October 2009 BBC wildlife series narrated by Sir David Attenborough to air in th UK this month. Kingo and family feature.
15th May 2009 Patrice has photos of “Buka’ the Silverback of the new group being habituated and ‘Mama Buka’ one of the females in the group. Habituation is going well.
17th January 2009 Ugly seems to be back in Kingo’s group! Meanwhile the habituation of the second Gorilla group is progressing well
with the new Silverback and 2 of the females accepting the trackers prescence.
11th January 2009 So now Kingo’s group consists of 7 individuals: Kingo, Mama, Mekome, Emilie, Kusu, Ekendy plus the new female.
10th January 2009 Kingo’s group has just lost one of the most gentile females named Beatrice. She died not long after losing her newborn on the 7th December. We don’t know yet about the cause of her death. What was amazing was that when she lost her newborn, she kept the dead baby for almost 8 days, moving everywhere with the body. The question is, was she contaminated by her baby? Difficult to say since we all also don’t know about the cause of death of Beatrice’s baby.
19th December 2008 George & Ugly have left the group. But on the positive side Kingo has attracted another female (to be confirmed).
7th December 2008 Very sad news update from Patrice at Mondika. Beatrices new baby has died after just 4 days. Cause of death unknown and poor Beatrice is still carrying the body. The rest of the group is calm though and carrying on as normal. They all appear to be in good health.
4th December 2008 We have just heard from Patrice at Mondika: ‘FYI, this is a good new for both Kingo’s family and all of you who used to support Mondika site. Beatrice, one of Kingo’s females just gave birth two days ago (on December 2nd). Kingo, the King of jungle keep taking care of his family after succeeding to attrack another named “Emilie” during the interaction on March 15th 2008.’
June 2008 BBC film crew spend 3 successful weeks filming a behavioural sequence for a new landmark 10 part series called “Life” due to air towards the end of 2009. Amongst other behaviours the crew witnessed Kingo mating with three of the groups females, including ‘ventral’ or face to face mating with the new shy female Emilie.
15th March 2008 After a group interaction Kingo managed to attract a new female into the group.