The Insane Biology of: The Gorilla

For as long as humans have existed, there has been an impenetrable barrier between us and the rest of the animal kingdom, a barrier of understanding and connection, the original language barrier, we have made some progress with animals like dogs, who can understand simple commands and currently There is a massive effort to translate whale language into hours, a topic we will talk more about in a future video, but when it comes to sitting face to face with an animal and chatting about thoughts, feelings and emotions, we have never surpassed the gap. The closest we could have ever been was with Coco, the western lowland

gorilla

, as an ambassador for her critically endangered species.

Born at the San Francisco Zoo, Coco was known worldwide for her love of cats, her friendship with Robin Williams, and her incredible ability to communicate through American Sign Language. In 1971, Coco was rejected by her mother and became seriously ill. Stanford University graduate student Francine Patterson soon took her in to care for her and taught her sign language as part of her doctoral work in developmental psychology. After decades of work, Coco developed a vocabulary of over a thousand words. Coco could reason about the world, communicate her needs, and even make other beings sad. She gave us a glimpse of what great apes might be capable of, while Gorillas are not our closest living relatives, we share about 98% of our DNA with them and even though our brains are larger and more complex,

gorilla

s are incredibly intelligent, but if you encountered a gorilla in the wild, your first thought It probably wouldn't be how nuanced and intelligent they are, but rather you'd probably be telling yourself that you've had a good run while your life flashed before your eyes.

Gorillas are not necessarily aggressive towards humans, but you certainly won't want to stick around to find out because gorillas are absolutely gigantic and monstrously strong, they are one of the most impressive. examples of notable intelligence encounters Incredible strength in the animal kingdom Gorillas are the largest of the great apes and live in Equatorial Africa. There are two species, the eastern and western gorillas, which are separated by about 560 miles or 900 kilometers of Congo Basin forest, each species has a lowland and highland subspecies, they live in family groups of usually five to ten, but sometimes as few as two and as many as 50.

Gorillas are also defined by profound sexual dimorphism with smaller females and large males, these giant males leading the pack. family groups and maintain the position of Authority for years, they are known as silverbacks due to the saddle of gray or silver hair on their lower back and these adult males are extremely strong, an average silverback gorilla can weigh up to 180 kilograms and can easily lift more than 450 kilograms, two and a half times his body weight. Average humans, on the other hand, would struggle to lift just one body weight, but the strongest gorillas can lift much more than that.

It is estimated that a gorilla can lift 815 kilograms 4.5 times. Their body weight, the human deadlift record is 501 kilograms, 3.3 times their body weight, so even taking size into account, gorillas are much stronger than humans and this despite the fact that we have a similar muscle mass-to-weight ratio, which is approximately 38 for humans and gorillas. The males, then, what are the gorillas like that are much stronger? One reason is that gorillas' incredible weight is supported by denser bones that are more resistant to fractures and breaks. Bones are made up of three different types of tissue, each of which performs a different function at the ends. subchondral tissue that is smooth to provide frictionless movement the hard outer layer is made of compact tissue that is strong and able to resist fractures and the interior is spongy or trabecular tissue that is spongy and porous to allow flexibility compared to human gorillas spongy tissue has a higher density, making it stronger, in addition to its bone composition allowing for its additional strength, its bone structure also does, like other great apes, gorillas have straight, continuous superciliary arches that protrude of their eyes and the males have something called sagittal.

Crest, which is a bony ridge on the top of the skull. These pronounced bones provide a more extensive muscle attachment area that helps support the weaker bones of the skull and reduces stress when chewing hard foods like sticks, but the most surprising thing about a gorilla's strength is that they basically don't eat meat at all. absolute to get this yoke. Gorillas are omnivores, but their diet consists mainly of plant matter, such as stems, bamboo shoots, and fruits. The only limited amount of animals they consume are insects such as ants or termites. digest and absorb nutrients from such a fibrous food source.

Gorillas are equipped with an extra long intestine and their hindgut, which consists of the cecum and colon, makes up about half of their total intestinal volume compared to only 20 percent in humans, if ever. . I wondered why gorillas have a big belly, that is why every day they eat around 18 kilograms of food and much of this weight is made up of the cellulose compound, this is the fibrous molecule that gives plants their structure and rigidity and, surprisingly, this is the secret ingredient of gorillas. It used to get so muscular, this is surprising because cellulose itself is made of many sugar molecules swapped together, it doesn't contain protein, humans can't even digest cellulose, it just passes through us and technically gorillas can't either.

What gorillas have that we don't have is a microbiome of bacteria that easily break down cellulose producing digestible sugars and volatile fatty acids. These fatty acids are then absorbed by the gorilla and used for energy and to synthesize complex molecules such as proteins, so it is the bacteria in their gut that provide them with the protein they need. This is a process known as hindgut fermentation and is similar to how horses and cows digest their food and with all this force. When the bouncers decide to start throwing punches, things can get ugly. When two groups encounter leaders, silverbacks can sometimes engage in a fight to the death, primarily using their sharp canines to cause deep wounds.

Gorillas have a bite force 9 megapascals stronger than a grizzly bear or spotted hyena, but fortunately extreme aggression is rare in stable groups of gorillas; in fact, these groups are socially collaborative and extremely complex. Western lowland gorillas have to travel to find adequate food. Their day begins at dawn and they head to the forest led by a male silverback who eat as they walk and, if they find a fruit tree, they climb its branches to reach the fruit. Once they finish the day, they demonstrate remarkable behavior, each gorilla builds a nest on the ground and sleeps there at night apparently this seems like tool use but not all scientists agree on understanding more about guerrilla behavior and social structures.

I spoke with Dr. Robin Morrison, a postdoctoral researcher at the Diane Fosse Gorilla Fund. The Nest is one of the most complex tools you use. It's really important, but it's not classic. It's been called a tool, but gorillas build a nest every day and you can see the little ones will try to do it, they're learning and it'll be a little messy and it won't be as good, so there's a real kind of skill involved in it. construction of these nests and they are quite comfortable, while nest building by gorillas might be considered tool use rather than animal architecture in other contexts, wild gorillas rarely see tool use, especially compared to other ape species such as chimpanzees. and bonobos, in fact, because gorillas live in what some scientists have called the great salad bowl, where their favorite foods abound.

It was long thought that gorillas did not use tools other than nests in the wild, until 2005. At an observation site in northern Congo, scientists watched as a female gorilla used a walking stick to test the depth of water in front of her. at her while she waded into a pool and another female from a different group used a large branch to balance herself while searching for food. she aquatic plants and then used it as a bridge to help her cross a swampy terrain. More recently, in 2013, researchers observed a mother gorilla sitting in a bamboo thicket holding a bamboo pole while her baby on the ground climbed to reach it.

These researchers suggested that unlike other ape species, gorillas primarily use tools to overcome physical obstacles rather than acquire food, so gorillas appear to use tools and use them very skillfully and in captivity this has been observed even more broadly. Studies have shown their ability to use sticks to extract food from various devices, and researchers have documented spontaneous use of sticks to obtain food in places out of reach. Infant gorillas learn tool use, nest building, and other behaviors by observing and imitating others in the group, particularly their mothers. In fact, family groups are closely knit and spend their afternoons grazing, playing and resting together and one of the most important factors in the bond and success of this group is the group leader, the male Silverback.

This was exemplified by a study conducted to investigate how young gorillas fared if their mothers died early in their lives. They expected that young gorillas would do worse in life if they lost their mother but, to their surprise, this was not the case. If the babies were no longer dependent on their mother's milk they did well, we believe that this is mainly because dominant males worry a lot, which is also a bit unusual for primates, so they take on a lot of responsibilities. be careful and they will have small collisions with all the little gorillas that run around them or climb. about them, um and especially if there are gorillas that have lost their mothers, then they are very affectionate with them and they can share their nest with them at night or they can carry them when they have to move a long way and we I have found that, actually , females prefer males that are much more affectionate with young gorillas, so it could actually be a kind of sexual selection, it could be these females that choose these males that are kind to the young because that helps them reproduce further.

Also, part of the social glue that keeps gorillas so tightly bound is the communication they have with each other. They do this through a variety of methods including facial expressions such as the play face indicating that they want to play or well-known gestures such as the chest thump as a sign of aggression. Dr. Joanne Tanner, Coco's former volunteer companion, studied the gestures made by gorillas at the San Francisco Zoo. She categorized what she observed as a tactile, visual, audible, or iconic gesture. it may be unique to a group or even just to an individual. She also found that most of the time the gorillas used multiple gestures in a sequence similar to a phrase or sentence and also displayed back-and-forth communication, like a dialogue based on what she saw. she hypothesized that gestures are an efficient way to foster social relationships, they improved social interaction and even possibly improved reproductive success and gorillas are also extremely vocal, there is quite a wide range of vocalizations, especially with the gorillas that we study, we know The context in which they are used very often, when we enter the group, we make these kinds of grunts that we think are at least quite reassuring, as just telling the bouncers where we are and that they are not very friendly. -threatening sounds and sometimes these vocalizations sound quite familiar.

One of my personal favorites is that gorillas often hum when they eat and we think it might be foods they particularly like, we may not know everything the gorillas are trying to say. but sometimes it's easy to make a pretty good guess, but what else could gorillas be capable of? Some researchers think that gorillas' communication skills don't end there and that they can also talk to us using our own language motivated by pioneering work. from psychologists Alan and Beatrix Gardner, who taught American Sign Language to a chimpanzee. Graduate researcher Francine Patterson began teaching Coco the gorilla American Sign Language in 1972.

She did it the same way a child would be taught, modeling the sign and its meaning and molding her hands in orientation and correct movement andIn just a few weeks, Coco began learning to sign, learning new signs at about the same rate as a human child, and over the course of her life, Coco spontaneously and accurately used 1,100 signs at least once and more. 300 signs at least half the days of a month observed by two independent researchers her vocabulary varied from basic words like food and more to emotions like love and forgiveness to concepts like unpleasant and fake there were some signs that Coco herself modified she did this because from a limitation of gorilla anatomy, such as having shorter thumbs relative to the index finger than humans or because naturally modulating it by making it larger or faster expressed a different emphasis or meaning, he also combined signs to represent a word whose sign did not. knew.

For example, she composed eye and hat as a mask and glue and metal as a magnet and Coco conveyed much more than just her wants and needs. She also communicated her feelings and revealed an empathy for other creatures, which was particularly exemplified by her love for kittens after repeatedly asking. For one thing, she was given a kitten that she called Ball, often cradling him in his arms as if he were a baby. Later, the cat unfortunately died in an accident when he found out about it. Coco signed, cried, frowned, sad and Beyond an apparent emotional intelligence, Coco also appeared. having the ability to lie, which for scientists was something really important.

One day she sat on the kitchen sink and pulled it off the wall when asked who had done it. She pointed to a staff member who weighed 40 kilograms of cocoa and blamed her. Scientists thought they had finally found a way for an animal to communicate its own inner self, its own thoughts, feelings and emotions, that the barrier had finally been broken. Many have questioned whether Coco was really speaking through sign language. or simply imitating signs as a means of obtaining a reward that was doing nothing more notable than what a dog does when told to sit or stay that the hand symbols he learned were empty signifiers that he learned to rebuild to get what she wanted it's not like she really knew what they meant maybe she was articulate enough for us to project our own ideas of what we thought she might be saying some say Coco's sign language has been totally debunked but still completely maintained by others, the debate has been going on for 30 years but I personally feel the real truth lies somewhere in between, maybe Coco isn't using language exactly the way we do and such Maybe we can't call it exactly. language, but to people who spent decades with Coco it was clear that she had a level of empathy and understanding that is difficult to refute, that she used phrases in unique ways and used them to articulately ask the things she needed and cared deeply about.

To the people around her, she seemed to make jokes and even laugh at them and Coco's legacy is still going on. The Gorilla Foundation is currently digitizing and analyzing thousands of hours of video footage to allow others to develop their research. Communication between species is a tool. which allows us to understand the minds of gorillas in a way that leads to better conditions for them in captivity, greater empathy for them in the wild, where they are critically endangered, and a greater understanding of the extraordinary emotional and intellectual capabilities of our fellow great apes. and maybe instead of forcing Coco to communicate in a way that was foreign to her species, we could have learned more by learning her language, maybe there is more to the grunts and gestures than we realize, today's scientists are meticulously studying the communication of wild primates. understand what they might be saying because who knows what they can teach us if we take the time to understand the world, it becomes much richer and more exciting the more we understand it, from interpreting the communication of other species to learning more about them until dissection. genomes to trace our evolutionary history to modeling neurons with computers to unlock the mysteries of the brain we are finally accessing a realm of knowledge that was never available to us before incredible things happen where

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