Endowment effects in gorillas (Gorilla gorilla).

Interunit, environmental and interspecific influences on silverback-group dynamics in western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla)

Session One: Training and Enrichment Home improvements: behavioural responses of captive gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) to enrichment efforts

This study, split into three parts, describes the behavioural changes in eight adult gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) housed at several European zoos, in response to environmental manipulations. These manipulations were aimed at encouraging more normal behaviour in captive gorillas, by increasing the complexity of food presentation (hiding food in plastic tubes, in holes, in woodwool, etc). I...

Social structure and life-history patterns in western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla).

Life-history traits and ecological conditions have an important influence on primate social systems. Most of what we know about the life-history patterns and social structure of gorillas comes from studies of eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei sp.), which live under dramatically different ecological conditions compared to western gorillas (Gorilla gorilla sp.). In this paper we present new data...

Behavioral responses of silverback gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) to videos.

This study examined the impact of video presentations on the behavior of 4 silverback, western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla). On each of 5 occasions, gorillas viewed 6 types of videos (blue screen, humans, an all-male or mixed-sex group engaged in low activity, and an all-male or mixed-sex group engaged in agonistic behavior). The study recorded behavioral responses and watching ra...

Nuclear integrations of mitochondrial DNA in gorillas.

Great ape systematics, particularly at the species level and below, is currently under debate, due in part to the recent influx of molecular data. The phylogenies of previously published mitochondrial control region (or D-loop) DNA sequences in gorillas show deep splits within West African gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), and very high levels of nucleotide diversity in this subspecies. Here ...