Get to Know the Gorillas of Disney's Animal Kingdom | Magic of Disney's Animal Kingdom

On the Gorilla Falls Exploration Trail lives a very special resident. This is our family troupe of gorillas. They're a big group; all of our kids were born here.

So we have Lily, she's our oldest. She's 12. There she is. Lily is probably my favorite. She loves to interact with the keepers. She and I have a really good relationship. She's very smart; it's really funny—grabs up all the toys and takes them for herself. She's so cute. Thank you.

And then we've got our two youngest. Grace has just really started climbing the trees. She's climbing the tree to get that smear board there, and she gets super, super high up into the trees. Then Otta, she was born last year. Lily's taking on more of a big sister type of role. She does a little bit more protecting, a little bit more teaching. It's interesting to watch her develop those maternal care behaviors. Such a sweet gorilla.

You're going to lay down back there, Lily? You're not feeling well this morning, but an ongoing health issue causes concern. You're okay.

We know them very, very well, so I can at a glance know whether Lily is feeling well or not. She'll kind of hunch over, holding her stomach, kind of crouched down. Ever since she was young, she's had some stomach issues. I've spent so many different times trying to find what it is that's making her sick. It's sad to watch her be that sick and not be able to do anything. She looks like she might vomit again. Oh, poor thing. You're okay.

I've known Lily since the day she was born. She's the same age as my daughter. We've been doing a lot of research to find a way to make Lily feel better. So we did a CT scan, and the CT scan showed that she has gas bubbles inside of her intestinal wall, as well as outside of her bladder.

Dr. Natalie and the team refused to give up on Lily. In humans, one way to treat this is to do surgery, but they've been moving away from that, and they're starting to use hyperbaric oxygen. But this is a very unique thing to do; we've never really known of anyone who's tried this in a gorilla. So it feels like the stakes are higher, and that makes it just a little bit more scary.

Come here, Lily. Can you come up for us? Lily's going to be inside of this hyperbaric oxygen chamber with pure oxygen. It's going to go into her bloodstream, push those bubbles out, and we're really hoping that this treatment is the solution. It's really hard for us as keepers to see her like that, just to know that there's nothing that we can do. This treatment could be Lily's only chance of improving. Honestly, she's one of my favorites. I love her; I just really hope that we can find a way to make her feel better. Thank you.