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![]() ![]() This seems to help them to relieve tension, but in the adult male it is part of a much more elaborate display. Large males usually make a nest on the ground.Ī Frightening Display! When disturbed in some way, gorillas of both sexes and all ages over a year, beat their chests. Nest-building doesn't take long the gorilla just sits on a main branch and bends in smaller branches to form a small platform. A young gorilla shares its mother's nest up to about the age of three but it may practise building its own nest from an early age. This grooming can relax a gorilla so much that it appears to go into a trance!Įvery evening, a gorilla builds itself a nest for sleeping. One gorilla 'presents' itself to a companion which uses its fingers and teeth to comb through the other gorilla's hair. When it does drink, a gorilla soaks the fur on the back of its hand and sucks the water from it.Īnother important part of the gorilla's day is social grooming. Most of the plants eaten form the forest's undergrowth - very little of the food comes from the trees themselves.Ī gorilla rarely drinks since it gets most of the water it needs from its diet, together with morning dew on the leaves. Scientists studying the gorilla in the wild have listed more than 200 different food plants eaten, although the family groups may travel no more than two or three miles in a day. Most of the gorilla's day is devoted to eating and an adult can quite easily consume about 30kg of vegetation every day. The home ranges of groups overlap and there is no defended territory groups of gorillas which live within the same area get on with each other peacefully, sometimes mingling for a while or simply ignoring one another. Other males usually wander alone, sometimes joining a group for a while. Territory: Gorillas live in family groups of 10 to 30, consisting of a single adult male and several females with their young. Males have a larger, domed head than females. Only western lowland and mountain males develop silvery-white backs when mature. Eastern gorillas have blacker hair than western, with bigger jaws and teeth. Weight male 140 - 275kg female 70 - 140kgĭescription: Mountain gorillas have shorter arms and longer, silkier hair than lowland gorillas. Sizes: Height male 1.8m (standing upright) female 1.5m. Lowland gorillas - rainforest up to about 8,000 ft. Habitat: Mountain gorilla - rainforest between 9,000 and 12,000 ft. Western lowland gorilla - West Africa and Congo basin. Mountain gorilla - the Virunga volcanoes region in eastern Zaire, Rwanda and Uganda. Western lowland gorilla: (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) Mountain gorilla: (Gorilla gorilla beringei)Įastern lowland gorilla: (Gorilla gorilla graueri) However, a further understanding of the evolution of group-living in gorillas requires detailed ecological studies conducted in parallel with studies of the population structure and dynamics of these groups.IUCN Red List Status: Critically Endangered Variations in population structure, and group composition and type among gorilla populations are discussed. Despite frequent changes in members due to migrations of the males, the persistence of these all-male groups indicates that they may play an important role in the life of migrating males. Our study confirms that 1) one-male breeding groups are the norm in western gorillas, and 2) all-male groups occur in this species. Five of the nonbreeding groups were composed predominantly of blackbacks, subadult males, and juveniles, and thus fit the definition of all-male groups previously observed in mountain gorillas. Nonbreeding groups (mean size: 5.5 range: 2-15) were devoid of adult females. At Lokoué, breeding groups (mean size: 8.2 gorillas range: 3-15) included a single silverback male and, on average, 3.2 adult females. However, the size of breeding groups varied with site (either clearing or forest sites). Its age- and sex-class structure was similar to those observed at two other clearings in the same forest block. This population included 31 solitary males, 37 breeding groups, and eight nonbreeding groups. During a 17-month study at the Lokoué clearing in Odzala National Park, Republic of Congo, we identified 377 western lowland gorillas. ![]()
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