Obese Gorillas Forced To Eat Tons Of Salad

Concerns about heart disease — the number one killer of the gorillas in our zoos — lead researchers to alter the diets of the animals at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, replacing their previous feed with “a wheelbarrow of romaine lettuce, dandelion greens and endive they gently tear and bite, alfalfa hay they nimbly pick through, young tree branches they strip of succulent bark and leaves, green beans, a handful of flax seeds, and three Centrum Silver multivitamins tucked inside half a smashed banana. Instead of spending about a quarter of their day eating the old diet, the pair now spends 50 to 60 percent of each day feeding and foraging, about the same amount of time wild gorillas forage.” The result? “Although they take in twice as many calories on the new diet, after a year, the big boys of the primate house have dropped nearly 65 pounds each and weigh in the range of their wild relatives.” This is very happy news for the gorillas, except for the part about how they are destined to spend their now extended lifetimes in captivity.