Male Dallas Zoo gorilla to get therapy for sexist attitude

By Marice Richter

DALLAS (Reuters) - A gregarious male gorilla at the Dallas Zoo will be sent to South Carolina for therapy after he bit one female gorilla and sneered at others, zoo officials said on Monday.

Patrick, a 430-pound (195-kg) Western lowland gorilla, will be moving to the Riverbanks Zoo and Gardens in Columbia, South Carolina, where he will live the bachelor life in his own digs.

The South Carolina zoo is known for working with gorillas with behavior problems.

Dallas Zoo officials said Patrick gets along fine with humans but not with other gorillas.

They said they have tried repeatedly to socialize him with the other gorillas, particularly the females, in the hopes that he might get along and even breed. Instead, he bit one female and sneered and nipped at others.

"It's not like we haven't tried, he's been here for 18 years" said Laurie Holloway, a spokeswoman for the Dallas Zoo.

Patrick was more tolerant of other male gorillas but seemed only to engage with Jabari, who was shot to death by Dallas police after he escaped in 2004 and injured three people.

Because of his cranky behavior, Patrick has been kept in his own habitat separate from the other gorillas. The Dallas Zoo needs to reclaim Patrick's space because it recently acquired two new males from the Calgary Zoo, including Zola, a break-dancing gorilla who stars in a video that has gone viral on the Internet.

John Davis, curator of mammals at the Riverbanks Zoo, said that initially Patrick will be separated from the zoo's three other gorillas, all males, but will be able to see and smell them.

Eventually Patrick will be introduced to the guys and zoo officials aren't ruling out the possibility that they can live together in a spacious, wooded bachelor pad, Davis said.

Born at the Bronx Zoo in 1990, Patrick was abandoned by his mother and then transferred to the Toronto Zoo, where he was hand-raised along with another male about the same age. At age 5, he was transferred to Dallas, zoo officials said.

Because of his rearing, Patrick gets along well with people and is a popular favorite among visitors and zookeepers at the Dallas Zoo, Holloway said.

"He's beautiful and smart and everyone loves him," Holloway said. "We're really sad to see him go but it's for the best for the zoo and for Patrick."

(Reporting by Marice Richter; Editing by Greg McCune and Sandra Maler)

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Washington state gets rid of sexist language

Achieving gender-neutral language is no small task, says a Washington state lawmaker from Seattle. (Thinkstock …

In Washington state, the word "freshman" is out. And "first-year student" is in. In total, 40,000 words have been changed as part of an effort to rid state statutes of gender-biased language.

The bill, signed into law earlier in the year by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, went into effect this week.

And it was no small task. "This was a much larger effort than I had envisioned. Mankind means man and woman," Democratic state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles of Seattle told Reuters.

"Fisherman" is now a "fisher." "Penmanship" is called "handwriting." And "manhole cover" is, well, still "manhole cover." Some words don’t have an easy replacement.

Others do: "His" is now “his and hers.” "Clergyman" is now "clergy." "Journeyman plumber" is now “journey-level plumber,” according to the Daily Mail.

According to Reuters, Washington is the fourth state to officially remove gender-biased language from the law. Others are Florida, North Carolina and Illinois. Nine other states are considering similar gender-neutral laws.

"Words matter," Liz Watson, a National Women's Law Center senior adviser, told Reuters. "This is important in changing hearts and minds."

France recently officially banned the term "mademoiselle" from official documents. The Gallic term means "miss," and French officials contended it forced women to acknowledge their marital status.

The French also bid adieu to "maiden name," which they dismissed as "archaic." They should know: Paris only recently got rid of a law that banned women from wearing pants.

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