Gorillas have developed humanlike social structure, controversial study suggests

[Judi Lynn]

Young gorillas from different families may become friends when their groups meet to dine in the wild.
WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY

By Virginia MorellJul. 17, 2019 , 12:45 PM

A bold claim about gorilla societies is drawing mixed reviews. Great apes, humans’ closest evolutionary relatives, were thought to lack our social complexity. Chimpanzees, for example, form only small bands that are aggressive toward strangers. But based on years of watching gorillas gather in food-rich forest clearings, a team of scientists has concluded the apes have hierarchical societies similar to those of humans, perhaps to help them exploit rich troves of food.

The finding, reported in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, challenges the prevailing notion that such sophisticated societies evolved relatively recently, after humans split from chimpanzees. Instead, these researchers say, the origins of such social systems extend at least as far back as the common ancestor of humans and gorillas, but were lost in chimpanzees.

The group has presented “a pretty convincing case for a hierarchical social structure in gorillas,” says Richard Connor, a cetacean biologist and expert on dolphin society at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth. But because other primates that are not great apes—notably baboons, geladas, and colobine monkeys—show similar hierarchies, he’s not surprised they have turned up in gorillas, too.

Gorillas spend most of their time in dense forests, travel great distances to a new home spot daily, and are slow to get used to observers, making their social lives hard to study. But western gorillas in the Republic of Congo gather periodically at swampy clearings in the forests to feed primarily on the highly abundant vegetation, but also on favorite and rare foods such as certain fig trees that produce massive amounts of fruit only every 3 to 5 years, says Robin Morrison, a zoologist at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and the study’s lead author.

More:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/gorillas-have-developed-humanlike-social-structure-controversial-study-suggests

[Duppers]

1. Most cherished and most endangered of the great apes

gorillas and orangutans.
They have my respect.

[Judi Lynn]

2. The postures, expressions, and general presence with those youngsters took me by surprised.

There seems to be an enormous amount of personality and intelligence there in a way I was not expecting to see. They remind me so much of human beings. Love that photo.