How Do Gorillas Behave in the Wild?

Many people wonder about how gorillas spend their day in the wild? You can now enjoy a gorilla habituation experience and see how these great apes live and behave in their natural wild. This new experience is one of the best rated gorilla safari adventures and can only be done in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park of Uganda.

Some Gorillas live in the very lowlands while others are in the extreme elevations of the mountains. Many gorillas live in Africa along the forests and swamps. Others live in the mountain region of Bwindi Forest and the Virunga Mountains that are shared by Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Gorillas are known to move and roam through the wild every single day looking for food and water. The fact that Gorillas move every day for food and water, they are not restricted. They move freely and they tend to pass each other often out there in the wild. Most of the time these interactions are friendly or they happen without any real interaction at all.

They also look for a place to sleep that night- a new nest is built every evening. They don’t remain in one place which is very interesting. Scientists get to know their numbers by counting the different nests where they last slept. However some researchers have found that some baby gorillas sleep with the parents; either its mother or the silverback gorilla. In gorilla groups, the dominant male (silverback) is generally the first to pick a place to put a nest and then the others will settle around him.

Interesting: Young Gorillas sleeps in a nest with their mother until they are about 3 years of age. At that point they will start to make their own nests but often sleep very close to her.

Gorillas mostly move to areas with plenty of food. In fact, they can walk up in the morning and consume food – they spend most of their day time eating. After a morning of playing and eating, the gorillas get ready for an afternoon nap. If the place has plenty of food, they can stay there for some few days but all in all, they have to build a new nest for every night. They make it out of leaves and twigs and they never sleep in the same one twice! However, the reason for this is still a hypothesis.

In Case a gorilla from another group invades another troop to capture dominance- there breaks up a serious fight. In Case of any attack from Gorilla predator, the silverbacks have a task to defend the entire troop. The silverbacks go to the frontline and alert others to be a ware that danger has come.

They tend to enjoy the terrain that is flat as they are able to move around on it much easier. However, they also have the ability to climb over rocky areas and to get into places that most humans would be exhausted moving around in.

Gorillas are not arboreal animals! For the most parts they spend time on the ground though. Climbing is generally reserved for getting to the various sources of food that they need.

Gorillas don’t spend too much time close to the water because they do not consume much of it due to moisture that is in their food stuffs like leaves, stems, fruits. More so, Gorillas are not good at swimming and they fear to sink.

You can easily indentify where gorillas stayed in the past few days- Gorillas tend to feed along the way that shows they have been through there recently. Another sign is that, you can easily find nests wher gorillas slept in the past.

If they have been in an area recently, it may smell like sweat from humans. They will also leave behind quite a bit of waste from their bodies so the smell you come upon may not be one you want to have lingering!