Gorilla Behavior
Gorillas
are chiefly land animals. They walk quadrupedally (using both feet and
hands), with the knuckles of the hands carrying the weight of the upper body. In
lowland regions with many fruiting trees, gorillas tend to spend more time off
the ground, climbing trees and sometimes brachiating (swinging by their
arms).
Unlike
the other great apes, gorillas travel, eat, play, and sleep in stable family
groups. These groups may range from several individuals to more than 50, but a
typical family consists of one or two adult males, three or four unrelated
females, and their young.
Gorillas
spend much of their day eating, consuming a primarily vegetarian diet of leaves,
stems, shoots, and fruit. They travel between feedings, covering a distance of
several hundred yards to a mile or more in a day. In lowland forests where
gorillas eat a substantial amount of fruit, the slow passage of seeds through
their digestive tracts serves an important ecological process: the widespread
dispersal and propagation of trees.
At
dusk a family settles wherever it has finished feeding. Each member constructs
its own nest, either on the ground or in a tree, by bending nearby vegetation to
form a flexible platform. The home range in which gorillas move, eat, and sleep
varies from 5 to 30 sq km (2 to 12 sq mi).
Apart
from humans, gorillas have few or no predators. In some regions leopards have
been known to occasionally attack gorillas. If threatened, adult
gorillas�especially males�defend others in the group by roaring, screaming,
beating their chest with cupped hands, and eventually charging if the threat is
serious. However, research and tourist programs in the wild indicate that
gorillas demonstrate extreme tolerance of people as long as people approach them
respectfully.
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