World Gorilla Day is an animal awareness day celebrated on every 24th of September to celebrating gorillas and inspiring global populations to intervene for and protection of all four subspecies of gorillas (mountain gorilla, gorilla, a western lowland gorilla, and gorilla grauera).
World Gorilla Day offers people around the world the opportunity to come together to celebrate the gorilla and, more importantly, to take steps to protect gorillas in the wild.
With just around 880 left in the wild, the mighty mountain gorilla is now critically endangered. They are found in high-altitude mountain and bamboo forests, often at 4,000 m elevations, where leaves, shoots, and stems are mainly eaten.
In 2017, World Gorilla Day was established which also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI) Karisoke Research Center is celebrated. The Karisoke, founded by Dian Fossey, is the longest-running gorilla research site in Africa devoted to gorillas and their habitats conservation, protection, and study.
According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), all species of gorillas are critically endangered but there is little hope for these species.
Since 1994, one of Eastern gorilla’s two subspecies, known as Grauer’s gorilla (G. b. graueri), has declined sharply, when there were 16,900 individuals, to 3,800 in 2015. Two species of Gorilla live in central Africa, separated by a large swathe of the rainforest, and are listed on the IUCN Red List as Critically Endangered.
Facts about Gorilla
Gorillas are primarily herbivores, with bamboo, berries and leafy plants as a diet, although small insects are also eaten by the West lowland gorillas. Adult gorillas can consume as much as 30 kg of food every day.
The lifespan of a gorilla is about 35-40 years in the wild, although they sometimes live longer in captivity, often for more than 50 years. A female western gorilla at the Columbus Zoo that reached the ripe old age of 60 before dying in 2017, was the oldest gorilla ever recorded.
Gorillas are the largest primates in the world, with males in the wild weighing about 143-169 kg and standing around 1.4-1.8 m tall. Females appear to weigh about half what the males do, 20-30 cm shorter.
How big a gorilla is, is hard to measure, but estimates go from around four times to ten times stronger than the human average. The strength of a silver gorilla is certainly phenomenal.
In November 2018 , it was announced that, while conservation work continues, mountain gorillas are no longer critically endangered.
Swikriti Dandotia
