Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

What you have here, is a male Western Lowland Gorilla, Gorilla gorilla gorilla! Why so many gorillas? To emphasize its gorilla-ness! This is surely a lot of gorilla. Actually the scientific name means: genus 'Gorilla', species 'gorilla', and also subspecies 'gorilla'. So this is the typical gorilla, the first named, and currently also the most widespread. There is another species of gorilla, the Eastern Gorilla, Gorilla beringei, of which there are two subspecies, the Eastern Lowland Gorilla and the Mountain Gorilla. There is also another subspecies of Western Gorilla, namely the Cross River Gorilla. The western gorillas differ from the eastern species in being a bit browner, especially about the head and neck. They're also not as shaggy-haired as the mountain gorillas, and not quite as big. Gorillas in general are the largest primates – at least the males are, and on average. The heaviest-ever human was much heavier than any wild gorilla, but the average male gorilla is about 180 kg/400 lbs in weight whereas the average male American (a country with quite large people) is, these days, about 86 kg/190 lbs. Here in Africa, the average man is probably closer to 65 kg/145 lbs. By comparison, the largest male gorillas can weigh 270 kg/600 lbs. Female gorillas are much smaller, being about 70-115 kg/155-250 lbs.

Gorillas don't stand as tall as humans do, having much shorter legs, but they have immense torsos. They also have huge heads and very thick necks. The 'bump' rising at the top of the male gorilla's head, is jaw muscle tissue supported by a crest on his skull, helping him to chew the tough plants that constitute his main food. Why doesn't the female also have such powerful jaw muscles, seeing as she eats the same food? It's because she eats less such food, being much smaller. The male has to eat more than twice the amount of food the female does, to nourish his vast bulk. A lot of that food is stored in the huge pot-belly of the male. He may look fat, but actually isn't … it's all intestinal mass needed for food digestion.

I've been fascinated by gorillas for just about all of my life! When I was a small child living in Pretoria, two things impressed me: first, a beautiful book about gorillas I found in the library. It was one of those old books aimed at children, illustrated with beautiful, detailed, realistic paintings, the likes of which aren't made any more. Well actually, there was a book before this, a tiny little book about mammals of Africa, that I got when I was perhaps three or four years old. That book also had a lovely painted gorilla in it. But the next big thing that influenced me, was seeing the movie 'King Kong' in the late seventies. I was just a small kid so I couldn't criticize this movie, but I did note that the gorilla wasn't really realistic, and I then imagined making a movie with a much more realistic giant gorilla in it. I am sure I made a bunch of gorilla drawings at the time but none of them survive as far as I know. But ever since then, I've loved gorillas. I've also always enjoyed seeing them in the Pretoria Zoo.

Peaceful Vegetarians

Unlike Chimpanzees and also Baboons, Gorillas are entirely herbivorous. They live on leaves and juicy stems and roots, as well as fruits. They forage mostly on the ground, but the females and smaller males often climb trees as well. The western lowland gorillas like areas such as old clearings, that are starting to be overgrown, and areas where landslides have happened, because such regions are covered in a rich, low growth of herbs, many of which are their favoured food plants.

In older days gorillas were often portrayed as being ferocious. In reality they are extremely peaceful. Gorillas live in small groups, and are not strongly territorial – the range of each group typically overlaps those of neighbouring groups. These groups, based on a single dominant male and a few females and their younger offspring, move about seeking food, often encountering neighbour gorilla groups. When this happens, there is most of the time no confrontation, but mutual avoidance – they simply stay out of each other's way. The dominant male will advertise his presence by a series of booming hoots, and rapid chest-beating. He also gives alarm calls: barks, roars and screams. Compared to the dominant male, the females and young are very quiet, only uttering subdued grunts, burping sounds and whines.

Dominant males sometimes challenge each other. They will start by roaring and beating their chests, also flailing at surrounding vegetation and making mock-charges at each other. They may do the same sort of displays when disturbed by humans, or by potential predators. While this can be very frightening, such displays rarely lead to actual physical attacks. Gorillas prefer to bluff, and for nobody to get hurt.

Even so, an adult male gorilla is incredibly strong, and can protect the females and youngsters against the largest rainforest predators – leopards and golden cats. This is what allows this slow-moving, mostly terrestrial ape to survive in the forest. Gorillas grow and mature fairly slowly, like humans, and can live to the age of 50 or 60.

Unfortunately it's not so easy for gorillas to face the new threat that's coming into the rainforest more and more often – people armed with firearms. Human populations are growing around the equatorial rainforest belt. A lot of the rainforest has already been logged; some has been taken over by cultivation. Gorillas, with less forest to forage in, sometimes raid farms, and people shoot them in retaliation. But gorillas are also often killed for food! They're a part of the unregulated 'bushmeat' trade, where human hunters kill anything they can find in the forest and then sell the meat in small markets and even in some restaurants. As a result of this habitat destruction and human persecution, the western lowland gorilla is now endangered, despite being the most widespread subspecies. There are many of them in zoos all over the world, and there are captive breeding programmes to increase their numbers, but most crucially they need protection and the conservation of their habitat in the wild.

Gorilla Intelligence

Gorillas are clearly very intelligent. They may not be quite as intelligent as chimpanzees, but that's debatable. Chimps are more aggressive, and often hunt for meat. They cooperate when hunting, and use strategy. They even make war! Sometimes one band of chimps will try to take over the territory of another, and in such 'warfare' they also use considerable strategy and clever tactics. They use tools in the wild: they can use sticks to probe into termite nests, and use tree branches or rocks as weapons. So far, such tool use has not yet been seen in the docile gorillas. But tool use is not everything. There are birds and even some invertebrates (octopuses) that use tools … they too are intelligent, but it would be strange if they were more intelligent than gorillas.

One of the most communicative primates ever, is the female gorilla Koko, who learnt to 'speak' using sign language. Still there are some people who refuse to acknowledge this as 'real' speech, saying the gorilla is just repeating signs she'd been shown, with little awareness of the actual meaning of the words or of grammar – the 'monkey see monkey do' theory. This is somewhat demeaning, but it's still a big obstacle we need to overcome in science to clearly prove and demonstrate language skills in gorillas and other primates. At the same time, we need to start thinking beyond the idea of 'exclusive signs of intelligence' … where we continue to set higher standards that other living beings need to measure up to before we consider them 'intelligent'. There are many kinds of intelligence, and just about any wild animal needs lots of its own kind of intelligence to survive and flourish in a very complex environment filled with other beings and many threats and opportunities. And is intelligence alone everything? Do we humans only value those among us who are intelligent? Indeed, humans should be respected, regardless of whether they are hugely intelligent, and the super-smart ones among us can't claim to matter more ... so why do we insist that animals are worth less than humans because of not being 'intelligent' as we define the term? That is merely self-serving and self-glorifying. In the end: gorillas are indeed very intelligent, but that alone is not why they are worth conserving and deserving their place on this planet. They deserve that simply because they are there!

Colours of Wildlife Archive

Willem

18.07.16 Front Page

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