Little Joe, Infamous Gorilla Who Once Escaped Boston Zoo, Is Moving Homes — Will He Escape Again?

An infamous and beloved Boston gorilla who once made headlines for escaping his enclosure and injuring a young girl is getting a new home.

Little Joe, a 33-year-old male silverback gorilla, will be relocated from Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo to the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium. His arrival will be part of an exchange, with Pittsburgh sending 7-year-old male western lowland gorilla Frankie to Boston, CBS News reports.

In September 2003, Little Joe made headlines when he escaped his enclosure at the Franklin Park Zoo and ran into the city, attacking and injuring 2-year-old girl Nia Scott and her babysitter and then leading police and zookeepers on a nearly two-hour chase.

“He pushed the door open and he, like, swung me from my babysitter’s hip,” Scott recalled during a 2016 interview. “Then he, like, just started dragging me on the ground, and he scratched my face.”

In the time that has passed since the incident, the Franklin Park Zoo has made safety upgrades and Little Joe has earned a reputation for being “curious, intelligent and gentle.”

“This news is bittersweet to share as we will all miss Little Joe, but we are also excited for this opportunity for him to lead his own troop and start a family, which is important for the preservation of the species,” Zoo New England President and CEO Stephanie Brinley said in a statement.

Once Little Joe is settled in to his new home in Pittsburgh, will curiosity get the better of him once again? A Polymarket scenario taking bets on whether or not Little Joe will escape again gives it low odds of happening. Although at one point betters had given Little Joe nearly 50% odds of escaping his new home in Pittsburgh, chances currently sit at just 6%.

The market will close on July 31, which leaves plenty of time for the odds to change depending on how Little Joe settles in. There has been no word on the timing of the exchange as of yet.

The exchange is part of the American Association of Zoos & Aquariums’ gorilla species survival plan, which helps ensure a healthy and genetically diverse population of critically endangered gorillas in human care.

Western lowland gorillas are a critically endangered species threatened in the wild by disease and poaching, as well as logging and mining practices.

Gorilla families are usually made up of one male, several females and the juveniles. The program’s hope is that Little Joe will fit in with the Pittsburgh Zoo’s two females, 29-year-old Moka and 35-year-old Ibo, and the younger gorillas, 3-year-old Charlotte and 2-year-old Bo.

As young male gorillas mature, they reach a point where they’re too old to be juveniles but too young to be silverbacks, so usually they band together with the other “blackbacks” in bachelor groups that allow non-breeding males to live social lives while minimizing competition. Frankie from Pittsburgh will join a recently-formed bachelor group with two other male gorillas his size and age in Boston.

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