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What’s “wrong” with this picture?

Did you know that gorillas rarely drink water?

In the wild, a gorilla’s vegetarian diet is almost half water so they rarely have a need to drink.

A female adult gorilla can consume more than 18 kg (40 lbs) of vegetation per day and a male more than 34 kg (75 lbs). For mountain gorillas, this food is made up of at least 142 plant species (primarily leaves, stems, and shoots) and only a few fruits. Bamboo and wild celery are a favorite. Often when they find wild celery, they eat it with much grunting and humming, as if they are taking real pleasure in the taste.

There isn’t much competition for food in the Virunga forests. The mountain gorilla home ranges average 3–15 km2 (1.16–5.79 mi2), but their movements on average per day are only about 500 m (0.311 mi) or less.

Dian Fossey wrote in her observations of mountain gorillas that they had an obvious dislike of rain, and gorillas seem to dislike water in general, usually trying to cross streams without getting wet.  With that said…these are unusual pictures our rangers caught recently of the Kabirizi family drinking water and even sitting in a stream.

Gorillas from the Kabirizi family drink water from a small stream.

Sources:
Our Virunga National Park rangers
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_go…

We are happy to announce another birth in the Mapuwa mountain gorilla family! You might remember that on December 28th, this family welcomed the last infant gorilla of 2011, so this makes 2 newborns in this family in the last 2 months, and a total family of 18 members. The mother is Bikenge, and the father is silverback Mvuyekure.

Rangers have been observing lately that the females are gathering around silverback Nvuyekure more than silverback Mapuwa, and suspect that the reins of the family are changing. Mapuwa has been the lead silverback of the family for many years and his age is unknown.  Nvuyekure is only 21 years old.

Father Silverback Mvuyekure

Silverback Bukima of the Rugendo family. © Micheal Valigore

The Rugendo mountain gorilla family is well-known around here for many things.

• In 2007, this gorilla family lost five family members in what has become known as the Rugendo Massacre when silverback Senkwekwe and 4 adult females were killed execution style.
• The family is extremely habituated, meaning they regularly come out of the forest and into cultivated land or wander through the Bukima patrol post peeking into windows.
• And they like to move, living up to the meaning of their name: “traveler”

At Bukima Patrol Post - the Rugendo family is extremely habituated.

Last month, they roamed all over the park, to the far corners near Uganda, south toward Rwanda, and yesterday they came back to their normal place of residence, the Bukima area where most visitors begin their gorilla treks.

Rugendo baby © Micheal Valigore

Yesterday, Rugendo family had a clash with our solitary silverback Mukunda close to Bukima patrol post. Mukunda had also come out of the forest to eat crops. The interaction resulted in no injuries, which is good news, but the rangers are watching carefully to make sure they don’t get into trouble.

Solitary silverback Mukunda on a day outside the forest.

(Thank you to Micheal Valigore for his photos:  www.michaelvaligorephotography.com)

The body of young silverback Bageni dies in a fight with solitary silverback Mukunda.

Yesterday, young silverback Bageni from the Kabirizi family lost a battle with solitary silverback Mukunda and died. Two weeks earlier he was involved in another fight that left him with cuts and bruises, but nothing too serious. We wanted to keep an eye on him, however, and so some rangers were there on the day of the fight. Although they shouted and threw sticks in the hopes of stopping Mukunda, they were unsuccessful.

Villagers carry the body of Bageni back to Bukima Patrol Post.

Villagers carried Bageni’s body back to Bukima Patrol Post where MGVP vets waited to perform a necropsy on the gorilla. This is always done (if it’s possible to recover the body of the gorilla) to learn whatever they can about the cause of death and other diseases. The vets worked from 5 pm to 11 pm, with the assistance of one of our rangers, and were up again at 6 am to clean up, load the gorilla into their car and drive back to Rumangabo for a burial in the gorilla cemetery.

Dr. Eddy and Dr. Noel from MGVP perform a necropsy on the body of Bageni.

Many of the staff at Rumangabo came for the burial. Although gorillas are wildlife like buffalo, elephant, and bushbuck, they are different somehow - intelligent creatures, with striking similarities to humans. Each is valuable.

Bageni is buried at the gorilla cemetery at Rumangabo.

More photos from the day:

Barnabé Sebagenzi has been tracking gorillas for 22 years.

Barnabe started tracking gorillas in December 1988. He is married and has nine children.

Tracking – as you know – is done for several reasons. First of all we need to know where the gorilla families are, and secondly we need to do a visual health check on the gorillas to ensure there are no apparent problems. This is done not only in DR Congo, but also in Rwanda and Uganda, the other two countries that have Mountain Gorillas. Another important reason to track is to remove snares that we find in the forest – they are not necessarily laid for gorillas, but as we know gorillas get caught in them.

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In August 537 tourists visited Virunga National Park: 393 visited our Mountain Gorillas, and the remaining 144 climbed the Nyiragongo Volcano to see the magnificent lava lake in the crater.

Tourists have been flocking to visit the Mountain Gorillas. For more information go here.

We relaunched tourism just over a year ago, so we are encouraged by the results. However July and August are high season for us here, so we now need to see how things go in September and beyond.

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Virunga’s Volcanoes

Seven of the eight volcanoes in the Virunga range stand within the park’s boundaries. Indeed the word Virunga corresponds to the word volcano in Kinyarawanda, the first language of the people who live nearest to the park.

Most of the Virunga Volcanoes are dormant, but two of them - Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira - are very active: they are responsible for two-fifths of the total of Africa’s volcanic eruptions

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Now the Humba family of Mountain Gorillas has started to leave the forests of Virunga to eat the crops of the villagers who live next to the park. As you can see this is an ongoing problem – and we desperately need to find a solution.

Humba and his clan are leaving the park to eat the corn planted by the local communities

The HUGOs are hard at work – encouraging and coaxing the animals back to their habitat. But it is not an easy task, and there is only so much noise the HUGOs can make. After a while the gorillas quite simply just ignore them.

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The Mapuwa Family of Mountain Gorillas has split again into two different groups, each led by a Silverback. Mapuwa – son of Rugendo and brother of Humba - has 6 individuals, including the female Kagofero. Nvuyekure – the 19-year old son of Rugabo – has formed his own group with 8 individuals, including the females Kanepo, Jicho and Bitangi.

Nvuyekure and Bitangi
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