Mariana van Zeller

We had the opportunity of hiking up this Kahuzi-Viega National Park that leads up to the gorillas where we saw them.

gorillas in the wild.

And it was beautiful, beautiful, stunningly beautiful.

Well, a lot of them are ending up in the Arabian Gulf, in Dubai.

What do they do with them?

They put them in private zoos that they then charge visitors to come and see.

They put them in private homes, people that want to have exotic pets in their house.

Oh, they do.

Gorillas go for $500,000 or more.

It's a crazy gorilla that they catch in the wild.

And the sad part about it is that to be able to catch that gorilla, and the same thing with chimpanzees, they have to kill the whole family because, you know, they're very social and...

Yeah.

Yeah.

They kill the whole family, Joe.

It's horrible.

Because, for example, if baby chimps, you can't carry your life chimp, for example, because they're too dangerous.

And so it's the Batwa pygmies.

We did a whole chain of who hunts them, who kills them, who transports them, and then who buys them.

And we started in the park with the Batwa pygmies.

You had a guest that I remember when I was doing research for the story I listened to.