GorillaSound

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Oct 18 2009 | By: gorillasound

I’ve spent the past two days following Kusu and Ekendi. Although close together in age, these two gorillas have very different behaviours. Kusu is more independent and will spend a lot of time just hanging out close to Kingo, while Ekendi will often spend a long part of the day close by Mekome.

Following the juveniles can be tough, everything happens so quickly. Kusu will be happily feeding close to Kingo. Kingo moves away. Kusu continues feeding until Kingo is very far away and then suddenly he’s off and running through the forest to catch up with his Dad. A few times he’s been running so fast he looks like he’s about to crash head on with a tree but he never does. The problem Kusu has is that although he may spend a lot of the day away from Mama every so often he wants to be with her and will start a long search for her as she often feeds far away from the rest of the group. Once when he was looking for her he came up to where we were sitting and stood there as if to ask ‘ok so do you guys know where Mama is?’

Ekendi likes to hang out and play with Kusu who likes to be close to Kingo. That can lead to problems if Kingo is far away from the other females. Yesterday Kusu and Ekendi were playing close to Kingo and the females were heading off towards the swamp. Ekendi then wanted to be with Mekome but she was too far ahead for him to find her all by himself, so he started calling for her to come and get him. Kingo was close by and was vocalising to Ekendi to let him know that he was there but Ekendi wanted Mekome and continued to call and call. Finally Kingo joined in calling with Ekendi but Mekome didn’t come back so Kingo had to ‘take’ Ekendi to the swamp.

Hopefully they won’t stay in the swamp for a long time as the water level is really high with the rainy season.