Gorillas: Gentle Giants

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Rich Swartz and I'm empty Money. Welcome to Amazing Wildlife, where we explore unique stories of wildlife from around the world and uncover fascinating animal facts. This podcast is a production of I Heart Radio in San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, an international nonprofit conservation organization behind the San Diego Zoo and Safari Park. Today, we're talking about one of our closest relatives and the animal kingdom, the gorilla. We're traveling to Central Africa to the Ebo Forest, where a distinct sound led a San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance scientists to discover a group of guerrillas previously unknown to science. But first, let's learn more about this charismatic, intelligent forest dweller EPY. People are really going to enjoy this conversation. I've been with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance for about twenty one years now, and I can attest to the fascination people have with gorillas. How about you? What would you Ebony like to know about the largest of the great apes? Rick, I am awestruck just looking at a gorilla. I think most people would agree gorillas are fascinating. Have you had any experiences maybe in your career with gorillas that stand out, Oh goodness, Yeah. For me, I would have to say it is the very beginning of my career. Actually, even before my care officially started, I was volunteering at a zoo during my summer break between high school and college, and I was fortunate enough to be placed as an intern to work with the apes and primates. Although my role, of course was primarily cleaning and food prep, on occasion I was able to shadow the main staff there and sit with them as they took care of the gorillas in a protective contact situation. And of course that's basically there's protective barriers. We're not in there with the gorillas. That wouldn't be very safe. And I just remember that the sheer size of the adult male gorilla when we would sit there with him, and you know, they'd give them some bananas or some grapes or something and just spend some quality time getting visual look on him. These males, they're known as silver backs, and they're just huge, the broad shoulders, the massive head, and their hands. I mean when you would see the handoff of a little bit of a food item from the wildlife care specialists to the gorilla. It was also breathtaking. I just remember sitting there in complete awe of their their presence and just how gentle they were. That sounds like an amazing experience. So guerrillas are known for being closely related to humans. You hear that often, But what does that really mean? Just how closely are we related? Yeah? I think you know, anyone who has spent time observing guerrillas would agree. We see a lot of individual behaviors, interactions with the group, and family dynamics are all familiar to our own. Now what do we do here? The term closely related, it's referring to the similarities that have been found when we look at the sequence genomes for guerrillas and humans. Now, essentially what that means is we're looking at the sequential structure of the DNA, the genetic code. At this time, we can say gorillas share about of the same DNA as humans. That is amazing to me. Wow. So girls are also known to display like humanlike behaviors. Can you give us some examples of that? Oh? Certainly, we can easily observe mothers with their babies, you know, holding and nursing them like we do our own. We'll see siblings play and wrestle and tease each other much like our own children. Do I really think the more time that you or anyone else spends observing them, the more we start to see a bit of ourselves in them. Ricks AND's gorillas are so similar to humans in so many ways. Does that translate to caring for them? Do they receive similar medical care as humans? Yeah, that's actually a great question, and the answer is unequivocally yes. So remember how we were talking about their genetics being similar to humans. Well, with so much in common with humans, that means their medical care is similar to ours as well. For example, a couple of years ago at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, wildlife care specialists noticed that one of our guerrillas, three year old Leslie, she had some cloudiness and her left eye, and when they were able to look at it further, they were able to recognize that she had actually developed a cataract in that eye. So our veterinarians are incredible. They can work on something as small as a hummingbird, too, as big as an elephant, and everything in between, you know, reptiles, mammals, birds, all of it. But when you're looking at something as specialized as a cataract and I that's when we have to turn to those who do that work as specialists on humans. So we were able to partner with several specialists from you see San Diego Health and they came in and did the work. They were able to remove the cloudy lens, which is what a cataract is. It's when that clear lens in the eye has some sort of challenges that are causing it to go cloudy and replace it then with a medical grade lens, just like you would any human. And right away she recovered with no problem, just as you would a human. And she's been going on really well ever since. You never know there was ever a problem with her vision. Right, that's a great story. So she's okay right now. Yeah, she is absolutely completely recovered from it. And like I said, it was a couple of years ago, so she's doing great. Awesome. So when you look at a guerrilla family, um, say at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, you'll notice that also like humans, there's range in size. Just how big can guerrillas get? Well, you're right, I mean the range in size within a guerrilla troop is pretty impressive. A Western Lowland guerrilla weighs about four and a half pounds at birth. So that's that's, you know, a little bit less than maybe you're average human. But they can grow up to a hundred and fifty nine to two hundred and sixteen pounds if it's a female. And get this, the males can grow up to three hundred to four hundred pounds. And we're talking high. The females can reach about five feet, where males about five point seven almost six ft. Wow, so they're they're not too tall, but they're definitely stocky, big muscular species. Yeah. You know, when you have a chance to watch them, you see the movie, you realize, just like you said, it's all muscle. They are very muscular and strong, very powerful animals. Being so powerful, what do gorillas eat to support their large muscular bodies? Okay, are you ready for this? An adult male gorilla can eat up to forty pounds a day, And believe it or not, that's forty pounds of plant material. This includes leaves, stems, fruit, seeds, roots. They they love it all. And for comparison, the average adult human eats about three to four pounds of food in one day, so almost ten times as much in weight of food per day to keep those grillas going. It's surprising that they're sustained off of a diet of of of plants. They really are gentle giants. Gorillas are just scribed as as being gentle and playful and peaceful. How does this play out in their community dynamic? Yeah, as big and powerful as the dominant male silverbacks are, they do rule with a sort of that strong, silent type attitude. Each family group also known as a troop, usually has one dominant adult male and then several females with their young and there might be some younger adolescent males in the group as well, but for the most part, it's that one dominant male that runs the troop. Males are incredibly powerful. They have large canine teeth. They can cause serious damage. But get this, even with all that strength and those massive canine teeth, almost all conflicts between gorillas are resolved through threat behaviors basically like yawns showing up being canine teeth or loud displayed like that classic chest meeting that occurs. It makes that loud noise, and those behaviors are all usually seen when there's an outside gorilla trying to come too close to the troop. If within the troop, if there's any disagreements, threat behaviors are rarely, if ever seen. Wow, Um, so how do they resolve conflict within a troop? Honestly, it's pretty impressive to watch. You will see them shift position, so it's a matter of personal space almost. If there's some conflict going on that the dominant silverback things should stop, he'll simply place himself between the two that are having a conflict. And it's really it's all very subtle, but if you spend time watching troop dynamics, it's really impressive to see how these subtle moves and strategic body language can really diffuse a situation pretty quickly. Rick, That's amazing. It sounds like the guerrillas are practicing a sort of conflict resolution. So I was surprised to learn that guerrillas have no natural predators, yet they're critically endangered. Why so, Yeah, Unfortunately, guerrillas are dealing with many challenges. You know. Among those, alandes are habitat loss due to either over hunting or trapping. You know, logging has been a big one for many many decades that they've had to deal with. An excessive mining for precious metals is another one we also hear about, you know, without logging, they're clearing land for palm oil. So interestingly enough, one of the metals that they mind there in the habitat where gorillas can be found is called colton. That's a metal that's important for many of the electronics that we use, such as smartphones and you know, different tablets. The good news is when you recycle your old electronics instead of just throwing them away or putting them in a desk drawer somewhere, you are directly helping to reduce the impact of mining on guerrillas. That colton can be taken back out of those items and put back into the system, therefore causing less draw on the natural resources. Thanks Rick Seet Eagles Zoo. Wildlife Alliance partners with community conservation organizations around the world. One of our eight conservation hubs is the African Forests covering the tropical Congo Basin for ecosystem in Central Africa, where guerillas are a key species we're working to protect and save. Pull out your passports. Coming up, we're traveling nine thousand miles away from the San Diego Zoo to Cameroon's Ebbo Forest. Right after this, now it's time for the San Diego Zoo Minute, an opportunity for you to learn what's new at the Zoo. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is set to participate in the two Tournament of Roses Parade. The float will represent the organization's past, present and future in wildlife conservation, depicting a lion, a California condor, and a rhinoceros. The last time the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance how to float in the parade was fun fact, the California Condor is making a comeback. Did you know that there were once only twenty two California condors remaining, and now, thanks to the efforts of the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and its partners, there are over five hundred, with more than half living throughout the Southwest. We'll be right back. Let's focus now on Cameroon's Evil Forest, one of the largest and most ecologically intact forest remaining in the Gulf of Guinea, a region considered a biodiversity hot spot for the wide variety of wildlife found there. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance concentrates on guerrilla conservation efforts there through the African Forest Program. It's a perfect time to talk to biologists. Bethan Morgan, who leads the program. Hi Bethan, hi epony, thanks for inviting me to talk to you today. We're so excited to have you. Can you help us visualize the Evil forest? What makes it a biodiversity hot spot? Of course? So first of all, let me tell you a little bit of Cameroon. Sure. So, Cameroon's a coastal country existing sort of between Central and West Africa, and it's a little bit bigger than California. It's often called Africa in miniature because in the south it's got this lush tropical Congo basin rainforest which gradually transforms into a drier savannah habitat as you go northward, um, and that's a little bit reminiscent of East African landscapes. And in the west it's got a second type of rainforest type which goes off westward and neighboring Nigerian into West Africa, and these are the Gulf of Guinea forests. And Ebo is one of the tracks, the largest remaining tracks in fact, of the Gulf of Guinea rainforests. You just said, yeah, there are biodiversity hotspot. They're characteris by really steep, rocky mountain sides, tall peaks. During the last Ice Age, we think this part of the world was really quite quite a lot drier than it is today, but islands of forests remained on these slightly wet and mountain side, so that when the climate warmed again and the forest was able to expand huge diversity of species, both the ancient species and some relatively new species developed a fill in this wide range of habitats. So from a scientists perspective, what's a significant of the region as it relates to guerrilla conservation. Well, Africa as a whole, of course, there are two guerrilla species, I'm generally considered there are the gorillas in the eastern the gorillas in the west, and each of these Eastern and Western gorillas are also split into subspecies. So in the mountains of East Africa you probably know about the mountain gorillas, which were studied by A. Diane Fosse at first. There are also Eastern lowland gorillas there. But in Western Africa there are also two forms of gorilla, the Western Lowland gorillas, which we have in San Diego of course, but also they are the gorillas that exist in all zoos around the world. But there's also a really small separate group of gorillas called Cross River gorillas that if on the boundary between Cameron and Nigeria. That was the case until two thousand and two, really, when we visited this place called the Ebber Forest, and we were not really expecting to find grillas there because the Aber Forest is halfway, if you like, between the West and Lowland gorillas and Across River gorillas. Well, there were rumors that grillas were there. We wanted to find out if that was true. So tell me about your your team's experience in two thousand and two, and we're all unfolded. It was quite something. At the time I started my post doctoral fellowship with San Diego Zoo. One day we started to drive to the Ebb Forest and it started to rain and the car got stuck and it was getting dark and we were starting to panic, so we continued on by foot to the nearest village. So I'm my three colleagues. We introduced ourselves to the traditional chief in the village and we asked him for permission to enter the forest the next day with two of the best hunters in the village. They told me that we would also find gorillas, so of course I was quite excited at this point. But one morning, at about half past nine, we were wandering around in on some mountaintop and I heard what I'd been hoping for. I heard chest beats in the distance, and it's only gorillas that do chess beating. It was quite something. So the first thing that I saw was a silver back gorilla twenty five meters up in a tree, and there was another pully black gorilla next to him, and roughly a two year old little one as well. They were all together up the tree and it was just astonishing. Immediately the silver back saw us and he almost fell down the tree. It felt like he came down so rapidly. It was really quite something. Can you describe how you felt when you when you heard the chess beating and you news distinctly what it was. And I find it quite emotional, to be honest, because it was it was knowing that there was something very special there, and the fact that I've heard the chest beats meant a lot to me, but I knew that that wouldn't be enough to convince other people. But gorillas were in the forest, I needed to actually see them with my own eyes, and I needed my my colleagues to see them as well, you know, so that we could return back with news of the fact that the ever forest did indeed contain guerrillas. So before your team made this discovery in two thousand and two, gorillas were not known from the science community to be in their forest. That's right. There'd been a couple of rumors beforehand, and some biologists working with WWF had gone there and found some ground nests, which is often, you know, thought to be gorillas making ground nests. But we now know that chimpanzees also make nests on the ground. So um, you know, without genetic evidence, which in those days at least, was pretty difficult to get hold of. Um, it's it's virtually impossible to tell the difference between gorilla and chimpanzee nests. And that's certainly true in in the Ebo forest. So today, you know, we we know for sure we have both gorillas and chimpanze, these living together. In our camera traps, we have videos footage of both of them from exactly the same camera trap, not at the same time, but they're in the same part of the forest. There have been major challenges protecting and preserving the forest landscape. How fragile is the situation and I'm referring to the suspension of logging in the in the region. Yeah, well, the situation across much of the remaining forest in Africa's very fragile. We in the West can usually see the enormous benefit of preserving rainforests and wildlife as part of a healthy global ecosystem because many of the governments in Africa struggling to develop their economies and improve life expectancy and living conditions for their people, and quite often, you know, forestry and wildlife conservation is not necessarily at the top of their agenda. There are also many diverse pressures on the remaining forests, you know, whereas in the past we used to put all of our emphasis really on hunting and logging as being the major threats to animals such as gorillas, but we're increasingly seeing that other factors, including sort of the global demand for palm oil, which leads to large scale forest destruction and devastation to grow monocultures of oil palm plantations. That's at least as important as some of these more traditional threats. In early the government of Camera And announced plans to commercially log the entire Ebb Forest, and it was a really a race against time to bring people together to try and make the government rethink its plans. First, and perhaps most importantly, action was taken by the local people around the forest, you know, because they believe that the forest belongs to them, it's their customary land. And of course we've been working them as well for over two decades now to raise the level of prime the ever forest and their knowledge of it and their voice and actions we think really made a difference in changing the government's mind. In addition to that, of course, we were able to mobilize the international conservation community to shine a light on these logging plans. Many conservation organizations in the US, in Europe as well as Western governments all joined forces to call out these logging plans. However, despite the President camera and suspension of the logging plans in late we're not resting on our laurels, and we're aware that unless a solution is found to encourage governments such as Cameraon to preserve the forest instead of destroying it. Then threats will always exist to the remaining forests. So we at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance are working with partners including civil siety organizations in Cameraon and overseas conservation organizations to persuade the government to allow the local communities to decide the future of the landscape via a new and an inclusive land use planning process, because we believe it's for the local people who have protected the ever guerrilla for thousands of years. We believe it's for them to decide and have the finals say and how their land is managed, and we believe that they will choose a future that includes the continued existence of the guerrillas and Ever. So what's next in terms of guerrilla conservation in the able forest. Well, as I said, we've been working with these communities now in Ebbo since two thousand and two to establish a long term conservation program, and around ten years ago Dr Korge Abware, who's now the program manager in Cameeron and my close colleague started efforts to encourage the local traditional chiefs to form an association and now This includes all of the forty traditional chiefs in the region, and it's a real force for positive, long term change. And we also of course helped to establish and we still support the guerrilla guardian clubs that I mentioned earlier in the three villages closest to the Ebo guerrilla population, These voluntary clubs that have now got close to four hundred members, so almost everyone in the communities is involved in some way. They monitor the gorilla habitat for threats to the gorillas. They're also involved in sensitization and educational work in those three communities. And we're trying to improve livelihoods gradually by supporting small scale sustainable projects to help with income generation from activities other than hunting. But ultimately, of course, we need to convince Western governments to support African governments to conserve their forests. The forest resources are of benefit to the whole global community, but the current burden of preservation does seem to fall on these developing countries. And there has been, as we all know, a recent surge in public knowledge and interest in conservation worldwide, and I really hope that increasing realization that we're all part of the same interconnected web would lead people to lobby the representatives to conserve bio diversity in habitats, both in their back gardens and further afield. I think we can all agree that the ether Guerrillas, like all remaining gorillas, deserve to continue to exist for their own sake as well as for our grandchildren to know what amazing animal they really are. Bethan Morgan, great talking to you. Good luck to you and your team. Keep up the fantastic work. Thanks so much for speaking to me, Abony, and that's it for our show today. Thanks for listening, and be sure to subscribe and tune into next week's episode, in which we bring you the story of the All Allah, the efforts to reintroduce this crow, which is extinct in the wild, to its native habitat in the Hawaiian Islands. I'm Abne Money and I'm Rich Schwartz. Thanks for listening. For more information about the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park, go to sdz w a dot org Amazing Wildlife. As a production of I Heart Radio. Our producer is Nikia Swinton, Our executive producer is Marcy de Pina. Our audio engineer and editor is Amina Gnatra, with assistance from Matt Stillo and James Foster. For more os from My Heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. M