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Sports fans have a tendency to try to determine who “won” a trade as soon as it’s announced in an attempt to figure out which team stands to benefit the most from the transaction. You might not think one involving a couple of gorillas would get the same treatment, but that was the case after zoos in Boston and Pittsburgh announced a plan to swap a couple of those massive primates.
NBA and NHL teams are currently in a holding pattern when it comes to acquiring players from other franchises, the MLB is still more than two months away from the trade deadline, and most NFL clubs aren’t in any huge rush to make any drastic changes ahead of the upcoming season.
As a result, there’s no reason to believe we’ll be treated to the news of a blockbuster trade at any point in the immediate future. That means the armchair experts who pride themselves on analyzing those transactions while trying to figure out which side managed to get the better of the other will probably have to bide their time before they’re able to jump into action.
With that said, Boston and Pittsburgh have ended up at the center of one that has taken the internet by storm. However, it has nothing to do with teams or athletes in those cities but rather a couple of zoos that have agreed to trade gorillas.
A gorilla trade between zoos in Boston and Pittsburgh sparked some amazing reactions online
On Thursday, Megan Swift of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review shared an article concerning an agreement between the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium and the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston, which will result in the former sending a 7-year-old male western lowland gorilla named Frankie to the latter in exchange for a 33-year-old silverback known as “Little Joe.”
Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium is set to trade gorillas with Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo.
Frankie, Pittsburgh’s 7-year-old male western lowland gorilla, will head to Boston, and in exchange, Boston will send 33-year-old Little Joe the silverback @TribLIVE 🦍https://t.co/qU732Imrfg
— Megan Swift (@mgswift7) May 14, 2026
The move is designed to help Frankie, who has resided in Pittsburgh since being born at the zoo in 2018, form a “bachelor group” with other gorillas his age (a stage they usually enter in the wild after leaving the families that raised them). There is also hope that Little Joe, who made headlines in 2003 after escaping from the zoo and attacking a two-year-old, will be “successful in starting his own family” once he gets a change of scenery.
It may not seem like the kind of story that has the potential to go viral at first glance, but the fact that Swift phrased her tweet like Adam Schefter or Shams Charania announcing a breaking trade led to people giving it the sports treatment.
Little Joe’s status as an aging veteran led to a number of people asserting “Pittsburgh got fleeced,” although there were others who argued the experience he brings to the table implied the zoo is in “win-now mode.”
Pete Blackburn, a Boston native who co-hosts the NHL-centric What Chaos! podcast, asserted his hometown zoo is entering “rebuild mode,” but as is the case with every trade, we’re going to have to wait and see how this pans out for both sides.