Both the killing of gorillas and trade in gorilla products are illegal across the animals' range, but due to weaknesses in law enforcement capacity and broader governance issues in some of the regions where the gorillas live, poachers, traders, and consumers are rarely apprehended. The first systematic study was not conducted until the 1920s, when Carl Akeley of the American Museum of Natural History traveled to Africa to hunt for an animal to be shot and stuffed.

To collect food, gorillas use their incredible strength to break apart vegetation, with adult males able to shred apart a whole banana tree to get to the tender pith. Gorillas, like many other social animals, are dependent on stable family groups for survival and well-being. A 2006 study published in Science concluded more than 5,000 gorillas may have died in recent outbreaks of the Ebola virus in central Africa. It’s has a population estimate of 90,000 individuals spread across the montane ecosystem, primary and secondary forest and lowland swampland and marshes (as low as sea level) in west central Africa: south to the Congo River and east to the Oubangi River. Let’s say an average person can bench press his own body weight then a 300 pounds gorilla can bench press up to approximately 1800 pounds.Some variations that distinguish the classifications of gorilla include varying density, size, hair colour, length, culture, and facial widths. Although their range covers a small percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa, gorillas cover a wide range of elevations.

Interestingly, gorillas do not overexploit an area for food, cropping the vegetation in a way that allows quick replenishment. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. While the average weight of male Western gorillas is about 146 kg (321 pounds) in the wild and 157 kg (346 pounds) in captivity.Today, tourism is regaining its grounds and more investments are being made to further develop ecotourism in Dzanga-Sangha with the projection to attain at least 1,000 tourists annually by 2025. Years later, at the behest of Louis Leakey and the National Geographic, Dian Fossey conducted a much longer and more comprehensive study of the mountain gorilla. When compared to an average human being, the silverback gorilla is four to nine times stronger than an average man. Conservation efforts include the Great Apes Survival Project, a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme and the UNESCO, and also an international treaty, the Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats, concluded under UNEP-administered Convention on Migratory Species.

The young nest with their mothers, but construct nests after three years of age, initially close to those of their mothers. There are lots of exercises named after animals – spider curls, donkey calf raises, downward dogs, inchworms, bear crawls, crab walks, and the cobra pose, to mention a few. The following observations were made by a team led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society in September 2005. As per the tradition, before we dive fully into the weight of each subspecies of western gorilla, here is how much the eastern species of gorillas weigh in general.An adult male Eastern lowland gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) have an average weight up to 160 kg (350 pounds), while for an adult female gorilla this amount is up to 90 kg (200 pounds).

Such a basic misunderstanding of basic biology (according to literally every evolutionary study of every species on this planet) really makes me question the validity of anything else here. The mountain gorilla eats a diet that is about 86 percent leaves, shoots and stems; 7 percent roots; 3 percent flowers; 2 percent fruit; and 2 percent snails, ants and grubs. Additional threats these animals face are human diseases, weak law enforcement, local people, the dreaded Ebola virus, and even other gorillas.Silverbacks of Eastern gorilla ( Gorilla beringei ) species have average body weight up to 163 kg, however, in captivity, their body weight reaches about 205 kg (452 pounds). The Western lowland gorilla consumes parts of at least 97 plant species, with 67% of their diet consisting of fruit. Gorillas are part of the great ape family, including other impressive species like orangutans and bonobos ; gorillas are essential to our planet’s biodiversity. Groups of bachelor gorillas containing young silverbacks have significantly higher levels of aggression and wounding rates than mixed age and sex groups. Behavioral ecology of sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda: diet".