A 23-year-old western lowland gorilla at the Dallas Zoo is back with her troop after human doctors performed a C-section and removed large cystic masses from her ovaries during an unusual surgery prompted by a miscarriage.<\/p>\n
Dallas Zoo Senior Mammal Curator Keith Zdrojewski said the zoo knew Asha was pregnant, but her care team grew concerned earlier this summer after noticing symptoms rarely seen in primates.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew that Asha was pregnant…\u201d Zdrojewski said. \u201cThey could tell that there was a lot of fluid buildup in her abdomen. They could tell what looked like a fetus, but they couldn’t find a heartbeat.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Dallas Zoo began consulting with animal experts around the country. In July, the team also turned to doctors accustomed to treating human patients, including board-certified OB-GYN Jamie Erwin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s very similar. It’s essentially the same, which surprises a lot of people,\u201d Erwin said when asked whether gorilla anatomy is similar to human anatomy.<\/p>\n
The zoo didn’t just consult with the doctors…it invited them into the operating room.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us in the human world, these are surgeries that we’ve done countless of times\u2026\u201d Erwin said.<\/p>\n
Once the surgery began, doctors discovered problems with both of Asha’s ovaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we entered her abdomen, we found that both ovaries were full of large cystic masses,\u201d Erwin said.<\/p>\n
Doctors also confirmed that Asha had suffered a miscarriage.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, additionally, and sadly, Asha had experienced a miscarriage,\u201d Erwin said. \u201cWhich meant we essentially did a C-section to remove the unborn baby that unfortunately did not have a heartbeat.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn’t Erwin’s first time performing a C-section on a gorilla. In 2024, she helped make history by delivering Jameela, the Fort Worth Zoo’s first gorilla born via cesarean section.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s something I never thought I would ever do once, much less twice, but here we are, and I’m really embracing my role as the gorilla OB-GYN,\u201d Erwin said.<\/p>\n
Asha was found to be cancer-free and spent a couple of weeks recovering before reuniting with her troop and returning to her habitat at the Dallas Zoo.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know she’s healthy, she’s happy, she’s got her same feistiness back. She’s doing great,\u201d Erwin said.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC DFW. AI tools helped convert the story into a digital article, and an NBC DFW journalist edited it again before publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 23-year-old western lowland gorilla at the Dallas Zoo is back with her troop after human doctors performed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-424685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}