Milk and Honey

Early relationships between gorillas and white colonists in Africa were hyper-masculine in nature, characterized as man against silverback. Alongside attempts to kill gorillas as trophies, repeated attempts were made to capture young gorillas. Despite young gorillas proving difficult to keep alive in captivity, they continued to be captured through the colonial period. Involving women in gorilla care appeared to improve gorillas’ outcomes, nurturing them within intimate interspecies relationships. Some African women were hired by white men to breastfeed unweaned gorilla infants. While some women took these gorillas into their homes, others were removed from their families to wet-nurse gorillas. White women became different kinds of foster mothers, treating gorillas as Europeanized children within the trappings of colonial domesticity. While women’s roles in gorilla care reinforced gendered and racialized hierarchies in colonial Africa, the interspecies intimacies that flourished between women and gorillas changed the lives of both.