Tag Archives: gorilla troop

Wild gorillas meet man in Uganda


What if you were a baby gorilla in Uganda, wandering peaceably around the jungle with your Silverback Daddy and the rest of your gorilla family … and happened upon a bunch of concrete steps making a pathway going up and down through the jungle, and discovered on those steps small troops of humans walking around. And one of those humans happened to be sitting down at just about your eye height and he had the oddest, silver hair. What would your baby gorilla mind tell you to do? Obviously, you must check this fellow out thoroughly. You must groom his hair a bit, lick him, and then climb up a small tree to see him better from a top view.

Gigantic Daddy at one point, grabs junior to move him on, but the little one isn’t ready to leave yet, and his fascination has attracted several of his brothers and sisters, who mill about next to the man together with junior. So Daddy Silverback walks a few feet behind the man and plunks himself down to sit and watch casually while his children, and then two female gorillas as well, examine this man thoroughly by touching his upper body, head and hair. Eventually, the family has seen enough and amble away. When the smaller gorillas move on, so does gigantic Daddy. They leave one very amazed man still sitting, keeping his head well down while the gorillas are in motion so as not to appear threatening or confrontative to them in any way. Clearly, the same benign Daddy who looks on with only moderate interest while his children swarm around the silver haired man, could very easily tear that man into several pieces if he was of a mind to do it.

This is a beautiful little vignette. Watch it if you have five and a half minutes to spend on a bit of pure enjoyment, observing the intersection of nature with the world of man.

The silver haired subject of the gorilla examination was visiting the Bwindi National Park wildlife preserve as an eco-tourist. Eco-tourism provides substantial revenue to the people of Uganda.