Western Lowland Gorilla

Western Lowland Gorilla
Jock (male) at Bristol Zoo, England
Conservation status
Critically Endangered (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Family:	Hominidae
Genus:	Gorilla
Species:	G. gorilla
Subspecies:	G. g. gorilla
Trinomial name
Gorilla gorilla gorilla (Savage, 1847)

The Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) is a subspecies of the Western Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) that lives in montane, primary, and secondary forests and lowland swamps in Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. It is the gorilla usually found in zoos. Adult male Gorillas are prone to cardiomyopathy, a degenerative heart disease. Babec, a Western Lowland Gorilla on exhibit at the Birmingham Zoo in Birmingham, Alabama (USA) was the first gorilla to receive an artificial pacemaker. Binti Jua, who resides at Brookfield Zoo in Illinois, saved a three year old boy who fell into her enclosure in 1996.

Behaviour

Cincinnati Zoo

They live in family groupings of one dominant male, five to seven adult females, children and adolescents, and possibly a few non-dominant males. Gorillas reproduce slowly because females do not begin reproducing until the age of nine or ten and usually only produce one baby approximately every five years.^[2]

Size

A male Western Lowland Gorilla can stand 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) tall and weigh almost 200 kg (440 lb).^[3]

Diet

The Western Lowland Gorilla eats plants (including bamboo) and occasionally insects. Males eat up to 9 kg (20 lb) a day.

Conservation

Bronx Zoo

In the 1980s, a census taken of the gorilla populations in equatorial Africa was thought to be 100,000.^[4] Researchers adjusted the figure after years of poaching and deforestation had reduced the population to approximately 50,000.^[4] Surveys conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2006 and 2007 found more than 100,000 previously unreported gorillas have been living in the swamp forests of Lake Tele Community Reserve and in neighbouring Marantaceae (dryland) forests in the Republic of the Congo.^[4] With the new discovery, the current population of Western Lowland Gorillas could be around 150,000–200,000. However, the gorilla remains vulnerable to Ebola, deforestation, and poaching.^[4]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Western Lowland Gorilla

• Western Lowland Gorilla Conservation in Gabon: Fernan-Vaz Gorilla Project
• ARKive - images and movies of the western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla)
• The Gorilla Foundation
• The Big Zoo: Western Lowland Gorilla
• Zoo.org: Western Lowland Gorilla
• Columbus Zoo and Aquarium: Western Lowland Gorilla^{[dead link]}
• Oklahoma City Zoo: Western Lowland Gorilla
• Astonishing’ gorilla discovery in Republic of Congo

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