Is the gorilla a terrifying King Kong? No, it is a gentle giant

Enter the Natural History Museum, walk under the skeleton of the blue whale "Hope", step onto the steps, say hello to the statue of Darwin, turn right and come to the entrance of the Treasure House on the second floor, where you can see the taxidermied gorilla covered by glass. His name is "Guy", sitting quietly by the wall, slightly tilting his eyes to the left, welcoming visitors to the Treasure House. Today is the 64th year since Guy arrived in London. In these 64 years, humans have gone from ignorance to understanding of gorillas.

Baby gorilla, from Cassell's natural history | Biodiversity Heritage Library

On November 5, 1947, Guy Fawkes Night, people were lighting bonfires and setting off fireworks. A gorilla, only one and a half years old and weighing just over 10 kilograms, came from Paris to the London Zoo with a thermos in his arms. This little guy, who had lived in the jungle of French Cameroon six months ago, did not understand why humans set off fireworks, but only knew that the loud noise he had never heard of was a bit scary. A keeper had to stay with him to comfort the restless gorilla. So he inherited the name of that night - Guy, and began his 32-year life in the London Zoo.

Gorillas in the Mist

One hundred years before that, in 1847, the scientific community first systematically described gorillas. But at that time, the lifestyle and distribution of gorillas were still shrouded in mystery. Coupled with the limitations of specimens and taxonomic knowledge, the scientific community came up with many outrageous classifications of gorillas. Some specimens were considered different species because of morphological differences caused by gender and age. In this way, people named more than a dozen different gorillas.

By the time Gay arrived in London, researchers had sorted out the mess of taxonomy. But the two-species, four-subspecies system we use today wasn’t fully formed until the 1990s. Today, the gorilla genus includes two species, the western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) and the eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei), each of which has two subspecies. Gorillas live in central Africa, close to the equator, but the two species live more than 1,000 kilometers apart and are more genetically different than chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus).

Eastern gorilla | Charles J. Sharp / Sharp Photography

They also have obvious differences in appearance: Eastern gorillas are the largest primates in existence, with males weighing more than 200 kilograms and females weighing half that; Western gorillas are lighter and narrower-chested, but the average male weight is 170 kilograms, and the hair on the top of the head of adult males is not pure black, but reddish brown. By today's standards, Guy is a western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), which is also the only gorilla subspecies currently kept in all zoos.

The western gorilla's hair is brown | Pixabay

Guy lived at London Zoo at a time when our understanding of gorillas was changing dramatically, not just in terms of taxonomy. Both the public and scientific community were changing their understanding of these creatures.

Get to know the gentle giant

In the 19th century African exploration stories, gorillas were described as "kings of the jungle", "fantasy creatures from hell", and "half man, half beast". These descriptions gave rise to the image of monsters like King Kong that possess emotions and wisdom but are violent. However, what visitors to the London Zoo see is not a savage and ferocious beast, but Guy sitting quietly in a corner. He sometimes catches birds that fly to him, observes them curiously, and then lets them go. The contrast between the huge body and gentle personality quickly won people's love and changed the public's stereotype of gorillas.

People imagine gorillas as ferocious and terrifying animals | Gallica Digital Library

At the same time, in the African mountains, Jane Goodall went to Tanzania to study chimpanzees with the support of paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, while Dian Fossey inherited George Schaller's work and went to Rwanda to study mountain gorillas. The long-term observation lasting nearly 20 years allowed humans to understand the lifestyle of mountain gorillas, what they eat in their natural environment, and how they get along with their companions.

Other gorilla subspecies have not been studied as deeply, but we know the basics of their lives. Gorillas can digest a fiber-rich diet, eating mainly stems and leaves of plants, although populations living at lower altitudes also eat fruit. Fully grown males, called "silverbacks" because of the silvery-white hair on their backs, lead several females and juvenile males in groups with complex social relationships; such groups are large and sometimes include more than one adult male, with the largest known group of eastern gorillas having 65 members, and the highest record among western gorillas being 22... The accumulated knowledge has made us realize that gorillas are smarter and more complex than previously thought.

The grave of Dian Fossey, who was killed in 1985 while studying gorillas in Rwanda, possibly because of concerns about gorilla hunting. | Fanny Schertzer / Wikimedia Commons

If visitors to London Zoo had known this, they would have noticed that Guy's living environment was nothing like the natural one. At the time, knowledge of how to keep gorillas was probably even less than knowledge of wild gorillas. Male gorillas take 18 years to fully mature, and when Guy was young, knowledge and methods of caring for gorillas in zoos were far from perfect. Limited cage space, lack of enrichment measures, large numbers of visitors around every day... In addition, loneliness is a major problem for gorillas living in groups. London Zoo had been trying to find him a companion, but it was not until 1969 that they successfully introduced Lomie, a five-year-old female gorilla, to Guy. The two gorillas got along well, but they never got along, and Guy did not leave any offspring.

Sculpture of Guy the Gorilla, London Zoo | Katie Chan / Wikimedia Commons

The threat that eventually took Guy's life came from the enthusiasm of tourists. When Guy was young, the zoo's management was not strict, and the tourists who loved Guy fed him countless fruit pies, ice cream and other sweets. The gorilla's body is adapted to the stems and leaves of plants that are not sweet, and Guy suffered from tooth decay in the last years of his life. In 1978, veterinarians had to perform surgery on him to solve the tooth decay problem. Unfortunately, during anesthesia, Guy bid farewell to the world due to a heart attack.

A challenging future

When Guy died, it was not known that male gorillas in captivity were highly susceptible to heart disease. This was not recognized until the 1990s, when fibrotic cardiomyopathy caused 70% of deaths in male gorillas over 30 years of age in captivity in North America. Veterinarians now include heart problems in their routine checkups and have developed techniques to train gorillas to cooperate with ultrasound heart examinations. Our knowledge of gorilla heart disease is gradually increasing. But until now, the root causes of gorilla heart disease have remained unclear. For animals that can live up to 40 years, it will take more than one generation to figure this out.

There are still many challenges in raising gorillas | Pixabay

Gorillas in the wild also face a variety of threats. Both subspecies of western gorillas are critically endangered, and eastern gorillas are endangered. It takes more than a decade for both sexes to reach sexual maturity, making them extremely sensitive to habitat loss caused by logging and poaching. At the same time, infectious diseases are also pushing western gorillas to the brink of extinction. During the Ebola epidemic in 2002 and 2003, gorillas at some research sites in Congo were almost wiped out, so the IUCN upgraded the western lowland gorilla's rating from endangered to critically endangered.

Without medical assistance and quarantine measures, they are more vulnerable than we are. Many people are now risking their lives to try to find a way for them to have a future from poachers and infectious diseases, and this will also take more than one generation of effort.

Guy remains unchanged, and we change

After Guy died, the London Zoo donated his fur to the British Natural History Museum and announced that he would be made into a specimen. Many British people who loved Guy strongly opposed it and believed that he should be buried. The plan had to be shelved for two years until people realized that it would be more embarrassing if Guy's fur was damaged in the freezer, so Guy was finally made into a stuffed specimen.

Gorillas can sometimes look very human | Eric Kilby / Flickr

In 2012, Guy the Western Gorilla finally had his own case in the museum's Hinds Hall, the first exhibit to greet visitors as they entered the Treasure Hall. Guy has not changed, he is still the same gentle giant, sitting quietly in his own little space. But in the 64 years he has been in London, people's views on taxidermy have changed a lot - he is now one of visitors' favorite exhibits; and we have also learned a lot more about gorillas.

We know that, whether in zoos or in the wilds of Africa, these animals, the world’s most similar animals, face challenges and an uncertain future—a future that is closely linked to the actions of humans.

Virunga National Park is home to political unrest and violence, where rangers face the risk of being attacked by armed groups | BluesyPete / Wikimedia Commons