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Sachita Shah texted a photo to her brother. He’s a cardiologist. She works for Butterfly Network. She was showing him a patient’s heart.
He stared at the image. Confused.
The heart was massive. The left venticle? Thick muscle. Way too strong for a normal human scan.
His confusion wasn’t paranoia.
The heart belonged to a gorilla.
If a radiologist saw the fetal ultrasound without knowing it was primate, they’d call it human.
Shah says so. Explicitly.
She is on the care team for Jamani and Olympia. Western lowland gorillas. They live at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.
Jamani had her baby. May 18.
Olympia was due any day.
The Tech Shift
Traditional ultrasound carts are bulky.
They require specific probes for specific jobs. Heart needs one shape. Baby needs another. Pediatrics need a tiny tip.
Too much hardware. Too little flexibility.
The zoo needed something small. Portable.
Enter Butterfly Network.
Their probe fits in the hand. It looks like an electric shaver.
It plugs into a smartphone.
One device. Many jobs.
Shah’s team used it on Jamani. And Olympia.
The goal was simple. Watch the bump. Check the growth. Monitor position.
The results? Startling.
“We got a really pretty baby,” Shah says.
She saw a nose. Lips.
Fetal breathing movements.
A heartbeat.
Drinking amniotic fluid.
Opening a mouth. Swallowing.
It looked human.
Is that unsettling? Maybe.
It’s mostly just familiar.
The mothers trained for this.
They put their bellies up to the enclosure wall. A small gap. Just big enough for the probe.
They got snacks for participation.
They chose to cooperate.
Connecting the Dots
The team also scanned Nadaya. The silverback father.
Shah used the same handheld device on him.
She actually sent him that confusing heart scan earlier. The one with the massive ventricle.
Nadaya wasn’t very furry on the chest. Lucky.
Because they used the human health software app instead of the vet version. Vet apps are tuned for fur interference.
Nadaya passed.
Shah has been pregnant herself.
She noticed Olympia waddling differently. The head had dropped.
“Must be so uncomfortable,” Shah thought.
Then she remembered her own third trimester. The awkward gait. The exhaustion.
It bridges a gap we often forget.
Western lowland gorillas are critically extinct-risked.
Babies matter. They really do.
More of them is better news.
We’re all connected. That biology is shared.
UPDATE:
Sunday. May 24.
1:44 p.m. PST.
Olympia didn’t go into natural labor.
Emergency C-section.
The team performing the surgery? Usually doctors for humans.
The result: a 5.4-pound boy.
His second baby. (Olympia had one before.)
The probe went back in the case.
The gorillas rested.
We go back to our lives.
