Rainforest Animals: Mountain Gorillas 

 

I remember watching a documentary when I was young about a woman who went looking for mountain gorillas, a very rare species, and found out how these creatures lived. That woman was Dain Fossey and it’s mainly her work that brought these apes and their vanishing breed into the attention of the world.

Mountain Gorilla’s are very rare animals. They are mostly found in the tropical rainforests of Eastern and Central Africa, namely in Rwanda, Uganda and Congo.  Mountain Gorillas and gorillas in general are the largest apes found on earth. In their natural habitat, a male gorilla can grow up to a height of 1.7 meters and a weigh up to 220 kg whereas females can grow as tall as 1.5 meters and weight up to 90 kg. 

Gorillas tend to have longer arms then legs and use all of their four limbs to walk, especially using their knuckles to support the front weight. Their bodies tend to be black with black hair all over except for their face and hands. 

Mountain Gorillas tend to live in big groups like joint families, which can be as many as 30, led by one or two adult males. Mountain gorillas have a home range of around 15 square miles. They are mostly vegetarian. Their diet consists of bamboo shoots, giant thistles, wild celery, fruits, leaves, roots, tree barks, and some non-vegetarian fare in the form insects and worms. 

Mountain Gorillas travel continuously in their home range foraging for food. They like their siesta and create temporary nests at noon and night by using branches and leaves. Some sleep on the ground and some on the trees. Young babies sleep with their mothers.

Female gorillas breed once every 4 years and generally give birth to a single offspring but they can give birth to twins as well. Gorillas communicate with each other through sounds like grunts, hoots, barks and even roars. The chest beating that made the Gorillas so fearsome is indeed a defense technique used to scare away invaders and to keep order within the family.

As Dain Fossey revealed to the world, the Gorillas are not violent creatures by nature and are often labeled so because of their chest beating behavior. Like any animal, they also defend their family and it is human’s encroaching into their habitat, that leads to violence.

The mountain Gorillas are being hunted to extinction to clear forest areas for agriculture. It is estimated that there is around 600 mountain gorillas left in the wild. Unlikely the normal gorillas, the mountain gorillas do not survive in captivity.

While mountain gorillas have been victims to poaching, habitat loss and diseases like other gorilla species, they have also been endangered by the tribal wars of Africa. Efforts to conserve these animals have also suffered due to the presence of armed forces in these areas.