Study
Western gorilla diet: a synthesis from six sites
Rogers, M. Elizabeth; Abernethy, Katharine; Bermejo, Magdalena; Cipolletta, Chloe; Doran, Diane; Tutin, Caroline E. G.
American Journal of Primatology, 2004
Feeding records and faecal analyses from six long-term western lowland gorilla study sites were combined to describe diet composition, seasonal variation and the degree of frugivory across the range.
- Studied in
- Gorilla gorilla gorilla
- Sample size
- 6 long-term study sites across western gorilla range
Western gorillas are substantially frugivorous where fruit is available, falling back on leaves, stems and pith when it is not. Diets across sites span more than a hundred plant species. Invertebrates — chiefly ants and termites — are eaten in small quantities at most sites. Vertebrate meat is essentially absent from the record.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Western gorilla feeding is flexible and more frugivorous than the folivorous stereotype derived from mountain gorillas.
How NatureHQ reads it
Two corrections in one paper. The picture of the gorilla as a leaf-eating specialist comes from mountain gorillas, which live high up where fruit is scarce, and it does not describe most gorillas — western lowland gorillas eat a great deal of fruit and switch to fallback foods when they must. And the "do gorillas eat meat" question has a specific answer: they eat insects, in small amounts, and there is no established record of vertebrate predation. Insects are meat in one sense and not the sense the question is asking.
- Six sites, unevenly studied, with different observation methods.
- Faecal analysis over-represents indigestible items and under-represents soft ones.
- Rare behaviours such as occasional vertebrate consumption would be hard to detect at these sample sizes.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
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Published by: Wiley journalsPublished in a Wiley journal.
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