Primate expert arrives to investigate baby gorilla's death at SF Zoo

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The primate expert hired to investigate the death of the young gorilla arrived at the San Francisco Zoo on Monday. This comes as zoo visitors and an advocacy group are calling for safer habitats for the animals.

Dr. Terry Maple has been brought in on prior cases at the zoo. He's been the only one to talk to ABC7 News about this case since he was hired last week. It's always been by phone from his home in Florida. But now that he's on the ground, here in San Francisco, he was not made available.

The zoo has set up a small memorial to Kabibe at the primate's habitat. Monday was Dr. Terry Maple's first day on the ground since he was hired to investigate the tragic death of the 16-month-old gorilla.

Before arriving, Maple had been pouring over documents on the case from his home in Florida. He told ABC7 News that he wants to examine the hydraulic door system used in the gorilla's night enclosure. He said the design had a major blind spot and suggested two people should be present when closing doors for the animals.

"If there are two of you operating the system," he said in a phone interview, "And one person doesn't see something, the other one can say 'hey, look at this, there's something going on there, you need to stop.'"

The ABC7 News I-Team obtained log entries detailing the problem back in Sept. of 2010 when another young gorilla named Hasani injured her hand on a nearby door. So a zookeeper issued a warning to employees that said: "avoid shifting Hasani into far off electric doors (which are hard to see gorillas through)."

Zoo visitors say they want to see improvements that will make the gorilla habitats safer.

"It's not a positive story for the zoo for sure, but it could also be one of those where it could draw attention to needed improvements to the zoo," said zoo visitor Nichole Smithson.

Fellow zoo visitor Molly Bloom said, "It's a fantastic place for kids in San Francisco and those are kind of few and far between, so it doesn't affect my support for the zoo."

On Monday, the founder of the animal advocacy group "In Defense of Animals" called on the zoo to update their doors to include safety sensors.

"We want San Francisco to sorta be the model now that they're gonna install and create a system that has ultra-safety things built into it," said founder Elliot Katz.

Zoo officials declined to comment on camera.