Just like a human infant, it’s entirely dependent on its mother and will stay in physical contact with her for at least its first five months of life. A newborn can weigh between 3-4 pounds, just half of what human babies weigh. This little one arrived, like a human baby, after nearly nine months of pregnancy. The curious eyes of an infant gorilla with her mother meeting strange faces for the first time. Even when fully grown, the mothers are only half the weight of the silverback. They don’t start to breed until they reach their teens.
Like humans, gorillas are slow to mature. The father would growl whenever we seemed closer to the infant than would please him. The troop we visited had a newborn, getting all the attention from the family, with a very protective mother. They must learn to recognize one another and help to keep the clan together. His family members are all females and their offspring, and he fathers each of the babies in this troop.įor their own safety, all of the gorillas in the troop need to know each other. He’s the dominant animal in a troop of about a dozen. He uses his incredible power to defend his family against jungle threats and intruders. But does he throw his weight around? Not so much like we were about to find out. A fully grown silverback mountain gorilla’s strength can trump that of six averagely strong men. With a mass of 480 pounds of muscle, the silverback gorilla is the world’s largest living primate. He stands about as tall as an average man but weighs more than twice as much. His maturity is written in the silver fur that adorns his back, which earns him the iconic name “Silverback.” Gorillas, like humans, develop some gray hair with age. In legend, the enormous fearsome silverback was something to fear. Join me on this narrative and get to know a typical day for a dominant silverback mountain gorilla and his family. I was one of the very lucky few to spend more time with a mountain gorilla silverback leading his family through their daily activities. The enormous and fearsome patriarchal silverback sitting in his domain with a watchful eye over his family. What it’s like spending a day with a dominant male silverback mountain gorilla and his family in the montane jungles of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park on a Gorilla Habituation Experience. In this activity, tourists can spend at least four hours with researchers and rangers following a wild gorilla family through their daily chores. Rushaga is currently the only place that offers gorilla habituation experience. Why should we care? I visited a gorilla family that’s still undergoing the habituation process to make it available for tourism in the Rushaga sector found in the south of Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. We are pushing a close cousin out of existence. The consumption of ape meat is considered prestigious amongst the wealthy elite. These vulnerable creatures have lost vast expanses of land to human development, illegally harvesting the forest to feed an ever-growing population.Īlso, poachers are still trapping and killing mountain gorillas to supply high-end demand for meat in urban centers. Mountain gorillas are one of our closest living relatives, and yet they’re also among the rarest animals on Earth at the brink of extinction. I spent a day with a silverback and his family within the home range of their natural habitat, and here’s my account of my whole Gorilla Habituation Experience. These mountain giants are a fascinating primate species with primitive social structures similar to ours: no wonder their DNA is 98% identical to humans. In the misty mountain jungles of Uganda, a small East African country, roams half of the world’s mountain gorilla population.
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