GorillaSound

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 16 2009 | By: gorillasound

Kingo is usually my focal gorilla, so the only data I collect on the females is how close they are to him. However, in the past few days I’ve had a few interesting experiences with them.

Mkpeta and I were following Kingo when Kingo decided to climb a tree. Seeing a silverback climb 40 meters up a tree is quite impressive, but once he’s up there it can be difficult to see what he’s doing. So we are moving round the tree trying to get into a position to see him. We find a good spot, but unfortunately, and without realizing this at the time, we are between Mekome and the tree. Mekome feels very strongly about being close to Kingo, which is why her infant is called Ekendi (meaning love) because of her love for Kingo. So anyway we hear cough grunting and Mekome is about 6m away from us and not happy about us being there. When gorillas cough grunt at you it usually means you are in their way and you have to move. However moving away from Mekome puts us closer to the tree which doesn’t make her any happier. Suddenly, Ugly, who was 15m away from us in a completely different direction comes running at us screaming ‘waaaaaaaaaaaah waaaaaaaaaah’ and then Mekome also starts screaming and charging at us, so we have two females coming at us from two different directions, screaming, shaking bushes and showing lots of teeth. Ugly doesn’t particularly like people and she was being followed by Roberta so was really wanting to charge, and just couldn’t resist rushing over when she heard Mekome cough grunting at us. Anyway I’ve learnt my lesson and will never get between Mekome and Kingo ever again!

The next day I was working with Mongambe and we were collecting data on Kingo. The females had split into two groups and Kingo was moving between them. If he was with one set of females, every so often we’d go and just see what the other females were doing and how far away they were. On one check we were looking for Mama and Ugly. We walked past a large wusa (Treculia Africana) fruit on the ground. It’s about the size of a volleyball. Continuing on we found Mama and Ugly, then turned round to head back to Kingo. We’d just walked past the fruit and suddenly there was this growling noise behind us. I’m still not completely fluent in Sango but Mongambe said something along the lines of ‘We need to step away from the fruit’. So we backed away slowly and Mama came rushing up and put her arms around the fruit and wasn’t going to let go. Kusu then came rushing up to see what Mama had found but she wasn’t going to share with anyone and whack! She punched him on the chin. She then very quietly began to eat it, hoping to keep her discovery secret from Kingo, who would just take it off her.

Kingo didn’t find Mama and her wusa fruit. However Mekome left where Kingo was and we heard cough grunting from the direction of Mama, so maybe she had to share her fruit after all.