Purpose:
The Gorilla Foundation has been working for over three decades to gain insight into the mind, heart, body and soul of another species. We are committed to using non-invasive techniques that are as unobtrusive as possible -- basically, we focus on forming relationships and instituting dialogues. In this way we have collected reams of data on gorilla communication, nutrition, health and behavior.

The challenge now is to integrate this variety of information into a single database to enable us to a) share more with the public, b) train new staff more rapidly, c) gain deeper insight into the relationships between gorilla communication, behavior, nutrition and health, d) collaborate more effectively with other great ape research and care facilities, and e) transmit the results of this unique project to new generations of researchers, conservationists and caregivers, so that they can build and extend rather than reinvent.

We have been developing such a database for Interspecies Communication Research and Care over the past few months, and plan to share it with interested partners when it becomes sufficiently mature.

Status:
The Gorilla Foundation began developing the sign language (ASL) core of this Interspecies Communication database, in conjunction with the ZEST Tutorial, earlier this year — developed with the latest version of the powerful database application software: FileMaker Pro (Vsn 8/8.5). Since then, modules for health and nutrition have been under development. The new modules will make it possible to identify correspondences between what the gorillas are communicating (i.e., signing) about, how they're feeling, what they've been eating and what they've been doing (or what enrichment activities they've been engaged in).

The Health module, which has been designed and prototyped, will improve the way we track symptoms, veterinary tests, prescribed medications and supplements and help us relate changes in treatment to changes in symptoms — factoring gorilla communications about their health — on a daily basis. It will also help us design better "preventative" health strategies.

The Nutrition module, which has also been designed and prototyped, will allow us to better plan meals to meet nutritional requirements and variety. Gorillas Koko and Ndume enjoy very diverse diets, and their preferences are taken into account when designing new menus. The database simply expedites the process — and connects to the USDAs nutritional database to compute selected nutritional parameters (eg, calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals) over any period of time and at any frequency. (We are also looking into establishing interfaces to standard zoo nutrition database, such as Zootrition.)

For the Behaviorial module, a simple system has been designed to track gorilla activity levels, moods and enrichment strategies, on a semi-daily basis. For more sophisticated behavioral experiments, we are evaluating an interface to commerical systems designed for real-time multimedia data capture with hand-held devices.

The combined Interspecies Communication Research and Care (ICRC) Database is designed to be continually updated, extended and further customized by the Gorilla Foundation staff, and via input from partner organizations. It is also very easy to interface with other database systems — via spreadsheet imports and exports, and in some cases direct "plugins" — so that we can adapt to whatever environment is most convenient as technology changes, and share our data with other organizations.

Technology Resources:
Development of a customized Interspecies Communication research and care database has been made possible by the software applications support of FileMaker, Inc.— thanks to their FileMaker Pro (Vsn 8.5) relational database software, server technology and instant web publishing capability. The ease of use of this software, for both developers and end-users, has been remarkable, and is largely responsible for the feasibility and success of in-house development.

The Gorilla Foundation would also like to thank Anne Adams, a professional database consultant who specializes in FileMaker Pro, for her valuable and ongoing guidance as a volunteer on this project.

News Updates:
Updates on the progress of the Gorilla Foundation's Interspecies Communications Database, and in particular on the ZEST (sign language) core, which will be made available to partner organizations, will be reported here. You can receive news updates automatically by subscribing to our KokoMail eNewsLetter..