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This lecture will explore the magical moments Beth Armstrong was privileged to witness as a gorilla keeper at the Columbus Zoo.
For decades gorillas were stereotyped as aggressive and fierce animals but thankfully in recent years many of those misnomers have been corrected. In truth, gorillas are reserved and laid-back, often quite shy and hesitate about new things. They are incredibly gentle parents and both female and males often adopt unrelated infant’s to raise as their own. Everyone has a backstory, a personal history and gorillas do as well. Many of the gorillas Beth worked with in the 1980’s and ‘90’s had been captured from the wild – so they would have seen and experienced the brutality of losing their family, then carrying that with them into captivity and yet somehow they found it in themselves to interact with us, to accept us on some level and even be affectionate towards us.
Author Beth Armstrong’s memoir Voices From The Ape House was published in March of 2020 by Trillium/Ohio State University Press. Since early 2023 she has been a monthly columnist for the Clintonville Spotlight newspaper. Her essays have appeared in the Columbus Dispatch and 614 Magazine. Prior to becoming a writer she was a gorilla keeper and the first conservation coordinator for the Columbus Zoo. Those years spent observing animal behaviors taught her the power of quietly watching the world with many of those moments becoming the basis for her essays and stories. Beth believes in the power of stories to change the world, to change people’s perspective by creating an opening for empathy to grow and thrive. She also believes that just as every single person has a story to tell so too do animals and their stories matter. Beth has given numerous lectures at international conferences on the topic of captive gorilla behaviors and husbandry as well as the role of the zoo community’s conservation efforts and commitment. She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from OSU while working full-time at the zoo.
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