49 Fun Facts About Gorilla

What is the leader of a gorilla troop called?

A silverback is named for the saddle of silver hair that comes with maturity, and he makes the troop's decisions: where it travels to feed, when it rests and where it spends the night.

What is the scientific name of the gorilla subspecies that nearly all zoo gorillas belong to?

Gorilla gorilla gorilla says one word three times because this was the kind first described, and the naming rules make that original population repeat its species name.

Which two animals are more closely related to humans than gorillas are?

Bonobos and chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, yet when the gorilla genome was read in 2012, about 15% of human DNA turned out to be closer to the gorilla's than to the chimpanzee's.

Gorillas hold which distinction among the primates?

The largest alive today, gorillas are nonetheless quiet, peaceful plant-eaters that live in close family groups, the opposite of the raging monsters the movies made of them.

What is the leading cause of death among adult gorillas living in zoos?

Heart disease is the biggest killer of adult gorillas in zoos, just as it is for people, even though zoo life lets them pass 50, against 35 to 40 years in the wild.

The word 'gorilla' comes from the voyage of Hanno the Navigator, an explorer sent out by which ancient city?

Carthage sent Hanno down Africa's west coast around 500 BC, where his crew met hairy, wild people their interpreters called Gorillai; an American missionary borrowed the word for the ape in 1847.

In Disney's 1999 animated film Tarzan, what is the name of the gorilla who adopts and raises him?

Kala soothes the orphaned baby with a lullaby that became Phil Collins's 'You'll Be in My Heart', which went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song.

A sailor's 1625 name for an African ape, 'Pongo', now belongs to which Asian primate?

Orangutans now carry the genus name Pongo because early naturalists used the word for any great ape, although the sailor, Andrew Battel, was probably describing a gorilla.

Field researchers tell individual wild gorillas apart by which uniquely patterned body part?

The nose of every gorilla is creased in its own pattern, called a nose print, and field researchers have kept files of nose sketches to tell their study animals apart.

The real gorilla behind the book and film The One and Only Ivan spent 27 years on display where?

A shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, kept Ivan in a concrete indoor enclosure until a public campaign freed him in 1994; at Zoo Atlanta he went outdoors for the first time in nearly three decades.

The 2012 gorilla genome showed that humans and gorillas had both rapidly evolved genes for which sense?

Hearing genes turned out to have changed as fast in gorillas as in humans, which undercut the older idea that our own sharp hearing evolved to serve spoken language.

Which geographical feature separates the ranges of the two gorilla species?

The Congo River and its tributaries lie between them. During the Ice Age the rainforest probably shrank into pockets, and gorillas cut off in the west and east drifted apart into two species.

How did scientists in a 2009 study get young gorillas and other apes to laugh?

Tickled them: the giggles of the young apes and of tickled human babies differed in step with the family tree, so laughter was traced back to the common ancestor of great apes and humans.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to nearly half the world's mountain gorillas, lies in which country?

Uganda opened Bwindi to gorilla tracking in 1993, and visitors now hike its steep, tangled slopes for a short visit with a family that has slowly been accustomed to people.

A gorilla's big toe differs from a human's in which way?

It grips like a thumb, so a foot can hold food or a branch, while a gorilla's hands match ours down to fingerprints as individual as a person's.

Gorillas usually walk on all fours with their weight resting on which part of the hand?

The knuckles take the weight because the fingers are curled under, yet high-speed film from 2018 caught about four in ten mountain gorillas also walking on other parts of the hand.

What makes up the bulk of a mountain gorilla's diet?

Leaves, stems, pith and shoots are nearly all a mountain gorilla eats, and it favours thistles and wild celery, while fruit barely features.

Which gorilla subspecies depends most on fruit?

Western lowland gorillas climb for the fruit of many kinds of tree while it is in season, then fall back on leaves, bark and seeds in the dry months when little is ripe.

Why do gorillas rarely drink water?

Their food is moist enough, because the juicy plants they eat all day are full of water and often wet with morning dew; gorillas will still take a drink now and then.

How often do gorillas build a new sleeping nest?

Every day ends in a fresh nest, even if last night's is only metres away, and because the old ones are left behind, researchers count nests to estimate how many shy gorillas a forest holds.

In a famous 1999 attention experiment, many viewers missed a person in a gorilla suit because they were counting what?

Basketball passes kept viewers so busy that only half noticed the gorilla, even though it stopped among the players and thumped its chest; most people are sure they would have seen it.

Which animal is the only likely natural predator of adult gorillas?

The leopard is the only wild predator known to kill adult gorillas, and the evidence is thin: a few kills have been confirmed, while gorilla remains found in leopard droppings may only show scavenging.

Which other apes have been observed forming coalitions to attack gorilla families and kill infants?

Chimpanzees were seen doing this in Gabon's Loango National Park in 2019, after years in which researchers there had watched the two apes meet peacefully and even feed in the same fruit trees.

Younger subordinate males aged 8 to 12 in a gorilla troop are known as what?

Blackbacks have yet to grow the grey saddle and the huge canine teeth of a full adult, changes that take several years of puberty, and until then they may serve as backup protection for the group.

After its first few months, how does a young gorilla usually travel through the forest?

Riding on its mother's back begins once an infant is strong enough to hold on, after months carried against her chest, and it keeps hitching lifts long after it has learned to walk.

Which sound, the most common within a gorilla group, signals contentment?

A rumbling belch, drawn out like a throat being cleared, keeps the group in touch, because gorillas feeding in dense forest often cannot see one another and rely on calls instead.

How does a gorilla's charge usually end?

He stops short because the charge is a bluff, the finale of a ritual that builds through hooting, chest-beating and torn-up plants, and it lets rivals settle things without injury.

What can a rival gorilla judge from the pitch of a male's chest beat?

His size shows in the sound, because bigger males make deeper beats on their chests, so a rival or a watching female can weigh him up by ear alone.

Scientists first recorded a wild gorilla using a tool when a female in Congo picked up a branch to do what?

To test the water's depth, she prodded the pool ahead of her with a branch, then leaned on it like a walking stick as she waded in; it made gorillas the last great ape seen using tools in the wild.

Which broadcaster planned a piece to camera about thumbs but ended up with a young gorilla lying on him?

David Attenborough came face to face with a female, dropped his script and spoke instead about how alike gorillas and people are; at one point a three-year-old called Pablo lay down on top of him.

Belgium founded Africa's first national park in 1925 to protect mountain gorillas; what is it called today?

Virunga began as Albert National Park after Carl Akeley, an American naturalist, warned that its mountain gorillas would soon be wiped out and pressed Belgium's colonial rulers for a reserve.

Which primatologist lived among wild mountain gorillas from 1966 until her murder in 1985?

Dian Fossey turned from research to fighting poachers, paying for patrols against them, and although she was found dead in her cabin, who killed her has never been settled.

What was the name of the Karisoke researcher's favourite gorilla, killed by poachers in 1977?

Digit died defending his group so the others could escape, and the fund set up in his name to pay for anti-poaching patrols still runs today under the researcher's own name.

Who played the lead role in the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist?

Sigourney Weaver won a Golden Globe for the part, and the role outlasted the film: she became honorary chair of the gorilla charity founded by the woman she played and has held the post for decades.

Koko, the gorilla taught a form of sign language, was born at which zoo?

San Francisco Zoo was where she was born on the Fourth of July 1971, which is why she was named Hanabiko, Japanese for 'fireworks child'.

What was the name of the pet kitten that featured in the 1985 best-seller Koko's Kitten?

All Ball was hit by a car and killed in 1984, and film shows Koko answering her carer's question about it with signs for 'cat' and 'cry', which her carers read as grief.

Colo, the first gorilla born in captivity, arrived in 1956 at which zoo?

Columbus Zoo gave Colo her name, short for Columbus, Ohio, and she lived there all her life, dying in 2017 aged 60, some twenty years beyond what most zoo gorillas reach.

Snowflake, the world's only known white gorilla, lived at which zoo from 1966 to 2003?

Barcelona Zoo's star developed skin cancer and died in 2003, and when scientists read his genome ten years later they traced his albinism to inbreeding: his parents were close kin, most likely uncle and niece or aunt and nephew.

Harambe was shot in 2016 after a three-year-old boy climbed into his enclosure at which zoo?

Cincinnati Zoo's director defended the shot, saying a tranquilliser could take too long to work on an agitated gorilla standing over a child.

Alone among great apes, mountain gorillas are doing what?

Growing in number: as of 2018 they were the only great apes on the rise, after anti-poaching patrols and vets who treat snared animals lifted them from about 680 in 2008 to over 1,000.

The Cross River gorilla, the rarest kind with fewer than 300 left, lives where Cameroon meets which country?

Nigeria shares the rugged hills at the head of the Cross River with Cameroon. Hunted almost to extinction, the gorillas hang on in steep forest where people seldom go.

Which virus wiped out several hundred gorillas in Odzala National Park, Republic of Congo, in 2004?

Ebola killed about 95% of the gorillas studied there, and those living in groups fared worse than lone males. A 2006 study put a nearby sanctuary's toll at about 5,000 gorillas.

The bony crest that gives a male gorilla's head its cone shape exists mainly to do what?

Anchor its jaw muscles: chewing tough plants takes massive muscles, and the ridge of bone along the skull gives them somewhere to attach. Females have the crests too, only far less pronounced.

Which country names its newborn mountain gorillas each year at a public ceremony called Kwita Izina?

Rwanda modelled the ceremony on a centuries-old custom of naming a baby in front of family and friends. Held since 2005, it also thanks the villagers, vets and rangers who protect the gorillas.

Emmanuel Frémiet's controversial 1887 sculpture, winner of the Paris Salon's medal of honour, shows a gorilla doing what?

Carrying off a woman: his first version was rejected by the Salon jury in 1859 and shown half hidden behind a curtain, yet the remake 28 years later took the top prize.

Gorilla Grodd, DC Comics' mind-controlling ape, first appeared in 1959 as a villain in which superhero's comic book?

The Flash #106 introduced Grodd, a telepathic gorilla whose super-intelligent kin chose to live in peace, hidden from the world, while he alone set out to conquer humanity.

The 1976 King Kong remake swapped the Empire State Building for which other New York landmark?

The World Trade Center, then New York's tallest building, hosts Kong's last stand. The film's 40-foot robot ape worked so badly it was barely used, so a man in a gorilla suit played most scenes.

Which author's 1980 thriller Congo sends a sign-language gorilla named Amy to a lost city guarded by killer apes?

Michael Crichton set out to write a modern King Solomon's Mines, and he modelled Amy on a real gorilla who was being taught sign language in California at the time.

An 1861 explorer's account of equatorial Africa recorded a belief that a pregnant woman who sees a gorilla will do what?

Give birth to one, he wrote, which is why no expectant mother or her husband would go near the young gorilla he kept caged. Researchers in Cameroon heard the same story more than a century later.