The gorillas of the Karisoke research groups now comprise a total of 72 individuals, an increase from 63 a year ago. The individual histories of each group member remain complete as the collection of detailed long-term data was restarted in May. In March 1995, the Karisoke field assistants witnessed an encounter between Pablo’s group and the Suza “tourist” group. The subdominant silverback, Cantsbee, took an active role in the interaction and managed to win over five females from the Suza group. The new females are all between the ages of 8 and 12 and thus reproductively an excellent addition to Pablo’s group which now contains 30 members. This is one of the largest groups ever known from research at Karisoke.

Two new infants were born in Shinda’s group, but one – a male – died within 5 days of causes that could not be determined at autopsy. In September, Karisoke staff again called in the new veterinarian of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Centre (MGVC), Dr. Jonathan Sleeman. There was thought to be a snare around the fingers of six-week old Bushukoro, offspring of Mawingu in Shinda’s group. Mawingu was anaesthetized and her infant operated on whilst lying on her mother’s chest. It was discovered that hair had become wrapped around the infant’s middle fingers causing tissue damage similar to that seen with snare injuries. This was the first observation of such an injury in gorillas. Fortunately the hair was easily cut off and the pair were successfully reunited with their group