It is now the middle of the dry season and is a period of low fruit availability in the forest.
Kingo’s group is spending a lot of time in the ebuka thickets eating terrestrial herbaceous vegetation. Its really hot and it seems
to be making the gorillas grumpy. Anyway I was following Mekome. To back track slightly a few days before Mekome and Ekendi must have
slept in a place where elephants had been because they were completely covered in ticks. Poor Ekendi had hundreds round his eyes. So all
the past week every so often Mekome would sit down in front of Ekendi and pull ticks off him. The ones around his eyes must be really
painful because he starts whimpering and then she will actually hold him down to stop him wriggling away. So I’m following Mekome
with Mbolo and we’re moving through the ebuka when I accidently whacked my head on a gau tree. Gau is a really thick liana vine
which is completely covered with 2cm long spines. The gorillas eat the pith, and it is also cooked and eaten by Bantu people. After
whacking my head I looked like a porcupine and man it hurt. Of course I couldn’t see all the spines so I had to get Mbolo to pick
them out for me. It must have looked odd with Mekome pulling ticks off Ekendi and Mbolo pulling gau spines out of my head – a mixed
species grooming session!
Ok that title is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is what I thought had happened the other day. I had just finished following Mama and
was starting to work with Kingo. Roberta was off following Mekome. Kingo was calmly feeding when off in the distance we could hear
females start to pig grunt at one another. The grunting got louder and louder. Kingo rushed off to investigate. We were following
behind, but he can move a lot quicker through the ebuka than we can so he was quickly out of sight. The grunting was still getting
louder and louder and Kingo was joining in. Suddenly there was screaming. I’ve heard females screaming before but this time the
screaming sounded an awful lot like Roberta screaming ‘hey hey hey’ so I freaked out thinking oh no, she’s gotten stuck in
the middle of a female conflict and some one just bit her on the leg!
We arrive on the scene and there is no Roberta. Ugly is moving rapidly away, Mama is cowering on the ground next to Kingo and he is
calmly eating leaves off a branch. Mbolo, who was my tracker, explained what happened. Ugly had the branch and Mama was trying to get it
off her. Ugly gave up the branch to Mama but Kingo had come to check out the fight and he wanted the branch so took it off Mama and that
was the screaming! So Kingo won that conflict and now I know that Mama can scream just like a human!
Two amusing stories from the forest. All the group was close together and Emilie climbed a manjombe
tree and was eating the leaves. At some point she dropped a branch that still had lots of leaves on it. Ekendi sees the branch and
rushes over to pick it up. Mekome is sitting nearby and she decides that actually, no, she wants the branch. Ekendi was moving past her
at the time so she grabs him by the shoulders, sits on him, then takes the branch off him. She stays in the same place and begins to
feed as Ekendi wriggles out from under her and sits there staring at Mekome with a hurt expression on his face.
At the end of the day the group was all resting in the ebuka thickets. These thickets are really
dense and spiny but there are paths through them. I guess these paths are formed by elephants and other animals. Anyway there isn’t
always a lot of room which can be interesting when you’re following a gorilla and they decide to turn around and come back the other
way. Once two trackers and I had to try and squash into a teeny tiny gap that not even one person could comfortably fit into when Kingo
suddenly decided he had to turn round and go back the other way. Anyway Mama and Kusu were resting on the ground on one of the paths.
Kingo was resting further along. Then Kingo decided he wanted to go somewhere else so walks right up to where Mama is resting and stays
there staring at her. She stares at him. He vocalizes at her. She vocalizes back. (made up translation: ‘Move’ ‘No, you
move’). He vocalizes again. She vocalizes back. (’Move’ ‘No way buddy, I’m resting’)They remain staring at each
other. I imagine lying on your back staring up at Kingo is quite scary but Mama was not budging one inch. This stand off continues for a
few more rounds of vocalizations. I was fully expecting Kingo to walk straight over Mama, but it didn’t happen. In the end Kingo
moved past Mama on one side of her so he could get past. Good relationships are all about negotiating!
Obviously following gorillas in the forest doesn’t lead to great fashion statements. All your clothes get covered in liana sap which stains brown or black, and you end up getting caught up on the spines and lianas. The big choice is usually whether to wear sandals or boots. Boots offer more protection but aren’t so great in the swamp, so if the group is close to the swamp, or my boots are drying out from a previously miscalculated day where I had to wear them in the swamp, I’ll go with sandals. I wear socks with them (I know that its super uncool) but it gives the ants something to bite that isn’t your foot. Usually I have grey socks but the other day I was having a laundry crisis so I pulled out a pair of highlighter orange, green and pink ones.
And wow. Kusu and Ekendi went mad. They spent all morning mock charging me trying to get a better look at my feet. Kusu climbed down from a tree and spent about 2 minutes just staring at my feet. Even Mekome walked past and was checking them out! I’m just glad Kingo didn’t decide to take an interest in my bright multi coloured feet!
On the 17th of November Kingo and his group had a morning of encounters. We were working with them in the morning and were walking to where we’d left them the night before. We hadn’t got there yet when the trackers saw traces of the group along the trail. Soon the trackers were worried because the group was running. Mbolo showed us a little patch of roughed up dirt that was under a leaf “Look look” he said “See how fast they were running”. So we started following their traces. According to the trackers something must have happened at about 4.30 in the morning (we were guessing an encounter with another male) and the group started running. They could tell due to the state of the dung along the trail. The group was running and running in a loop towards the swamp. At one point they suddenly changed direction and there was a knee print from where Kingo tripped. By now we were all getting worried, but the trackers told us they could see traces of the females and of Kusu and Ekendi so it seemed the group was all there. The trackers started moving faster and faster trying to catch up with the group. When they start moving really fast they dodge and weave and duck through all the lianas. Roberta and I weren’t so lucky and at one point we had to crawl along the ground on our hands and knees to keep up!
We finally reached the swamp and could hear Kingo vocalizing. By this time it was ten o’clock and we’d been following their traces since about 6.45. We got close to Kingo and saw that he had quite a deep cut on his left eyebrow, but apart from that he seemed fine. But where was everyone else? We found Kusu and Ekendi sleeping close to Kingo and Mama was feeding about 30m away. Mbolo went back to camp to tell the afternoon team where we were, Kamo and I stayed with Kingo and Roberta and Dona went to find and check all the other females. Luckily all the females were there and fine. Kenga, Ugly’s 10 month old offspring was also fine. That was a relief because it has been reported in Mountain gorillas that when solitary males encounter groups they will try and kill the dependent offspring of the females in the hopes the females will then leave the group and go with the male. In Lowland gorillas infanticide hasn’t been directly observed but at Mbeli bai a female was seen carrying the shredded remains of an infant after she transferred groups.
Kingo eventually started moving out of the swamp with Kusu and Ekendi travelling close to him. That was when Kamo and I noticed that Kusu was limping. He had a large cut on his left foot about 5cm long. It looked like a bite wound. It seems that during the encounter Kusu must have somehow gotten involved and the other male bit him! Now his foot is all healed but for about a week he was limping and when he climbed he was climbing slowly slowly and not putting any weight on his foot.
The group went into the ebuka thickets and then Mbolo came back with the afternoon team. He told us that on the way back he’d found traces of another group close to where Kingo had made the odd detour and there was the knee print. So on the way back to camp we went to look at the traces. When the trackers found the traces they started acting out for us what must have happened. Kingo was here and saw the other group, he broke off these branches here in a display and then he turned up this trail, this was where the knee print was.
So two encounters in one morning, one with what was probably a solitary male and involved physical contact, and one with a group of gorillas which involved displays. No wonder they spent most of the next day sleeping!
Too bad! The day after we saw Fini holding her baby, we went in the forest ready to get a better view to the 10th member of Kingo’s
group, but things went differently, unfortunately!
When we contacted the group, all members were feeding up in a tree. As we arrived, first Fini followed by Kingo, and then Mama and
Mekome climbed down. Fini went to check something on the ground, close to the tree. It was the body of the little infant! Kingo went in
the same direction and when all females started to cough grunt to each other, Kingo run in the middle and the squabble stopped. When
Fini went close Kingo charged her away. Then, he stayed close to the baby, looking at him, touching with his big finger and then
smelling the odor left on it. It stayed there for 10 minutes. Suddenly run away to seat at three meters and stayed there for a while.
The little Ekendi and Kusu went few times to look closer but every time Mama or Mekome cough grunted at them and they stopped. It was
really sad but at the same time extremely interesting to see how death is lived by our close relatives. All group members stayed silent
without eating within 5 meters from the little body. After 30-40 minutes also Emilie came down and passing by looked at the infant
several times. When she approached closer, Kingo came closer and Emilie scared went away to seat close to Mekome and Fini at about 5
meters. KIngo looked and smelled at it for the last time before he turned his back and vocalizing started to travel toward west. The
group went feeding close by on a ngulma tree. They spent the entire morning in the same area, only in the afternoon they started to
travel further away.
When we could see the body, it was already covered by flies. With the intervention of WCS and Global Health same samples have been
collected in order to investigate the cause of the death. We will keep you informed. Our idea is that the infant was already dead when
we saw in the swamp. The mother was always holding it and one of the trackers saw his legs hanging and not grabbing the mother at all.
Infant mortality is very high, not just in gorillas but also in humans living the area. To cite our experienced Vet and director of WCS
Congo Global Health Program, Trish: “The majority of newborn death is attributed to birth defects (21%). This can include
congenital malformations, deformations, and chromosomal abnormalities. After that we think of complications associated with the mother
(not lactating for example, trauma during birth, infections or a difficult or prolonged birth, premature birth, an infection that the
mother may have had during or birth or pregnancy). Also we have to think about maternal neglect and infanticide (killing her baby) as
possibilities…”
Yesterday I was following Kingo with Mamandele. Kingo was calmly eating and Kusu was sitting about 10m from Kingo and 10m from us. Kusu was sitting on a tree root that came out over the path so he could see right down the path. We were also sitting on the path but behind Kusu. Suddenly Kusu looks very hard at something down the path. Then he rushes back and climbs a small tree. He is about 3m up and still staring very intently up the path. As soon as he does this Kingo leaps up (he was sitting down) and starts staring in the same direction as Kusu. Mamandele also starts staring down the path trying to see what it is that they have seen. Everyone stays like that for what seems like a very long time, although it is probably only one minute. Then Kingo runs away! He ran back about 10m and remains very alert, turning his head as if he is listening for something. Kusu climbs down the tree and runs to be behind Kingo. I look at Mamandele who is still looking down the path. I ask him what it was, but he says that he doesn’t know, but it wasn’t an elephant or a leopard. Kingo sits down but is still very alert. Kusu comes and sits very close to Kingo and every so often reaches out to touch Kingo’s back.
Mamandele told me that Kusu probably saw an antelope and became scared and that made Kingo become very alert.That makes sense to me. I spent one year working at Mbeli Bai and sometimes the sitatungas (swamp antelopes) would “scare” the younger gorillas, normally by coming to close. Sometimes the silverbacks would then display towards the sitatunga, but sometimes the fear of the younger gorillas would set off the whole group and they would all run away.
Beautiful! Yes, it’s just beautiful when you go in the forest and something so exceptional happens. We were going to the swamp while Kete and I saw, for just few seconds, Fini traveling away from us. We both looked at each other afterwards saying: “I need to look better, but I.. did you..? Yes , let’s control before say anything!” We looked again and we saw her walking on three limbs, one was keeping something on her chest/belly. Following Fini is not easy and we didn’t want to stress the mum too much today. We waited and we saw her again in the swamp climbing down a tree; she had a baby! This time also Julia and Mkpeta saw her, she was hiding up in the tree and sceamed when we tried to come closer!
We asked to the trackers that followed the group the day before more information about her and they told us saw her the last time at 16:00 but without any infant. Thus, she should have given birth during the night or early morning. We didn’t pass through their nest this morning so we are not sure (27-28 November 2009).
As I mentioned in a previous blog posting, Ekendi is trying to stand up to Kusu, however he can’t just win. I was following Kingo and Kusu and Ekendi were close by. Kingo was sitting with his back up against a small sapling while Kusu and Ekendi were rough and tumble playing. Its funny when they play as they will suddenly stop for a few moments before starting again. During these stop periods they might grab something to eat or just stare up at the sky and suddenly they’re off again.
During one ‘stop’ Ekendi found a termite nest. It was the kind that is in the ground, not attached to a tree. So he dug it up and began to eat the termites. Unfortunately for him, Kusu saw that he had it. Kusu starts moving towards Ekendi. Ekendi realises that this is going to end badly for him so starts trying to move further and further away from Kusu. He has the nest in one hand and keeps looking over his shoulder towards Kusu so he already has quite a lot on his mind. From where I am I can see that everything is about to get a whole lot worse for Ekendi as he’s moving towards Kingo.
So once Ekendi is about 10m from Kingo, Kingo suddenly gets up and starts moving towards Ekendi because he wants the nest as well. Poor Ekendi now has competition from both sides. So Ekendi tries to run away from them both still carrying the nest. Since Kingo is so much bigger it pretty much looked like he was chasing both Kusu and Ekendi, I’m not sure if Kusu thought he was so much still chasing Ekendi as trying to get out of Kingo’s way! Ekendi ran round a huge tree and thinking he had successfully gotten away from Kingo sat down and began to eat. It may have been a case of ‘I can’t see you, therefore you can’t see me’ but of course Kingo just keeps going round the tree until he catches up with Ekendi. From where I was I see Kingo’s head pop round the side of the tree and he doesn’t even need to be aggressive, Ekendi sees Kingo, drops the nest and moves away. And then Kusu sneaks around from the other side of the tree and sneakily gets a bit of the nest that Kingo dropped.
The other day Kingo was in the swamp. We were going to follow Kingo in the afternoon. Every morning three trackers go out to make contact with Kingo and once the group is found one of the trackers comes back to camp. When Kamo came back to camp he told us he’d left the group at 10 well in the swamp. By the time we got to the swamp round 11.30 Kingo had already left. So we followed the path the trackers had left for us. And followed the path and followed the path and followed the path! It took an additional hour of very fast walking to catch up to where Kingo was resting. They’d left the swamp and had been travelling really fast to cover that amount of distance in two hours. When we arrived Kingo was sleeping. But he didn’t stay sleeping for long. Within the first ten minutes he was up and moving again. And this was a gorilla on a mission! He was really determined to get someplace and was going fast. Then we heard a male do a hoot series and a chest beat from the direction of the swamp. Oh so that’s why Kingo was so determined to put a lot of distance between his females and the swamp, there was a male there!
However hearing the male seemed to change Kingo’s mind and he had a different agenda. All his females were close to him and far away from the male so he decided to go back and challenge the male. This involved him practically running all the way back to the swamp. I was trying to keep up with him and my tracker, who were both moving really quickly, and watch and record all his behaviour. Not always easy and I nearly tripped on lianas lots of times. Anyway to follow Kingo during an interaction is impressive. He would respond to the hoot series and chest beats of the male with a hoot series and a chest beat of his own, or he would do other displays. The most impressive one is where he runs towards a tree, leaps up and breaks off a branch by grabbing it with both hands and then slapping the ground as he comes down so it goes crack! Boom! And seeing Kingo run (when he isn’t running towards you which then becomes very scary) is amazing. It is difficult to describe but it looks like the slow motion running of a lion when it is chasing its prey.
So after a lot of running, chest beats and breaking branches, Kingo suddenly stops. All his arm hair is puffed up, his lips are pressed to together and he is looking to the side. These are all signs of a very angry male gorilla. He was also quite stinky. Normally Kingo smells anyway. He has this quite distinctive odour which is a bit like apples crossed with grass clippings. When he gets mad it becomes stronger and more acrid and really makes the inside of your nose curl up. Anyway the other male is about 20m away from him but in a thicket so we can see movement but I never got a good look at the actual gorilla. Kingo does a chest beat, slaps the ground with both hands and then does a stiff armed charge towards the other male. There’s a lot of movement in the thicket and it looks like Kingo has won, the other male has left!!
Now that Kingo scared off the other male he had to go all the way back to his females to make sure they are still there so we had to practically run all the way back! And then he kept his group moving for most of the rest of the afternoon. Needless to say I was exhausted by the time we got back to camp!
Donations made here are
Jan 29th Stephen B USD 17.25