Western lowland gorilla · No. 1 of 22
The Gorilla Trade
Pittsburgh lands a 33-year-old silverback. Boston rebuilds with two prospects.
The Deal
The Grades
Pittsburgh
Filled the most important position in the sport with the best available veteran. The troop had no silverback and two youngsters with no male role model.
Boston
Moved a 33-year-old who could never breed here anyway and came back with two prospects in their bachelor years. Textbook retool, not a fire sale.
Washington
Gave up a celebrity in Moke and got nothing back in this deal. Correct developmentally, painful for the fanbase.
The Breakdown
Silverback is the most important position in the sport, and Pittsburgh was playing without one. Both of its adult males had died. It had females ready to breed, two youngsters with no male role model, and a hole in the middle of the roster that no amount of internal development was going to fill in time.
So they went and got the best available veteran. Little Joe is 33 years old, roughly 400 pounds, and had spent his entire adult life in Boston without ever siring an offspring. Not for lack of ability: he is simply too closely related to Franklin Park's matriarch Kiki and her daughters for the Gorilla SSP to green-light a pairing. He was a great player stuck on a roster where he could not play his position.
He also comes with the most famous rap sheet in the sport. In 2003, Little Joe escaped Franklin Park and was loose for about two hours, injuring a toddler and a teenager before he was recaptured with four tranquilizer darts. The incident forced a facility-wide safety overhaul. His keepers describe him now as curious, intelligent, gentle, and unusually good at puzzle feeders. Front offices call that a character-concerns flag that aged out.
Boston's return is the part most people got wrong. Frankie is a 7-year-old blackback born in Pittsburgh, described by his keepers as playful and chill, and he is exactly the age at which wild males leave the natal group. Boston paired him with Moke, an 8-year-old acquired from the Smithsonian, and its own 5-year-old Pablo, forming a bachelor group. That is not a team giving up. That is a team that looked at its depth chart, saw three young males and no path to a breeding group, and built the developmental environment those animals actually need.
The verdict: Pittsburgh won the win-now trade and Boston won the next five years. Both zoos are correct, which is what the Pittsburgh Zoo's own CEO said about good trades in the first place.
