GorillaSound

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Aug 11 2009 | By: gorillasound

In the last two weeks we had very nice tourists visiting Mondika. More than 20 people visited Kingo’s group; they came from USA, Argentina, Spain, France, Austria and Mexico!

Since our Director is in Uganda attending an important conference, I’m helping here at MOndika with the visits of tourists to the gorillas. Yesterday I accompanied Ana and and her boyfriend to see Kingo and Company in action. Unfortunately for them, Kingo in the last few days is spending a lot of time on the trees eating new leaves. We went out at 630, after reaching the place where we left the group the day before. While we where controlling the place we heard him vocalizing from a tree not far away from where we were. We followed his voice and we found him happily eating Ngombe leaves 30 meters height in the tree. With him in the tree there were Mekome, Emilie, Ekendi and Kusu. The tree was quite big and Kingo was moving on it quite comfortably. After an hour Kingo was still up in the tree and for most of the time was difficult to see him, because he was so high in the canopy that all the leaves and branches was impeding us to see him. Suddenly we heard the typical sound that precedes copulation. Incredulous, me and the trackers looked up and ohhh yes, it was time for sex! Kingo called and Mekome, sorry but I have to repeat, Mekome approached him and copulate with him on the tree. It was surprising for two reasons: gorilla copulations on the tree have been observed before but considered rare; secondly, Mekome did not copulate with Kingo since she had Ekendi, so for at least 4 years! As you know she proposed several times to Kingo in the last few months, but the big guy always refused. The trackers and me we were terribly excited and worried because we couldn’t see our Kingo moving so much so high on a tree!!
After less than an hour, Kingo called again and Mekome run towards him to mate again….still in the tree. Likely, Ana is a great photographer and captured this moment in a picture I will update asap. Finally, after 2 and half hours spent in the tree, Kingo decided to come down and show to the tourists how big is he! We walked with him for a little before he started to call again for sex. Mekome, who came down just after Kingo, was ready and happily approached him again. The afternoon team came after a little while. When they returned to the camp they told us that Kingo had copulated also three times with Emilie in the afternoon. Since Mekome started again to copulate, we have four females, who will copulate with Kingo for the next months until the arrival of a new born (mostly we are waiting for Fini and Emilie babies!). Since females seem to compete for sex, the next months will be full of action!!!!