The western lowland gorilla was smuggled from Africa to Italy in the 1980s. As taxidermy, he is part of a new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland

Name: Bobby

Species: Western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla)

Dates: 1983-2008

Claim to fame: Much-loved zoo animal

Where now: National Museum of Scotland

In 1994, magistrates from the Italian province of Ancona found the manager of a local circus guilty of importing a gorilla into the country. Bobby (variously also known as Bongo, Bongo III and Bongo Junior) had been captured as a baby in Equatorial Guinea more than a decade earlier and is thought to have been brought to Italy soon afterwards as “a chimpanzee”.

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Either way – gorilla or chimpanzee – the transportation of Bobby was in direct contravention of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international agreement signed in Washington D.C. in 1973 and eventually ratified by Italy in 1979. CITES binds parties to pass appropriate national legislation to allow its implementation, but it took the Italian Parliament until 1992 to do this (Legge 7 Febbraio 1992, n. 150, if you must know). It was only then that the Italian authorities were in a position “to penalize trade in, or possession of, such specimens,” and “to provide the confiscation or return to the State of export of such specimens.”

“The Italian Parliament took thirteen years, one month and 22 days to translate into Italian the Latin expression nulla poena sine lege,” quipped professor of international law Tullio Scovazzi in the European Environmental Law Review.

Bobby was confiscated from the circus, but instead of being repatriated to Equatorial Guinea ended up under the custodianship of the Giardino Zoologico di Roma. There, he lived alongside Romana, a female gorilla of a similar age that had been born in captivity in 1980. According to a history of gorillas at Rome Zoo, Bobby’s new situation resulted in “a considerable improvement both in the physical aspect and the behavioural profile.” When the “ape house” finally closed in 2000 and became a restaurant, Bobby and Romana moved to Bristol Zoo.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Romina, formerly known as Romana, at Bristol Zoo in 2005 with her baby son Namoki (not fathered by Bobby) Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA/PA

Romana (now known as Romina) remained in Bristol and is still there today. Bobby moved on to London Zoo in 2003, where the silverback became a much-loved resident and star of Gorilla Kingdom, the £5.3 million enclosure that opened to the public in 2007.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest One of Bobby’s friends (probably Zaire) welcomes Baroness Margaret Thatcher to London Zoo’s Gorilla Kingdom in 2007 Photograph: Daniel Sprawson/PA

When Bobby died in December 2008, his remains were given to the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. On 9 December, he will return to the public gaze for the first time in almost a decade. He is one of over 60 taxidermy specimens to appear in Monkey Business, an exhibition that will showcase the diversity of the primate family and explore “how primates have evolved and adapted, how they communicate, and the tools they have developed to obtain food.” The exhibition “reveals their complex social systems and looks at the relationship between primates and humans today.”

It is easy to be critical of the events that led to Bobby’s capture more than 30 years ago and feel sadness for the life he spent among humans rather than with other gorillas in the wilds of Equatorial Guinea. But the even sadder reality is that he might have been safer in captivity. The possession, hunting, sale and consumption of primates in Equatorial Guinea only became illegal in 2007 and it takes time for a law to result in cultural change. Celebrity animals like Bobby that have moved humans have a lot to achieve, even in death, revealing the beauty and fragility of the natural world and the value of protecting it.

Monkey Business will run from Friday 9 December 2016 to Sunday 23 April 2017 at the National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh. Admission: £10 adults, £8 concession, children (age 12-15) £7. Entry is free to National Museums Scotland Members and children under 12.

Tale ends

Bobby’s early life as a circus animal in Italy remains obscure. If anyone can shed any light on this period or remembers seeing him in Rome, Bristol or London, please leave a comment or send me a message via Twitter @WayOfThePanda.

If there is a zoological specimen with a great story that you would like to see profiled, please contact Henry Nicholls @WayOfThePanda.