01 Follow fruit
Western groups track a forest that is not a Virunga meadow.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed30
Intelligence96
Range24
Resilience11
Cultural impact49
Ecological role61
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Why western gorilla as the type?
The taxonomy wiki is Western gorilla. Mountain gorillas are G. beringei, fewer, more filmed, and less CR. The atlas follows the listed type, not the movie.
Did Fossey study this type?
Karisoke watched mountain gorillas in Rwanda. The methods and the murder belong to that species; western gorillas have Mbeli Bai and different threats (Ebola, bushmeat).
What about Koko and language?
Francine Patterson project treated signs as words. Linguists remain split. The atlas files Koko as culture and a research programme, not as proof that wild western gorillas recite English.
Why the lowest resilience in the 24?
CR western gorillas plus Ebola, logging and hunt. Mountain gorilla rebound is real and is a different species card.
What is Mbeli Bai?
A forest clearing in Nouabale-Ndoki where western gorillas come for minerals -- a platform study that rarely makes a biopic.
Did Gorillas in the Mist help the type?
The 1988 film helped mountain gorilla tourism and the Fossey myth. Western lowland numbers kept falling on a different map.
IUCN: Critically Endangered
Operating a gorilla life is a loop: sense, decide, act, and stay inside an energy and legal envelope.
Steps are type-level -- hunt, migrate or spawn -- not a promise that every individual follows the same film sequence.
Principles
Energy in, work out
All-day herbivory -- fruit in western forests, more pith in some mountain diets. A CR ape is a slow calorie machine, not a hunter.
Information before motion
Close social vision and smell. Intelligence here is ranked highest among the 24 for ape social learning -- still below a marketing superlative.
Replacement rate
Slow breeders (whales, apes, albatrosses, tigers) cannot outrun a short political cycle. Fast clutch species still fail if the nest site vanishes.
Place is part of the phenotype
A gorilla without its lake, ice, anemone or gravel is a different, usually failing, animal.
Human systems are now habitat
Quotas, feeders, reserves and films rewrite survival as much as weather. Ebola, bushmeat and logging. A mountain rebound is a different species. Lowest resilience in the atlas is a CR statement.
Diagrams
Gorilla forage / hunt loop
Tracksense
Stalkmove
Killact
Guardhandle
Raiseinvest
Disperseleave
Gorilla life-cycle loop
Birthstart
Weangrow
Learnmove
Disperselearn
Breedbreed
Senescenceend
Life-cycle steps
02 Build a night nest
A new platform, not a den reused for years.
03 Silverback pace
A male holds a group; takeovers rewrite infanticide risk.
04 Wean slowly
Years of dependence -- the CR math.
05 Meet a snare or a virus
The two modern ceilings.
06 Avoid the biopic
Field hours at a bai do not look like Sigourney Weaver.
Hard limits
Physiological envelope
Ebola, bushmeat and logging. A mountain rebound is a different species. Lowest resilience in the atlas is a CR statement.
Place dependence
Without the breeding site or forage pulse, brochure behaviour is theoretical.
Human and legal limits
Quotas, listings and trade rules now bound real populations as tightly as weather.
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