The gorilla in our midst: The enchanting story of the couple who adopted baby Digit (and still let her share the duvet 13 years on)

By Kathryn Knight


Like most devoted parents, Pierre and Eliane Thivillon know their 13-year-old’s little idiosyncrasies inside out. She is partial to a milky coffee and a brioche for breakfast, while her favourite evening meal is a portion of leeks in a creamy sauce.

She prefers sparkling water to still, and absolutely loves her sleep, complaining vociferously if she gets woken up too early.

Yes, she has her moody moments — what teenager doesn’t? — but, in general, she has a calm and placid nature.

Want a bite? Pierre Thivillon offers the two-year-old Digit a snack. She has been part of the family for 13 years


Which is just as well because not only does their ‘little girl’ weigh 80k (12st 8lb), but she is covered in fur, and, were she so minded, she could kill
her ‘parents’ with just one over-zealous hug. Not that there’s much risk of that.

Because while Digit may be a fully-grown gorilla, for the past 13 years the Thivillons have raised her as lovingly as if she were their own daughter at their home in the hills west of Lyon, France.

And their bond, they insist, is as close and loving as that of any conventional (human) family.

While Digit spends her days swinging, scratching and parading around a roomy enclosure, each evening she tootles across a covered walkway into Pierre and Eliane’s bedroom where the house-trained gorilla hunkers down for the night alongside them, snuggled under a duvet.

Sweet dreams: Eliane Thivillon and Digit catch 40 winks. If Pierre rises early, the gorilla will often clamber into his place to snuggle alongside his wife


If Digit is thirsty, she has no qualms about shaking Pierre awake to get her a drink of water, and if he rises first she will often clamber into his place to snuggle up alongside his wife.

Once everyone is up and about, this rather unusual trio eat breakfast together as a family before taking a morning stroll.

It is an extraordinary situation; one that is believed to be unique in the world — and little wonder. Gorillas may be wonderful creatures to look at, but given their size and strength, not many of us would fancy keeping one as a family pet.
Not so the Thivillons.

‘With Digit, I am never afraid,’ says Pierre.

‘I trust her implicitly, and that goes both ways — she has enormous confidence in us too. If she gets a splinter in her hand she will come to me to remove it.

‘The other day she had pineapple between her teeth and held her mouth open so I could floss it out with a stick. She has never shown a moment of aggression towards us. She just likes us being with her.’

Digit at one-month. She weighed just two kilos (4lb 6oz), and her life hung in the balance as the Thivillons tried to nurse her back to strength


It’s certainly fair to say that Digit is as demanding as any human child (although in gorilla years she is, technically, a young woman now).

‘We cannot leave Digit overnight with anyone else, which means we haven’t be able to go out for 13 years,’ admits Pierre.

‘We haven’t had a holiday, or a night away. We haven’t been to the cinema, the theatre, or out for dinner. It would make Digit sad if we weren’t here, and if she is sad we are, too.’

Married for 43 years, and with no children of their own, the Thivillons have dedicated their lives to animal conservation, setting up a private zoo in St Martin La Plaine 39 years ago to provide a sanctuary for ill-treated wild animals from circuses, private homes and other badly-run zoos across the world.

Funded by visitor fees and donations, today it is home to more than a thousand animals, among them monkeys, gibbons, snow leopards, tigers and lions and eight other gorillas.

But it is Digit who will always have a special place in their heart and home. Not least as she was born there.

Monkey business: The eight-month-old Digit playing with her favourite cuddly toy


Digit’s mother, Pamela, also lives in the family zoo after she was rescued from captivity in Cameroon, but sadly had little maternal instinct for her baby when she gave birth in October 1998 and failed to feed her.

‘We watched anxiously for two days,’ says Pierre. ‘But Digit was starving, shrinking before our eyes.’

She was also being bullied by some of the other young males, who would drag her along the ground while her mother looked on impassively.

‘In the wild, Digit would have died but we couldn’t allow that,’ says Pierre.

‘We held out our hands to Pamela, and by doing so, asked her if she would give us her baby. She understood, and passed Digit through her food hatch.’

Digit weighed just two kilos (4lb 6oz), and her life hung in the balance as the Thivillons tried to nurse her back to strength. They knew they were taking on a huge commitment: gorillas are reliant on milk for the first three years of their life and once she was bottle-fed there would be little chance of her being returned to her mother.

Urbane gorilla: Digit aged four. The Thivillons have not had a night out for 13 years as they won't leave her alone


So, at just a few months old, Digit became part of the family, spending her every waking hour with the couple as they went about their work at the zoo.

If Pierre drove a tractor, Digit sat on his lap; if Eliane went to the post office in the village, she took Digit with her.

‘We did all the things you would do with a normal child,’ Pierre recalls.

‘We took her for walks, we played with toys, we read books with her. Sometimes Eliane took her for a drive through the countryside, although in the end that got too difficult because you can’t make her wear a seatbelt and she clambered all over the car.’

Initially, Digit slept on her own in a put-up bed in the office of the couple’s home. All this changed, however, when, aged two, she had to have an operation to remove an abscess from her stomach.

‘The night of the operation she was very woozy so we didn’t want to leave her on her own, so Eliane and I slept alongside her on put-up beds,’ Pierre explains.

‘We only intended to do it for two nights, but when we had settled her in on the third night and got up to leave, she reached up with each hand and pulled us both back. She didn’t want us to go. It was a case of “stay one more night, please”. And 11 years later we’re still there.’

Digit with Pierre and Eliane today. Married for 43 years, and with no children of their own, the Thivillons have dedicated their lives to animal conservation


The couple’s bedroom, meanwhile, remains totally unused.

Unsurprisingly, there have been logistical problems: as Digit got older — and stronger — allowing her to roam in a public space during the day became unsafe. She needed a new daily hangout, and Pierre decided the chimp enclosure might do the trick.

‘We couldn’t put her back in with the gorillas as Pamela could react badly to her,’ he explains.

‘Chimps and gorillas aren’t really natural bedfellows in the wild, but in captivity they can get on and at least this way Digit could socialise with other primates rather than be alone.’

A pattern was established: during the day Digit would play with her new friends, and at night Pierre would come to collect her and take her over to the family home, where she would cuddle up with the couple.

It is a pattern which has unfolded in more or less the same way for the past seven years, although these days Digit has her own enclosure directly linked to the house.

‘She comes over at 8pm and climbs through the window to our bedroom,’ explains Pierre. ‘She has something to drink and sometimes something to eat, and then she pulls her covers over her and goes to sleep.

‘Then every morning we have breakfast together before she goes back to her enclosure.’

Digit's affection for Pierre is immediately apparent


Until a few years ago they took her for walks around the wider environs of the zoo, courtesy of a strong lead, although this is no longer possible as Digit now weighs almost as much as Pierre and Eliane put together.

‘If she wanted to run for it I would not be able to stop her,’ he says.

Not that she would be likely too, for it seems Digit knows on which side her brioche is buttered. ‘She knows how to communicate with us and tell us what she wants,’ Pierre says.

‘Obviously she can’t speak but she understands a lot of what we say. If I am talking to Eliane about getting a drink for Digit she will put her finger to her mouth, and if she’s thirsty she makes a noise to attract our attention and makes the same gesture.

‘She also doesn’t like us talking when she’s trying to sleep, so if we chat for too long she gives a big sigh to tell us to shut up.

'Just because Digit has this wonderful bond with me and Eliane doesn’t mean she is sympathetic to humans in general. In fact it’s impossible to predict how she will react to individual people,’ Pierre explains.

‘We don’t know whether she reacts to smells, or something in people’s faces, but we’ve had situations where we have tried to introduce her to someone and she has gone mad and rattled the bars of her enclosure. Other times she makes a low noise which says back off. It could go either way.’

A wide strip of grass and fencing separates zoo visitors from Digit’s barred enclosure, and it is only under Pierre’s strict supervision that I am allowed to navigate my way towards her — albeit, still protected by bars.

Pierre tells me that there are two noises in the gorilla repertoire: a low grumble which is the gorilla version of ‘get out’ and a contented throat-clearing which serves as: ‘I don’t object to your presence.’

Happily I get the latter.

'Just because Digit has this wonderful bond with me and Eliane doesn't mean she is sympathetic to humans in general,' said Pierre


‘She seems OK with you,’ nods Pierre, and within a few moments Digit has crouched down on the grass alongside me and is peering out through the bars while smacking her lips with her fingers.

‘She is offering you a present,’ Pierre tells me — and sure enough, Digit is proffering a piece of grass from her teeth which, in gorilla etiquette, is a high honour. She then shifts her attention to my feet, which seem to fascinate her, stroking the nail varnish on my big toe through the bars.

It feels marvellous, although not as much as watching her with Pierre, for whom her affection is immediately apparent. When he enters her enclosure she wraps her arms around his legs before leaning upwards for a kiss. Does she see him as a father-figure?

‘It’s hard to know,’ he says.

‘We have raised her, we live together much of the time, but it’s hard to know whether she sees us as parents.’

Nonetheless, Pierre and Eliane are painfully aware of the consequences of Digit’s reliance on them. In the wild, gorillas live to around 35, but in captivity can make it to 50. As Digit is only 13 and Pierre and Eliane are in their late 60s, there is every chance they will die before her.

‘We do worry,’ Pierre admits. ‘We hope to be here for a long time yet but we know we won’t be here for ever and we have to find a way of re-integrating Digit into the gorilla world.’

It is a process that will take time, although plans are afoot: in recent years Pamela has had two other babies, Gypsy and Jade, with another male gorilla, meaning Digit has two half-sisters.

‘We are building a new enclosure where we hope we can house all three of them and, over time, encourage her to spend the night there. It will be a sad day for us, but an important one because it means that Digit will be independent.’

In time, they even hope she will have babies of her own. And just like any other parents, Pierre and Eliane relish the thought of their furry grandchildren.

‘It is our dearest wish for her,’ Pierre smiles.



source:dailymail