Like us, gorillas express a range of emotions, from laughing during play to grieving for the dead. Generally, females reproduce just once every four to six years, which makes it very difficult for gorillas to recover from a population decrease.Īnother similarity between gorillas and humans is emotional experience. Gorillas reproduce similarly to humans: the female is fertile for a couple of days every month, gestates for around eight to nine months, gives birth to (usually) one infant at a time, and nurtures them for multiple years before becoming pregnant again. The young remain with the troop until they mature, at which point all of the males and around 60% of the females move to new troops to prevent inbreeding. The groups are polygamous, with one adult male gorilla, known as a silverback, leading the troop and mating with the female members. The average troop size is around five to 10 gorillas but some can contain more than 50 individuals. Gorillas are social animals and live in family groups called troops. These two types are divided into two subspecies: eastern lowland gorillas, eastern mountain gorillas, western lowland gorillas, and western Cross River gorillas.

There are only two types of gorillas in the world, eastern and western, and they’re actually next-door neighbours, separated by just 560 miles of forest. Although they’re over 10 times stronger than humans, they share 98.3% of their DNA with us-making the gorilla our closest cousin after chimpanzees and bonobos. Gorillas are the largest of the great apes.

Gorilla height and weight