Monday, Feb. 26, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
* SECOND of two parts.
Some facts about the life and death of the Barbary ape named Mujica are not in dispute.
The small ape was born at the Southern Nevada Zoological Park in early 1991 and was rejected by his parents.
The young parents had never seen a birth, according to zoo director Pat Dingle, and didn't know how to act with an infant.
So Mujica was bottle-fed and raised by humans for the first two years of his life.
Barbaries, however, are very social animals and not meant to be raised in isolation.
Sometime in early 1993 the isolation began to take its toll on Mujica, who began exhibiting neurotic, self-destructive behavior. He began throwing himself against the cage walls, and biting himself and his keepers.
George Stoecklin, who was zoo veterinarian at the time, said Mujica's sad story never would have happened if he hadn't been kept apart from his kind so long. The result, he said, was that Mujica never learned how to be a monkey.
"It's kind of typical of how out of touch things are with the zoo here."
But Dingle said the zoo had to do fund-raising before it could expand the Barbary exhibit. It took that long, he said, to raise the money and build the expansion.
In any case, after Mujica began hurting himself, Dingle and his staff agreed they should try to reintroduce him to his kind.
Because Barbary apes, like many primates, are sometimes violent creatures, caution was necessary. Mujica was moved into a cage next to the troop and an adult female, Mimi, was housed in a cage directly adjacent to his for two months.
After that, any semblance of agreement on the facts between Dingle and his critics ends.
Placing blame
Both sides are hoping an upcoming U.S. Department of Agriculture hearing on a 16-count complaint against the zoo will bring the long controversy to an end.
Dingle blames Mujica's neurotic behavior on the zoo keepers. The ape had a close relationship with one keeper, Dingle said in a recent interview. But when she moved to England, "he missed her and subsequent zoo keepers didn't have the same rapport."
About that time, he said, it came to his attention that the keepers were locking Mujica in his den box while they cleaned his cage.
That was true, said zoo keeper Sherry Patterson. She and the volunteers were tired of being attacked by the ape.
So, Dingle said, he decided to demonstrate how to deal with Mujica.
The incident is often cited by the director's critics as an example of how little Dingle really cares about the animals.
As Dingle describes it, Mujica began "bouncing all around" the cage when he entered, and he had to push the ape away occasionally.
But Patterson and volunteer Ed Brown tell a dramatically different story.
When Dingle went into the cage, Patterson said, Mujica began his usual routine of jumping on him and trying to bite him. In response, she said, "Pat started hitting him, slamming him around."
That went on for "a good 10 minutes," she said, during which Dingle punched the animal at least a dozen times. The session ended when Mujica bit Dingle and "drew blood."
Brown, in a letter to the zoo board, also said he saw Dingle "hit Mujica" during the episode.
Dingle, however, flatly denies he ever struck the animal.
"Of course not," he responded. "I'm going to beat him up in front of everybody?"
He also said he was never bitten, and suffered only a scratch on his forearm.
But Dingle admits the episode did demonstrate to him how neurotic Mujica was.
"He had no life by himself," Dingle said. "So I had a choice: either euthanize Mujica or give him a chance for life by getting him reintroduced to the rest of the colony."
Patterson and volunteer Polly Sullivan then contacted experts to research how the reintroduction should be conducted.
The experts they contacted -- Gary Priest, an animal behaviorist at the San Diego Zoo, and Viktor Reinhardt, then a veterinarian and clinical behaviorist at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center -- gave them recommendations.
Among the recommended steps for the introduction: It should begin with short periods and be gradually increased; it should be constantly monitored; it should be separated from the main colony; and an escape route should be provided for the youngster.
Advice ignored
Dingle rejected all the recommendations.
Putting Mujica in with Mimi, he said, would have been "absolute, 100 percent torture" because the juvenile would get beat up repeatedly and nothing would be resolved.
"You couldn't think of anything that would be more cruel," Dingle said.
The former staff members said they realized the introduction couldn't be physically separated from the colony at the small zoo. But they said they could have easily put up an inexpensive visual barrier, such as a tarp, to separate Mimi and Mujica from the others.
Such separation is necessary, said Reinhardt, who has overseen hundred of pairings of different macacaque species, because primates form coalitions and pecking orders. When the dominant female of a coalition sees a bond forming between one of her subordinates and an outsider, he said, she will vocally "instigate a fight."
A visual barrier, Reinhardt said, would have helped immensely.
Dingle, however, refused to put up any such barrier.
It wouldn't have done any good, he said, because the apes still would have been able to hear each other. "They instinctively know what is going on."
Mujica attacked
So Mujica was put in the same cage with Mimi, and, as a videotape of the beginning of the introduction shows, the beatings began.
During the 45-minute video, taken over three hours, Mimi attacked Mujica at least a dozen times, chasing him, throwing him around, shaking him, grabbing and holding his arms, and appearing to bite him.
The colony's dominant female, Soho, can also be seen screaming from the next cage at the two. Patterson and others describe witnessing the same behavior by Soho.
By the end of the videotape, Mujica was already beginning to look battered.
Dingle, however, said he was encouraged. Violence is a part of such introductions and Mimi was merely establishing her dominance over the youngster.
Besides, Dingle said, he had presided over the introduction of Mujica's father, who had survived just such an ordeal.
And, he pointed out, Mujica had suffered no wounds.
"There were no fingers bitten off," he said. "There was no blood drawn."
That proved, he said, that Mimi, who like all Barbary adults has several-inch canine teeth, was not really biting him.
"If Mimi had wanted to kill him," Dingle said, "she could have at any moment."
Staff worried
Patterson and other staff, however, were becoming increasingly alarmed. They asked Dingle to allow them to intervene in the worst violence, but he refused.
Finally, Sullivan called Reinhardt in Wisconsin, who then called Dingle to warn him that his plan was "very, very dangerous for the animals."
But Dingle rebuffed Reinhardt's warnings, saying he had been given "false information."
"It was clear," Dingle said, "he had no knowledge of what our circumstances are here or what was going on."
As the day ended, Dingle decided things were going so well that Mujica could be left in with Mimi overnight.
Patterson and many of the staff were horrified. They tried to convince Dingle again to give Mujica a break or at least put up a visual barrier, but the director refused.
Volunteer Jane Ply offered to stay overnight to monitor the apes, but Dingle again refused.
"There was no need," he said. "The animals aren't active overnight. They sleep."
The next morning, however, Mujica looked to the staff to be in critical condition.
"He was rocking, eyes not moving -- void," Patterson wrote shortly after the incident. "It was to the point that Mujica wasn't even holding Mimi off anymore, just letting her pull and bite on him without any defense.
"We begged Pat to call George (Stoecklin)," she said. "But he said, 'If anyone calls George, they don't work here anymore.'"
Dingle still maintains Mujica appeared fine, "other than he looked tired."
A short time later, about 18 hours after the introduction began, Mujica collapsed. He was rushed to Stoecklin's office, but died en route.
Stoecklin, who had been told the reintroduction was scheduled but had not been given any details, did a necropsy of the animal.
In his report, he stated that all the internal organs appeared normal and healthy, and there was no evidence of "prior disease or massive bloodloss."
He did, however, note "massive and significant bruising on the arms, chest, penis, legs, forehead and ears."
Stoecklin listed the cause of death as "massive trauma/ shock."
At first, Stoecklin said, he defended Dingle's handling of the introduction.
"I was giving him the benefit of the doubt," Stoecklin said. "Introductions can be a tricky thing. Animals can die."
But eventually, he said, he learned "the truth" and began to call for Dingle's resignation.
"At some point, Mujica was going to get beat up, that was expected," Stoecklin said. "The point is it kept continuing and continuing and continuing.
"If you want my opinion, it was because the monkey made a fool of Pat Dingle and so the monkey was going to die."
'Classic example'
Reinhardt, who was subsequently sent a copy of the videotape, said it bore out his predictions completely.
"The videotape is a showcase of how aggression can be triggered by an onlooker," he said. "They didn't make this tape for this purpose, but it's a classic example."
In the tape, Reinhardt said, he could see Mimi "showing off" for the dominant female in the next cage.
"She beat up the kid and then looked over to the other cage," he said. "When this happens at a zoo situation, it is very unfortunate."
Dingle, however, insists the video bears out his observations and is being misinterpreted by a bunch of "new employees."
"We don't work with research facilities back East," he said. "We work with the San Diego Zoo."
Carmi Penny, curator of mammals at the San Diego Zoo, cautiously backed Dingle's handling of the incident.
But he would not discuss specifics.
"Depending on the circumstances and the situation of the day," he said, "there is no predictable outcome of an introduction."
Requests for interviews with Priest were denied by the San Diego Zoo.
Dingle, meanwhile, called Mujica's death "unfortunate," but insisted that it's just part of life among wild animals.
"These are violent animals," he said. "They attack one another periodically."
He attributes Mujica's death to a combination of things, but primarily to the ape being "weak as an individual."
While he'd like to see the controversy go away, Dingle said he's not going to let it slow him down.
"I don't dwell on this, believe me," he said. "We just have too many good positive things going on here."
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