the baby from the other juvenile males as an apparent power play. Gracie chased the males and reclaimed her baby, which was not injured.

Little Toshi died in the exhibit last week after being taken from her mother and fatally injured by the roughhousing juvenile male chimpanzees.

``There is a control thing going on among the chimpanzee group,'' said Dr. Charles Sedgwick, the zoo's animal health services director. ``It appears that . . . Jerrard is maneuvering his way to the alpha (controlling) male position, replacing 21-year-old Judeo.''

Another chimp, 3-1/2-year-old Ripley, ``was the baby of the bunch, and maybe he's a bit jealous now that there are other babies,'' said McNary. ``And he and the rest of the chimps are little boys, and they sometimes play rough.''

Before these incidents, the zoo's chimpanzee family had successfully raised seven infant chimps since 1985.

The new baby in the nursery adjusted easily from breast-feeding to bottle-feeding, said animal keeper Kelley Greene, who will be the chimp's primary caretaker.

``She is such an adorable baby,'' Greene said. ``Right now, she drinks about 40 cc's of Similac (formula) every two hours.''

Depending on how well the baby adjusts, she'll eventually visit her mother and the rest of the chimps daily, McNary said.

``We want to let her see the chimps, smell the chimps, hear the chimps . . . so even though she's being raised by humans, she realizes she's a chimp and she can be resocialized into the group,'' she said.

The one good thing about separating the new baby from Gracie is that it may speed up zookeepers' efforts to determine which of the exhibit's six male chimpanzees - all of which have had vasectomies - have impregnated the females, McNary said. Once all the chimps' blood has been drawn, DNA tests will be done to determine which vasectomies failed.

In the meantime, McNary said, the female chimps are being given birth-control pills.

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PHOTO (color) A 3-week-old female chimpanzee, daughter of Gracie, 12, nibbles on a keeper's finger at the Los Angeles Zoo's nursery, where she's being raised for safety.

Associated Press