I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla. As a child in New York, I endlessly begged and cajoled my mother ...

Pettit said the recent baboon incident evoked memories of another animal escape in a different state. "Several years ago a gorilla at the Dallas zoo escaped its enclosure," Pettit said.

Whether you’re a human or an elephant, a baboon or a fish ... of a unique database currently managed by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, a nonprofit conservation group in Rwanda.