Gorilla
(Gorilla gorilla)

Largest of the living primates, gorillas inhabit forests in central and western Africa. Their range is now very restricted because of agricultural deforestation. The mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei) is a subspecies that lives high on the mountain slopes in the eastern Congo and adjacent Uganda.

Weighing as much as four hundred and fifty pounds (six hundred and fifty pounds in captivity), and measuring nearly six feet in height, the big, older, silver-backed males dominate the family group that is the basis of gorilla society. This family group, with several younger and smaller males and adult females and their young, numbers sixteen on average and wanders about a home range of ten to fifteen square miles. They are not territorial, and encounters with other gorilla families are peaceful.

Gorillas are diurnal, and spend the day slowly moving through the dense vegetation, feeding on leaves, bark, stems, and fruit of more than one hundred plants. They get all the water they need from their moist food, and have never been seen to drink in the wild. At night the females and young build twig nests low in trees and sleep there. The heavier males sleep on the ground. A single baby is born to females after an eight and a half month gestation period. Although they can eat some solid food at two and a half months, the babies are nursed for one and a half years and reach sexual maturity at six to seven years (females) or nine to ten years (males). In captivity gorillas have lived thirty-eight years.

Group Environment
Kivu Volcanos, Zaire

From this mountainside can be seen three major volcanos of the Kivu range: (left to right) Nyiragongo, Nyamlagira, and Mikeno. Carl Akeley, who conceived this hall and collected and mounted these gorillas, lies buried on mount Mikeno, near the scene shown here.

1. Cusso tree, Brayera anthelmintica, with pinnate leaves not unlike those of our mountain ash, belongs to the Groves family. This species, which belongs to a genus of its own, is confined to Ethiopia and the Upper Nileland. Supposedly, they can be used as a medicine to kill worms.
2. Pendant bedstraw Galium spurium of the Matter family can also be seen in Europe. Its stems are rooted in the mossy soil which has accumulated on large branches.
3. Usnea, a beard lichen, is one of many lichen species belonging to a group dispersed all over the world. All soak up water like sponges in wet weather, but in dry weather they crumble to pieces if touched.
4. Polypodium spp., a pendant fern related to the Lineare group. It is probably closely allied to P. excavatum, which has the sori, or spore cases, set at the bottom of small depressions in the undersides of the fronds.
5. Anthriscus sylvestris, a wild chervil, does not differ greatly from the chervil of herb gardens. This species occurs in the open woods on the slopes of the Kivu mountains, between seven and ten thousand feet elevation.
6. Rumeps nepolensis, a species of dock, differs remarkably in appearance from our native dock plants. Its range extends from the Himalaya mountains to Cameroons and the Cape of Good Hope. It grows at elevations of seven thousand to ten thousand feet.
7. Ruwenzori blackberry, Rubus ruwenssori, is one of a group of mountain blackberries with rose colored flowers. It occurs at elevations of nine thousand to twelve thousand feet. A somewhat similar species grows in the Andes Mountains.
8. Tutsan tree, hypericun lanceolatum, is among the shrubby plants known as St. John's wort. It ranges from central African mountains west to the Cameroons, and south to Mozambique and Madagascar.
9. Funisciurus carruthersi, a squirrel of greenish brown color, is rare and found only in the mountains.