The Mountain Gorilla

30 April 2012

The Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei)

The mountain gorilla was first discovered on October of 1902. It is is set apart from its cousins because it has longer teeth, hair, and jaws; it also has smaller arms. The longer hair helps the gorillas handle the extreme cold they are subject to at altitude. The nose print is different from gorilla to gorilla, similar to human fingerprints. Of all the gorilla species, the Mountain Gorilla is considered the most endangered; there are only 786 individual Mountain Gorillas existing in the wild today.

Gorillas live in a patriarchal society. For every family group, there is one dominant male and several fertile females. The dominant male is referred to as a silverback because of the patches of silver hair that grows on his back and hips. Some families have more than one silverback, but only the dominant one is allowed to mate with the females of the group. The dominant male is responsible for protecting the family from different predators or threats, and he acts as mediator during family quarrels.

The Mountain Gorilla family unit consists of the dominant male, several female gorillas, and young, sub-adult, gorillas. The sub-adult males are also known as blackbacks because they have no silver hair. They are subservient to the silverback and will be forced to leave the group if they challenge his authority. If a blackback is successful in his attempt to overthrow the current silverback, he will assume the power position in the family and the old silverback will usually be exiled. Generally, the silverback mates with three dominant females. The females are responsible for caring for the offspring and it is their duty to initiate mating with the silverback. Each female will have one to two offspring during the mating season.

The diet of the Mountain Gorilla mainly consists of fruits and vegetables. About 86% of their diet is leaves, shoots and stems of plants such as bamboo, 10 % is roots and flowers, 2% is ants, snails, and grubs, and 2% is fruit (due to limited availability in the higher elevations of the Gorillas’ range. Even though Gorillas are large animals, the largest male gorilla ever recorded weighed in excess of 580 pounds, they are able to survive on this vegetarian diet because they are constantly grazing and do not regularly exert large amounts of energy. In fact, a large male can eat more than 40 pounds of vegetation in a day. Because most of what they eat is high in water content, Mountain Gorillas do not need to consume large amounts of water and are actually afraid of getting near bodies of water.

Mountain Gorillas are only found in one region of the world, but their range spreads over three separate countries: Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. While this may seem like a large area, the forest in which the Mountain Gorilla resides