Taming a Reluctant Patient

Also, she said, anesthesia alters the animal's heart rate and blood pressure, causing abnormal readings.

How, the experts wondered, to get an awake gorilla to submit to a blood test?

Murray said she realized that if any zoo could figure it out, the National Zoo could. The keys were the zoo's giant pandas.

"The keepers that take care of the gorillas . . . are also the keepers that train the pandas," she said. "The pandas are trained for awake blood draws, awake blood pressure [tests], awake radiographs of their chests. It's amazing."

The prospect of training a gorilla to do the same thing, although daunting, was tantalizing, because the zoo has a blood test that could warn of heart trouble.

Gorilla heart disease is different from human heart disease, Murray said. Rather than suffer blocked coronary arteries and heart attacks as humans do, gorillas develop a hardening of the heart muscle, a condition called fibrosing cardiomyopathy. There are few symptoms.

Gorillas in captivity can live into their 50s, longer than in the wild, where they are more exposed to disease and human depredation. And in captivity, if their disease is detected in time, they can be treated with the same techniques used to treat humans.

Last month, two gorillas at Cleveland's Metroparks Zoo were placed on human heart drugs, said Pam Dennis, a veterinary epidemiologist at the facility and a Gorilla Girl. A gorilla at the zoo in Knoxville, Tenn., has been on human heart drugs for three years. And four years ago, a gorilla at the Birmingham, Ala., zoo had a pacemaker-like device implanted.

As in many health matters, human and animal, early diagnosis is crucial.

So twice a week for the past year or so, the National Zoo has been training Kwame to submit to a blood test.

It has not been easy. He is only 8, essentially a gorilla teenager.

The plastic sleeve was designed to be attached to the cage so Kwame can place his arm in it, and there is a hole at the top so veterinarians can insert a needle.