preview

Gorilla Essay

Better Essays

Introduction
Gorilla gorilla gorilla, is better known by its common name, western lowland gorilla (National Geographic Society n.d.). The western lowland gorilla is a subspecies of the Genus Gorilla, within the Suborder Haplorhini (Table 1). G. gorilla gorilla is found in Central to Western Africa in lowlands, swamps, and tropical and subtropical forests (San Diego Zoo Global 2006; World Wildlife Fund n.d.a.).
Table 1. G. gorilla gorilla Taxonomy
Suborder
Haplorhini
Infraorder
Simiiformes
Superfamily
Hominoidea
Family
Hominidae
Genus
Gorilla
Species
G. gorilla
Subspecies
G. gorilla gorilla
Source: Primate Info Net (Cawthon Lang 2005)
Western lowland gorillas are sexually dimorphic with the male gorillas being about 2 times as large as female gorillas (San Diego Zoo Global 2006). Male gorillas are 400–500 pounds, on average, and female gorillas are only 159–216 pounds (Cawthon Lang 2005). The males also are taller than the females when standing bipedally, at around 1700 millimeters (~5 '5") on average, 200 millimeters more than their female counterparts (Cawthon Lang 2005). Gorillas’ arms are longer than their legs, which helps with their knuckle-walking (Saint Louis Zoo n.d.). The habitual mode of locomotion for gorillas is primarily knuckle-walking (Cawthon Lang 2005), but they can walk bipedally for a short amount of time (Saint Louis Zoo n.d.). Western lowland gorillas differ from other gorilla subspecies in that they have brownish (rather than black) fur (World Wildlife

Get Access