Description:
After chimpanzees and bonobos, gorillas are the next closest relative to humans, and closer than originally thought, sharing approximately 98% of our DNA. The mountain gorilla is a subspecies of eastern gorilla (the other being the eastern lowland, or Grauer’s gorilla), which are larger and have blacker fur than the western gorilla. Males are much larger than the females, and develop the characteristic “silverback” as adults.
© Ryoma Otsuka
Key facts
Population:
Numbers have been increasing from their lowest point in the early 1980s
Diet:
Habitat:
Mountain gorillas are split into two populations in the montane cloud forests of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, and the Virunga Volcanoes on the Uganda, Rwanda, DR Congo border.
Range:
© Susannah Rouse
© Getty Images/iStockphoto
© Getty Images/iStockphoto
Threats
What’s left of their original habitat is now well protected, and their greatest threats these days are disease transmission from humans and civil unrest.
Conservation
The increase in the mountain gorilla population has been a conservation success story thanks to high levels of protection of the gorillas and their habitat, and the gorillas’ value for tourism. Nevertheless, so few still remain that they remain critically endangered.
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What’s left of their original habitat is now well protected, and their greatest threats these days are disease transmission from humans and civil unrest.
Conservation
The increase in the mountain gorilla population has been a conservation success story thanks to high levels of protection of the gorillas and their habitat, and the gorillas’ value for tourism. Nevertheless, so few still remain that they remain critically endangered.