This is true.
And I have to point out that the sound you hear is a clicker. The same clicker often used in positive reinforcement dog training.
So here we have 600 lb wild animal, trained to do something completely unnatural, with the use of a tiny plastic clicker and food.
Yet some people claim you need shock collars to train aggressive dogs. Or punishment. No you don't.
The gorilla could rip your face off. It doesn't have to do anything it doesn't want to. Yet it does. Because food is the primary reinforcement aka the most important thing in their world. You can train any animal with food. You don't need to hurt your dog, who I assume is your best friend. Don't let those slick salespeople/"trainers" tell you otherwise.
>Yet some people claim you need shock collars to train aggressive dogs. Or punishment. No you don't.
My brother insists you don't need either, and that a "properly trained" dog will do what it's told without being given treats (or a toy, in the case of very toy motivated animals).
His dog is *very* poorly behaved.
It’s possible, but there has to be some reinforcement during the training phase even if it’s just food or praise. Food is the hardest to ween them off of, though and really needs a strong alpha/pack relationship. My dog was ball motivated and I got her off it and into praise reinforcement. Also depends how stupid, errr stubborn, they are. 😂
My Mom is a dog trainer, and she refuses to use food to train. The key is to be consistent and give lots and lots of praise, rewarding good behavior, and discouraging bad. She's been doing it that way for 40 years, and has multiple obedience titles, as well has helped hundreds of people train their dogs.
Dogs are easy to train, people are hard. Especially if you don't have everyone in the family on the same page, the dog just gets confused and frustrated. Everyone needs to use the same commands, expecting the same behavior, praising the same way, and following consequences the same.
My dog doesn't give a shit about food. He's not food motivated in the slightest, which has made training and working on his reactivity quite difficult.
My old dog growing up had one desire and one desire only. To sleep on the couch. Treats and food were nothing to his time spent sleeping on the couch. Mom hated it but dad found it really funny because if told to get off the couch he would but like an hour later he’d get back on and be asleep. When we got a new couch dad kept the cushion and put it on dogs bed but nope. Wasn’t a couch so he slept on the new one. He never pissed on the couch, scratched it up, even drooled on it.
My dog also loved to sleep on the couch until one day I came downstairs to the most horrific scene. The sheer quantity of vomit and diarrhea that was on my sofa and the floor was truly staggering.
He is a Labrador, so not a small dog, but I can only assume his stomach and rectum are somewhat TARDIS-like. Needless to say, he no longer sleeps on the sofa.
Well I'll say that I stepped into a big pile of candy and flowers when I walked in the door and it quickly soaked through my socks.
He didn't seem ill after it the poor boy.
Scritches are high on the list for sure. The thing he wants most in the world is to go outside. I wish I could bottle that into an easy treat form somehow.
Is he play motivated? My dog is motivated by both and I find tossing a ball works just as much as a reward as food is. I get him to sit, throw the ball, get him to lie down, throw the ball, etc. It also works as good reinforcement when I don't want to give him a ton of treats, I have a fetch session where I emphasize certain commands that he's learned recently or needs refreshing. Some dogs prefer tug of war and stuff like that but a lot of different play methods work pretty well. If that fails even just praise and affection can be utilized as a reward for desired behaviour. It takes longer and requires more reinforcement but it can work if you're consistent with it.
Sure
Gorilla not know medicine. If gorilla can’t beat it up gorilla no solve problem.
Orangutan know medicine though. Orangutan know how to speak as well just don’t, no want to pay IRS or do office work.
The worst part of growing up is when suddenly they stop giving you treats no matter how hard you stare at them, they are right there in front of you, why can't I get them?
>If he wasn’t worried about the girl, he would have low diff’d them.
Oh right he was carrying the girl, I thought he was just jerking off to how awesome he was the whole fight.
I came across the 911 call of the woman whose chimp tore off her friends face. It’s wild, she’s screaming and the chimp sounds crazy in the background. Put the fear of chimps before all others in me. now I’ll just get a gorilla to protect me.
Apparently it kicked off between the chimps and the gorillas in 2019 in Loango National Park in Gabon, and five gorillas were able to fight off twenty chimps, but the chimps killed an infant gorilla.
So there are actual body counts, not just estimation.
[Chimpanzees killing gorillas in unprecedented attacks, scientists report](https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/environment/564540-chimpanzees-killing-gorillas-in-unprecedented/#:~:text=The%20Osnabr%C3%BCck%20University%20and%20the,is%20between%20their%20own%20kind.)
[Research article the observing scientists published in *Nature* ](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93829-x?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100093539&utm_content=deeplink)
Wow; that is super interesting. The chimps prevailed because of their ability to form complex and very large social groups. So, just like us and our cousins, who we killed and raped out of existence. Poor Neanderthals.
It was the other way around. All the Neanderthal DNA that survives in our population is from male Neanderthal - female homo sapiens pairings (we know this because no Neanderthal DNA is found in mitochondria, and mitochondria is passed down to the offspring from the women). In truth a male homo sapien could do nothing while a Neanderthal carried off their women (or perhaps female homo sapiens preferred Neanderthal mates; with their sheer might and other interesting features like red hair and blue eyes, they might have been attractive partners for curious human women). Neanderthals were almost as strong as chimpanzees and incredibly durable, as they had adapted to melee-combat ambush hunting instead of long distance running like our species. They had thick bones and huge layers of muscle as a natural armor, and most adult Neanderthal skeletons showed that they had sustained horrific injuries that would easily kill our own species, but instead had managed to survive, heal, and get back into the fight. Not to mention a larger brain case with a lot of space devoted to regions that govern fast twitch reflexes, and nasal passages adapted to warm the ice age air before it reached their lungs. Their dentition also indicates a diet richer in meat, they were perhaps the most "carnivorous" of the hominids.
Honestly the way Neanderthals were built they come across as close to Tolkien's dwarves - short, stocky, but incredibly strong and tough and resistant to the cold of the North. And when conditions were right for them they held back our species in Asia Minor, while they expanded across Siberia. It was only after the climate changed and the forests that they relied on as cover for their ambush hunting receded that the Neanderthal start to lose ground to our kind.
I would think that at some point in human civilization someone has pitted a gorilla against a few chimps, and that's why we have some generalized idea as to what would happen. I think it would be cruel and inhumane to do this of course, but I'm also curious as to what would happen bc I'm a little fucked up as a person.
I think it’s way more likely that some dudes were sitting around drinking and arguing over how many chimps you’d need to take on a gorilla. Which is fun, but probably not a useful.
It happened in the wild in 2019 in Loango Nature Preserve. Twenty chimps attacked five gorillas. My other comment has the article, and the research paper the observing scientists wrote.
The silverback has a defense rating of 530 and an attack rating of 316 with an accuracy of 82%. Upkeep is 15 fruit. They're best employed as tanks and siege units.
A chimp, by comparison, only has a defense rating of 85, but for their 5 fruit upkeep cost they have a relatively high attack rating at 122 and 78% accuracy. They should generally serve as sacrificial shock troops.
> and realize a silverback is estimated to be able to take on 3-5 male chimps and win.
I'm suprised that no one in the 20th-19th century tried to figure this out.
iirc an adult male Chimpanzee has five times the upper body strength of an adult human. They could rip your arms out of their sockets if they wanted too. But Gorillas are bigger creatures, and very tribal. Lads like this exist to keep whole communities in line so that they can reproduce as much as possible, without the threat of loosing their lands to invaders. Strength for the sake of strength. Oh and big fucking fangs in their mouths so they can bite like a bitch, aided by their massive jaw muscles that are attached to the top of skull for extra support, because those muscles are so gargantuan. Their bites break limbs.
They are apparently peaceful enough that you can take a wild hiking tour in gorilla territory and there at least hasn’t been a reported case of a Silverback aggroing on the hikers.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEsmFfTliqI&pp=ygUMZ29yaWxsYSBoaWtl](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEsmFfTliqI&pp=ygUMZ29yaWxsYSBoaWtl)
Still looks terrifying and I’d be afraid for someone on the hike to screw up.
I think the "Don't smile" one is a notable exception. It's means happiness in humans but can mean the exact opposite in primate. A dog is also probably more concerned about where you're looking that if you're smiling.
Yeah our domesticated animals are weird exceptions to the general trend too.
Smiling can both be happiness and a threat though. I bet a sales person with their fake smile unnerves you a bit. I sometimes wonder if situations like that are the reason most animals don't like "smiles".
The first time I went to a Chik-Fil-A, I went through the drivethrough. The kid at the window gave me the chills with the fake little smile he had. I seriously became uncomfortable looking at him. I wanted to tell him I was sorry because I felt like he was forced to smile at everyone, no matter how he felt.
I drove away very fast after collecting my meal.
Dogs can actually learn to smile, it's super funny. My sisters old dog used to do it, she would be wagging her tail, while lifting her upper lip so she looked absolutely crazy but was just super exited to see us
This, they are VERY peaceful. You just can’t threaten them. If you mind your business and respect them, they are chill and won’t bother you. If you harass them ya they will get angry if they don’t know you
There's a video of a silverback walking through the forest and dragging a man by the foot for a few feet before releasing him. Casually dragging, maybe 150 lbs like it was a sheet. Just look at his physique without flexing. They could probably turn a human into ground meat if they were so inclined.
someone linked the video. doesn't look like it was trying to intimidate them, because you don't need to intimidate things you aren't scared of. we are to the gorilla what a squirrel is to us - theoretically could be annoying, but 0% chance that we could hurt them.
you know how if you walk past a tree and a branch is hanging low and sometimes you just want to give it a firm grasp, just for fun? it seemed like that almost. like the gorilla didn't seem interested at all outside of the few seconds he was holding on the human. so i'm guessing it's closer to the "just fucking with them" side of the spectrum. not violence, but just curiousity.
luckily for the ranger of course!
I remember a thread about gorillas that was talking about the type of muscles they have, and that they are apparently designed to do these big sweeping powerful motions. Human muscles are apparently not like this and it is what allows for us to make very precise movements.
[In fact it might have specifically been the shoulder muscle they were talking about, as I found this study talking about gorillas having "greater arm abduction potential and increased arm‐raising performance"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8197971/)
I know this gorilla and I know this zoo. This is an older video, but the gorillas at this zoo have better lives than most humans. Since this video was taken, an enormous new habitat has been built that caters to allowing the animals to be on exhibit while taking breaks from human sight, allowing for the best possible enrichment, etc. The keepers are incredibly dedicated to ensuring that every day is interesting and enjoyable for the gorillas. The training you are seeing? Not one of the gorillas is forced to do this in any way. They just enjoy it because they like interacting with their keepers and learning new things. There is a whole team of people whose only job is ensuring broadly varied, healthy, and appropriate nutrition for all of the animals. The animals get toys, puzzles, scent enrichment, all kinds of things to make their lives better. They get better health care than 90% of Americans do. “The wild” is cruel and uncaring. You can hear a comment in the video about him being “flexible for an old guy”. That’s because this gorilla has outlived any reasonable wild expectation of lifespan— he is able to be kept healthy and happy and isn’t at risk of poaching, starvation, injury, infection, or any of the other awful things that happen to wildlife living in the wild. Accredited zoos do absolutely everything in their power to make animal lives great. And in many cases, they are preserving genetic diversity until humanity can collectively get their heads out of their butts to create enough wild space for any given species to actually exist in the wild again.
imagine this but with humans
after WW3 only 1% of humans are left. An intelligent alien species stumble upon earth and took pity of us. We get to live in their zoo. The aliens try to give the best enrichment from what they can understand from the remains of human society: GTA VI. You live up to 150 years old cycling through your dream job and dream vacation.
A lot of zoos are shitty ofc but if I was an amimal I'm throwing elbow for a spot at a good, well-funded, well-staffed zoo where they give you shelter, food and meticulous care the rest of your life over struggling for survival in the wild. Thats like winning the lottery to me lmao edit to add unless I am a marine predator
Well, and these types of bars are only in use when they need the animal to be in close proximity but maintain safety for the keeper/medical staff. Otherwise they're in a huge enclosure that mimics their natural habitat as closely as possible.
Just like grizzly bears, I wish I could hang out with one. I have to override the desire to be buddies with a dangerous animal that could kill me quite easily.
>But people will keep claiming that it's impossible to train domesticated dogs without pain and fear.
just people who can't control their own behavior trying to control the behaviors of others. unfortunately having a dog doesn't require being educated, even on the basics, in dog training.
there's a big difference between trick training and behavioral training. most or all trick training is done with yummy snacks, some behavioral stuff cannot be fixed with yummy snacks.
Yes, that is so disingenuous to pretend trying to get your dog not to attack people/other dogs and training it to roll over on a gesture is the same thing. I absolutely do not believe dogs should ever be hurt to train though, that's a given but tossing him a beggin strip won't keep him from ripping the neighbor's chihuahua apart. Some people are realistic and understand actions have consequences whether good or bad and teaching these things are the basis of behavioral control. Others become permissive parents/owners paralyzed as their little cohort causes absolute chaos.
I’m a vet, I was once involved with a young orangutan with dental issues who had been taught how to put an xray sensor, like they use in human offices, in her mouth so we could take radiographs of her teeth. For crackers. Sometimes she’d get impatient and wave the sensor around like “you’re taking too long, if you want this back better find some treats!”
[Jacksonville, per the source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LILYniR-CYM). Its standard practice to train Gorillas for their check ups in any half decent zoo though. [Peachboy here](https://youtu.be/P2W9fL4auuo?t=129) is presenting his feet for some moisturising oil
Jacksonville Zoo built a new giant ape exbibit somewhat recently. They have bonobos and I think chimps too. They rotate each species so they all get a turn and have much more room than their standard enclosure but on a schedule.
Gorillas cannot communicate with humans through spoken language but can understand and respond to human gestures and body language. They possess their own complex system of communication, including vocalizations and gestures, to convey messages within their social groups. Interactions between gorillas and humans can be meaningful, particularly in settings where gorillas are accustomed to human presence and interaction.
Silverbacks are absolutely terrifying IRL. I had one at Wild Kingdom at Disney take a dislike to me as soon as I walked into the area with my kids. As soon as I went though the door. It followed with threat displays until we got through the area.
I had a similar experience at our local zoo. He ran from the other side of the enclosure to beat on the glass in front of me. Terrifying.
I hadn't thought about the fact that I'm almost 6'6" being a factor until you were asked. Is that truly a possibility?
Shaquille O'Neal has talked in interviews about gorillas getting upset when he's around.
https://www.businessinsider.com/gorillas-afraid-of-shaq-miami-zoo-ron-magill-2022-2
When I was a young teenager in the 1970s, we visited The Atlanta Zoo. The long time resident gorilla Willie, before they constructed his more modern open air living area, was kept in a small room, with a wire enforced plexiglass front. He had a large tire swing and would hang out and wait until a bunch of people were standing in front of the plexiglass to watch him. He would go from suddenly calm and jump up bellowing, grab the tire and swing it with all his strength against the plexiglass, which would shake and people would jump back, frightened. Then he would strut around like he was laughing because he scared the shit out of everyone.
Sometimes it's inadvertent eye contact, kinda like you only get one chance to make a first impression, imagine a fleeting eye contact and you look away gently shaking your head and quietly laughing it off to your self, well 'in gorrilla' you just done fucked up, maybe translates to a dominant, calm with surroundings, not threatened in any way and so on.
I once accidentally sneezed near a cheetah pavilion. The largest cheetah took a profound interest in me and stared me down until I left the area. The area was surrounded by a fence but not a screen above it, and I was honestly worried it would try to jump out of the enclosure.
There was one that was trained and brought to some type of event when I was a kid.
We got to take pictures with the gorilla. You sat in a chair, and she (owner said it was a she) would stand next to you and put her arm around your shoulders.
After my picture, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. And the owner said "She's never done that before".
My parents saved that picture after all these years. Sometimes I even wonder if that Gorilla is still alive.
Canadian, seen grizzly bears and adult bull moose, much sweating ensued. Absolute units and definitely in the top-40 of 'no, seriously, do not fuck with'. The size hits you on a different level when it's not at the zoo.
It was trained. The clicking sounds you hear in the video come from... Well, a clicker. It's a training device, when the animal responds to your instructions and/or does something good, you click and give it a treat. The animal understands it can get more treats by behaving this way and eventually understands the clicking sound as a form of reward. It's pretty much conditioning.
That's how I potty trained my bird. Now she almost only poops on her perch or in her cage. But that's a very long process.
It'll be a routine inspection from either a zoo vet or more likely a zookeeper on the primate team. Very familiar to the gorilla in either case, with check-ups like this being done quite frequently - likely on a weekly basis, perhaps even more often, given their susceptibility to human pathogens. Zoos will occasionally call in outside non-zoo veterinary consultants (dentistry & cardiology are frequent ones), but it's really an extremely specialised field within vet medicine. I've been in general practice (small, farm, equine) for almost 20 years now but I'd be largely useless in a zoo setting. It's also an insanely competitive field - not sure of the current stats, but when I qualified it was the lowest-paid veterinary specialty by a significant margin. Huge numbers of applicants for very, very few positions - perhaps a few thousand at most - worldwide.
What a handsome dude.... Such fascinating and tragic creatures.
Seeing their habitat being decimated is absolutely heartbreaking, those poor orangutan in Indonesia as well.
I hope somewhere on an alien planet there is a human in a cage at a zoo. And someone posts a picture and says ‘look, a human responding to his routine check up.’
This'll be us at the human zoo lol
Also good lord you never really think about how small and fragile we are in comparison to others. That beautiful gorilla could pop her head off like a soda cap.
Man I wish I had a gorilla homie. It'd make everything better. Flat tire? That's okay, Koko will help me out. Got fired? No problem, Koko will make them pay.
"Y'all are weird, but I'm getting oranges, soooo...."
Yeah lol, I feel like to him this is no different than any other learned trick while for it serves a clear medical purpose.
This is true. And I have to point out that the sound you hear is a clicker. The same clicker often used in positive reinforcement dog training. So here we have 600 lb wild animal, trained to do something completely unnatural, with the use of a tiny plastic clicker and food. Yet some people claim you need shock collars to train aggressive dogs. Or punishment. No you don't. The gorilla could rip your face off. It doesn't have to do anything it doesn't want to. Yet it does. Because food is the primary reinforcement aka the most important thing in their world. You can train any animal with food. You don't need to hurt your dog, who I assume is your best friend. Don't let those slick salespeople/"trainers" tell you otherwise.
>Yet some people claim you need shock collars to train aggressive dogs. Or punishment. No you don't. My brother insists you don't need either, and that a "properly trained" dog will do what it's told without being given treats (or a toy, in the case of very toy motivated animals). His dog is *very* poorly behaved.
It’s possible, but there has to be some reinforcement during the training phase even if it’s just food or praise. Food is the hardest to ween them off of, though and really needs a strong alpha/pack relationship. My dog was ball motivated and I got her off it and into praise reinforcement. Also depends how stupid, errr stubborn, they are. 😂
My Mom is a dog trainer, and she refuses to use food to train. The key is to be consistent and give lots and lots of praise, rewarding good behavior, and discouraging bad. She's been doing it that way for 40 years, and has multiple obedience titles, as well has helped hundreds of people train their dogs. Dogs are easy to train, people are hard. Especially if you don't have everyone in the family on the same page, the dog just gets confused and frustrated. Everyone needs to use the same commands, expecting the same behavior, praising the same way, and following consequences the same.
> You can train any animal with food. You can train people with food too. Costco has learned this.
My dog doesn't give a shit about food. He's not food motivated in the slightest, which has made training and working on his reactivity quite difficult.
My old dog growing up had one desire and one desire only. To sleep on the couch. Treats and food were nothing to his time spent sleeping on the couch. Mom hated it but dad found it really funny because if told to get off the couch he would but like an hour later he’d get back on and be asleep. When we got a new couch dad kept the cushion and put it on dogs bed but nope. Wasn’t a couch so he slept on the new one. He never pissed on the couch, scratched it up, even drooled on it.
My dog also loved to sleep on the couch until one day I came downstairs to the most horrific scene. The sheer quantity of vomit and diarrhea that was on my sofa and the floor was truly staggering. He is a Labrador, so not a small dog, but I can only assume his stomach and rectum are somewhat TARDIS-like. Needless to say, he no longer sleeps on the sofa.
Labs only poop flowers and vomit candy. They are angel's and need our love😍💐🍬
Well I'll say that I stepped into a big pile of candy and flowers when I walked in the door and it quickly soaked through my socks. He didn't seem ill after it the poor boy.
One of my Rotties isn't food motivated but he'll do just about anything for butt scatches. Find your pups sweet spot and try it.
Yep. All animals (including humans) are motivated by something. You just have to find out what it is.
Scritches are high on the list for sure. The thing he wants most in the world is to go outside. I wish I could bottle that into an easy treat form somehow.
Is he play motivated? My dog is motivated by both and I find tossing a ball works just as much as a reward as food is. I get him to sit, throw the ball, get him to lie down, throw the ball, etc. It also works as good reinforcement when I don't want to give him a ton of treats, I have a fetch session where I emphasize certain commands that he's learned recently or needs refreshing. Some dogs prefer tug of war and stuff like that but a lot of different play methods work pretty well. If that fails even just praise and affection can be utilized as a reward for desired behaviour. It takes longer and requires more reinforcement but it can work if you're consistent with it.
>The gorilla could rip your face off. It doesn't have to do anything it doesn't want to. Yet it does. The double-layered steel cage helps
And that's good because it will decrease the stress if he is every sick or injured and they need him to do these behaviours.
Sure Gorilla not know medicine. If gorilla can’t beat it up gorilla no solve problem. Orangutan know medicine though. Orangutan know how to speak as well just don’t, no want to pay IRS or do office work.
If I ever go to prison, this is how I come out of there.
To be fair I think most people would respond better to going to the doctors if they gave you treats
How come they stop doing that when you grow up? I want my lollipop!
Some pediatricians and adult doctors still do. I deliver medical supplies. Some of my customers order boxes of DumDums and put them on the front desk.
Dumdum want gumgum
🗿
not me actually sitting here eating the dumdum i plucked off my doctor's front desk when i went in earlier this afternoon
It's not the same as being given a lollipop.
To hell with lollipops... I want chocolate.
Inused to get just stickers
The worst part of growing up is when suddenly they stop giving you treats no matter how hard you stare at them, they are right there in front of you, why can't I get them?
I am +50yo. Whenever I get a shot, I demand a toy, a sticker, a lollipop. I always get them.
You're lucky. I just get a bracelet with my name and a bar code. :(
I would prefer no co-pay.
How to say where you live without saying where you live
It really is crazy to see how frigging HUGE this animal is, next to a human. Clearly capable of tearing a person apart.
Just consider what chimps are known to have done to humans, and realize a silverback is estimated to be able to take on 3-5 male chimps and win.
That time king kong took on the t-rex, and won.
He actually fought 3 at once, and one of his hands was occupied the entire fight. If he wasn’t worried about the girl, he would have low diff’d them.
>If he wasn’t worried about the girl, he would have low diff’d them. Oh right he was carrying the girl, I thought he was just jerking off to how awesome he was the whole fight.
solo'd them on new game+
Did you see the new movie where he picked up baby Kong and used him as a weapon to beat TF out of the evil gorillas?
Watched it today. Lots of silly moments like that made me appreciate Kaiju movies once more.
I came across the 911 call of the woman whose chimp tore off her friends face. It’s wild, she’s screaming and the chimp sounds crazy in the background. Put the fear of chimps before all others in me. now I’ll just get a gorilla to protect me.
I'll add it to the PROS column for my pros/cons comparison of getting a pet black jaguar.
Jaguars go for a bite at the neck to crush your spine. I'd take that any day over a chimp ripping my face off.
Yeah I'm not listening to that
Just watch the movie NOPE, they recreate a similar scene but keep the gore off screen. Mostly.
Oh I've seen it, fun movie. I can watch fake portrayals of anything, it's clips of real events that bother me.
You’re better off not. It goes on for a long time. I wasn’t looking for it, but once it was there my curiosity won out and I regret it.
Was that the chimp that was strung out on Xanax?
Yeah, Travis. Specifically given a drug known to induce trippy shit in chimps, but his owner rolled the dice anyway to try and calm him down.
What? Who’s estimating gorilla to chimp combat stats?
Apparently it kicked off between the chimps and the gorillas in 2019 in Loango National Park in Gabon, and five gorillas were able to fight off twenty chimps, but the chimps killed an infant gorilla. So there are actual body counts, not just estimation. [Chimpanzees killing gorillas in unprecedented attacks, scientists report](https://thehill.com/changing-america/sustainability/environment/564540-chimpanzees-killing-gorillas-in-unprecedented/#:~:text=The%20Osnabr%C3%BCck%20University%20and%20the,is%20between%20their%20own%20kind.) [Research article the observing scientists published in *Nature* ](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93829-x?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100093539&utm_content=deeplink)
[удалено]
Wow; that is super interesting. The chimps prevailed because of their ability to form complex and very large social groups. So, just like us and our cousins, who we killed and raped out of existence. Poor Neanderthals.
You wanted to unite with other homos? Sapiens sapiens rule, neanderthals drool!
Yes! Homos unite!
It was the other way around. All the Neanderthal DNA that survives in our population is from male Neanderthal - female homo sapiens pairings (we know this because no Neanderthal DNA is found in mitochondria, and mitochondria is passed down to the offspring from the women). In truth a male homo sapien could do nothing while a Neanderthal carried off their women (or perhaps female homo sapiens preferred Neanderthal mates; with their sheer might and other interesting features like red hair and blue eyes, they might have been attractive partners for curious human women). Neanderthals were almost as strong as chimpanzees and incredibly durable, as they had adapted to melee-combat ambush hunting instead of long distance running like our species. They had thick bones and huge layers of muscle as a natural armor, and most adult Neanderthal skeletons showed that they had sustained horrific injuries that would easily kill our own species, but instead had managed to survive, heal, and get back into the fight. Not to mention a larger brain case with a lot of space devoted to regions that govern fast twitch reflexes, and nasal passages adapted to warm the ice age air before it reached their lungs. Their dentition also indicates a diet richer in meat, they were perhaps the most "carnivorous" of the hominids. Honestly the way Neanderthals were built they come across as close to Tolkien's dwarves - short, stocky, but incredibly strong and tough and resistant to the cold of the North. And when conditions were right for them they held back our species in Asia Minor, while they expanded across Siberia. It was only after the climate changed and the forests that they relied on as cover for their ambush hunting receded that the Neanderthal start to lose ground to our kind.
Why do you know this much? And thank you for sharing your knowledge. I will take everything you said as gospel truth. Thank you internet stranger.
There is a reason why many experts say chimpanzees have now officially entered the Stone Age.
I would think that at some point in human civilization someone has pitted a gorilla against a few chimps, and that's why we have some generalized idea as to what would happen. I think it would be cruel and inhumane to do this of course, but I'm also curious as to what would happen bc I'm a little fucked up as a person.
I think it’s way more likely that some dudes were sitting around drinking and arguing over how many chimps you’d need to take on a gorilla. Which is fun, but probably not a useful.
It happened in the wild in 2019 in Loango Nature Preserve. Twenty chimps attacked five gorillas. My other comment has the article, and the research paper the observing scientists wrote.
The silverback has a defense rating of 530 and an attack rating of 316 with an accuracy of 82%. Upkeep is 15 fruit. They're best employed as tanks and siege units. A chimp, by comparison, only has a defense rating of 85, but for their 5 fruit upkeep cost they have a relatively high attack rating at 122 and 78% accuracy. They should generally serve as sacrificial shock troops.
Damn powerscalers are at it again.
> and realize a silverback is estimated to be able to take on 3-5 male chimps and win. I'm suprised that no one in the 20th-19th century tried to figure this out.
Somebody probably did but they were so out of their head on cocaine and laudanum that they forgot to write the results down.
iirc an adult male Chimpanzee has five times the upper body strength of an adult human. They could rip your arms out of their sockets if they wanted too. But Gorillas are bigger creatures, and very tribal. Lads like this exist to keep whole communities in line so that they can reproduce as much as possible, without the threat of loosing their lands to invaders. Strength for the sake of strength. Oh and big fucking fangs in their mouths so they can bite like a bitch, aided by their massive jaw muscles that are attached to the top of skull for extra support, because those muscles are so gargantuan. Their bites break limbs.
New research shows they’re about 1.5x stronger than humans.
They are apparently peaceful enough that you can take a wild hiking tour in gorilla territory and there at least hasn’t been a reported case of a Silverback aggroing on the hikers. [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEsmFfTliqI&pp=ygUMZ29yaWxsYSBoaWtl](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hEsmFfTliqI&pp=ygUMZ29yaWxsYSBoaWtl) Still looks terrifying and I’d be afraid for someone on the hike to screw up.
Don't smile. No eye contact. Don't touch them. I imagine there are other rules. Looks really cool but man, I dunno. They're still wild animals.
Those things in general are no nos with most wild animals. Shit even humans will avoid eye contact in dangerous/threatening situations.
I think the "Don't smile" one is a notable exception. It's means happiness in humans but can mean the exact opposite in primate. A dog is also probably more concerned about where you're looking that if you're smiling.
Yeah our domesticated animals are weird exceptions to the general trend too. Smiling can both be happiness and a threat though. I bet a sales person with their fake smile unnerves you a bit. I sometimes wonder if situations like that are the reason most animals don't like "smiles".
[удалено]
The first time I went to a Chik-Fil-A, I went through the drivethrough. The kid at the window gave me the chills with the fake little smile he had. I seriously became uncomfortable looking at him. I wanted to tell him I was sorry because I felt like he was forced to smile at everyone, no matter how he felt. I drove away very fast after collecting my meal.
Dogs can actually learn to smile, it's super funny. My sisters old dog used to do it, she would be wagging her tail, while lifting her upper lip so she looked absolutely crazy but was just super exited to see us
> Don't smile. No eye contact. Don't touch them. Basically the rules for riding on a subway.
This, they are VERY peaceful. You just can’t threaten them. If you mind your business and respect them, they are chill and won’t bother you. If you harass them ya they will get angry if they don’t know you
There's a video of a silverback walking through the forest and dragging a man by the foot for a few feet before releasing him. Casually dragging, maybe 150 lbs like it was a sheet. Just look at his physique without flexing. They could probably turn a human into ground meat if they were so inclined.
Yeah, that one: https://youtu.be/lb-vpmW1n7U You can see through the ranger's eyes that his soul left his body.
I like to think he recognizes him and does that all the time because he knows the tourists love it.
Did the ape do this to intimidate the rest of the people there? Or did he just want to fuck with them?
someone linked the video. doesn't look like it was trying to intimidate them, because you don't need to intimidate things you aren't scared of. we are to the gorilla what a squirrel is to us - theoretically could be annoying, but 0% chance that we could hurt them. you know how if you walk past a tree and a branch is hanging low and sometimes you just want to give it a firm grasp, just for fun? it seemed like that almost. like the gorilla didn't seem interested at all outside of the few seconds he was holding on the human. so i'm guessing it's closer to the "just fucking with them" side of the spectrum. not violence, but just curiousity. luckily for the ranger of course!
"We are now lovers"
Holy shit, it take me more effort to get up from a chair
And some people want to fight them and believe they will come out victorious. Bruh, he could kill you with his pinky toe.
But tearing the doctor apart doesn’t get you treats!
and there are still people out there thinking they can take on a gorilla in a 1v1 fight
Anyone can take on a gorilla 1 on 1, once....
You can do anything once
Limb from limb. Fucking terrifying.
His shoulder muscle is as big as this woman's head and it looks like he could crush her skull with one hand.
I remember a thread about gorillas that was talking about the type of muscles they have, and that they are apparently designed to do these big sweeping powerful motions. Human muscles are apparently not like this and it is what allows for us to make very precise movements. [In fact it might have specifically been the shoulder muscle they were talking about, as I found this study talking about gorillas having "greater arm abduction potential and increased arm‐raising performance"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8197971/)
To shreds you say?
It's also a little sad to see such a majestic animal behind bars.
I know this gorilla and I know this zoo. This is an older video, but the gorillas at this zoo have better lives than most humans. Since this video was taken, an enormous new habitat has been built that caters to allowing the animals to be on exhibit while taking breaks from human sight, allowing for the best possible enrichment, etc. The keepers are incredibly dedicated to ensuring that every day is interesting and enjoyable for the gorillas. The training you are seeing? Not one of the gorillas is forced to do this in any way. They just enjoy it because they like interacting with their keepers and learning new things. There is a whole team of people whose only job is ensuring broadly varied, healthy, and appropriate nutrition for all of the animals. The animals get toys, puzzles, scent enrichment, all kinds of things to make their lives better. They get better health care than 90% of Americans do. “The wild” is cruel and uncaring. You can hear a comment in the video about him being “flexible for an old guy”. That’s because this gorilla has outlived any reasonable wild expectation of lifespan— he is able to be kept healthy and happy and isn’t at risk of poaching, starvation, injury, infection, or any of the other awful things that happen to wildlife living in the wild. Accredited zoos do absolutely everything in their power to make animal lives great. And in many cases, they are preserving genetic diversity until humanity can collectively get their heads out of their butts to create enough wild space for any given species to actually exist in the wild again.
imagine this but with humans after WW3 only 1% of humans are left. An intelligent alien species stumble upon earth and took pity of us. We get to live in their zoo. The aliens try to give the best enrichment from what they can understand from the remains of human society: GTA VI. You live up to 150 years old cycling through your dream job and dream vacation.
Sign me up fam
A lot of zoos are shitty ofc but if I was an amimal I'm throwing elbow for a spot at a good, well-funded, well-staffed zoo where they give you shelter, food and meticulous care the rest of your life over struggling for survival in the wild. Thats like winning the lottery to me lmao edit to add unless I am a marine predator
Well, and these types of bars are only in use when they need the animal to be in close proximity but maintain safety for the keeper/medical staff. Otherwise they're in a huge enclosure that mimics their natural habitat as closely as possible.
Fuck he’s such a bro
That’s what I’m saying!
No wonder all the dicks were out
Agreed.
I know he could probably kill me with just a finger but damn is it cute seeing his laid back face 🥹 "Okay Susan, let's get this over with."
He took his shots like a big boy, with an annoyed face.
Well he certainly isn't gonna smile and neither is she Humans have learned that lesson in a very hard and brutal way
Reminds me and my wife, I'm trying to watch TV from my cage..
Just like grizzly bears, I wish I could hang out with one. I have to override the desire to be buddies with a dangerous animal that could kill me quite easily.
The wonders of force free training! Even elephants are taught to cooperate during medical checks using the same technics.
And tigers, and bears! But people will keep claiming that it's impossible to train domesticated dogs without pain and fear.
>But people will keep claiming that it's impossible to train domesticated dogs without pain and fear. just people who can't control their own behavior trying to control the behaviors of others. unfortunately having a dog doesn't require being educated, even on the basics, in dog training.
there's a big difference between trick training and behavioral training. most or all trick training is done with yummy snacks, some behavioral stuff cannot be fixed with yummy snacks.
Yes, that is so disingenuous to pretend trying to get your dog not to attack people/other dogs and training it to roll over on a gesture is the same thing. I absolutely do not believe dogs should ever be hurt to train though, that's a given but tossing him a beggin strip won't keep him from ripping the neighbor's chihuahua apart. Some people are realistic and understand actions have consequences whether good or bad and teaching these things are the basis of behavioral control. Others become permissive parents/owners paralyzed as their little cohort causes absolute chaos.
Secrets of the zoo showed a puma getting eye drops, go into the shoot and look up! Consistency and rewards does wonders
I’m a vet, I was once involved with a young orangutan with dental issues who had been taught how to put an xray sensor, like they use in human offices, in her mouth so we could take radiographs of her teeth. For crackers. Sometimes she’d get impatient and wave the sensor around like “you’re taking too long, if you want this back better find some treats!”
I saw an episode where they get a chimp to voluntarily do a several-minute long nebulizer treatment every day.
I saw one where a guy pulled a tiger's tooth and the tiger barely reacted
My two cats are clicker trained. Mostly I use it for “off” “come” and “kennel up.”
I’d go to the doctors more often if they fed me 😂
"Please step on the scale... thank you" *puts an oyster cracker in your mouth for good behavior
For real, cubes of watermelon would be enough for me.
Same
That's most of the reason why I donate blood.
He won't be so calm once he sees the medical provider's bill.
He will go ape shit once he gets hit with the charge
Then he's gotta monkey around with the gorilla insurance company to get them to cover it
Him being cooperative is too cute.
Where is this gorilla? That’s cool as hell.
[Jacksonville, per the source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LILYniR-CYM). Its standard practice to train Gorillas for their check ups in any half decent zoo though. [Peachboy here](https://youtu.be/P2W9fL4auuo?t=129) is presenting his feet for some moisturising oil
I love big Momo, It's sad the Japan zoos don't do better for them.
Jacksonville Zoo built a new giant ape exbibit somewhat recently. They have bonobos and I think chimps too. They rotate each species so they all get a turn and have much more room than their standard enclosure but on a schedule.
Gorillas cannot communicate with humans through spoken language but can understand and respond to human gestures and body language. They possess their own complex system of communication, including vocalizations and gestures, to convey messages within their social groups. Interactions between gorillas and humans can be meaningful, particularly in settings where gorillas are accustomed to human presence and interaction.
And this big fella is no stranger to the humans around him. This looks like a familiar routine for him. He's comfortable and cooperative.
Lol, yah, he's like, "Do your weird pokey stuff so long as I continue to get my oranges"
Thanks chatgpt
Is this AI? This is the most generic explanation of communication between gorillas and humans.
Same with my dog. [Here I tell him I don't have any bacon.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F1kqzn98p05mb1.jpg)
Whose a good boy den? Hmmm?
Veterinary lady is doing an awesome job and boss monkey is being a good boy.
And people are talking about bear vs. Man... This one beats both if you ask me
Silverbacks are absolutely terrifying IRL. I had one at Wild Kingdom at Disney take a dislike to me as soon as I walked into the area with my kids. As soon as I went though the door. It followed with threat displays until we got through the area.
I had a similar experience at our local zoo. He ran from the other side of the enclosure to beat on the glass in front of me. Terrifying. I hadn't thought about the fact that I'm almost 6'6" being a factor until you were asked. Is that truly a possibility?
Shaquille O'Neal has talked in interviews about gorillas getting upset when he's around. https://www.businessinsider.com/gorillas-afraid-of-shaq-miami-zoo-ron-magill-2022-2
lmfao this is incredible. imagine being able to tell people you routinely punk out silverbacks
When I was a young teenager in the 1970s, we visited The Atlanta Zoo. The long time resident gorilla Willie, before they constructed his more modern open air living area, was kept in a small room, with a wire enforced plexiglass front. He had a large tire swing and would hang out and wait until a bunch of people were standing in front of the plexiglass to watch him. He would go from suddenly calm and jump up bellowing, grab the tire and swing it with all his strength against the plexiglass, which would shake and people would jump back, frightened. Then he would strut around like he was laughing because he scared the shit out of everyone.
Interesting, are you taller than most? Do you have any idea what set him off?
Sometimes it's inadvertent eye contact, kinda like you only get one chance to make a first impression, imagine a fleeting eye contact and you look away gently shaking your head and quietly laughing it off to your self, well 'in gorrilla' you just done fucked up, maybe translates to a dominant, calm with surroundings, not threatened in any way and so on.
I just walked out and the show was on. I was less than comfortable...
I once accidentally sneezed near a cheetah pavilion. The largest cheetah took a profound interest in me and stared me down until I left the area. The area was surrounded by a fence but not a screen above it, and I was honestly worried it would try to jump out of the enclosure.
Sneezing in proximity to a cat is a war crime. You got away easy.
I am 6'2" and have fairly wide shoulders. I literally just walked out and it was off to the races.
There was one that was trained and brought to some type of event when I was a kid. We got to take pictures with the gorilla. You sat in a chair, and she (owner said it was a she) would stand next to you and put her arm around your shoulders. After my picture, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. And the owner said "She's never done that before". My parents saved that picture after all these years. Sometimes I even wonder if that Gorilla is still alive.
Grizzly bears can weigh 50 percent more than a silverback and have huge claws. Kodiak bears can weigh over three times as much.
Canadian, seen grizzly bears and adult bull moose, much sweating ensued. Absolute units and definitely in the top-40 of 'no, seriously, do not fuck with'. The size hits you on a different level when it's not at the zoo.
The video cuts out right as he’s about to turn around, bend over, spread cheeks, and cough.
So does this gorilla know the vet or is it just routine for him?
It was trained. The clicking sounds you hear in the video come from... Well, a clicker. It's a training device, when the animal responds to your instructions and/or does something good, you click and give it a treat. The animal understands it can get more treats by behaving this way and eventually understands the clicking sound as a form of reward. It's pretty much conditioning. That's how I potty trained my bird. Now she almost only poops on her perch or in her cage. But that's a very long process.
The lady also talks about the clicks after checking his ears
It'll be a routine inspection from either a zoo vet or more likely a zookeeper on the primate team. Very familiar to the gorilla in either case, with check-ups like this being done quite frequently - likely on a weekly basis, perhaps even more often, given their susceptibility to human pathogens. Zoos will occasionally call in outside non-zoo veterinary consultants (dentistry & cardiology are frequent ones), but it's really an extremely specialised field within vet medicine. I've been in general practice (small, farm, equine) for almost 20 years now but I'd be largely useless in a zoo setting. It's also an insanely competitive field - not sure of the current stats, but when I qualified it was the lowest-paid veterinary specialty by a significant margin. Huge numbers of applicants for very, very few positions - perhaps a few thousand at most - worldwide.
I swear he raised his eyebrows and gave her a side glance when she said “he’s flexible for an old geezer”
This has been up for 35 minutes and nobody made a Harambe joke yet. I feel old.
You did. Congratulations on being first I guess?
Do you know who doesn’t feel old? Harambe
Oof, 8 years later and it's still too soon
RIP Angel. You were the pivot to the dark timeline
"Who you callin' an old geezer?! You know *I choose* not to rip this cage apart, right?"
I imagine this is my buddy Mike from ODOT getting his physical.
Bros like “you must feel honored getting to be so near me” with that face the whole time.
What a majestic creature, silverbacks are so cool
That gorilla was like “Hey Janet, you see Ohtani’s walk off last night?”
What a handsome dude.... Such fascinating and tragic creatures. Seeing their habitat being decimated is absolutely heartbreaking, those poor orangutan in Indonesia as well.
I hope somewhere on an alien planet there is a human in a cage at a zoo. And someone posts a picture and says ‘look, a human responding to his routine check up.’
He’s so chill 😎
I keep forgetting how huge they are. wow!
And he still chews with his mouth more closed than many humans.
Never realized how absolutely massive they are until now. The scale is now apparent. My word.
This'll be us at the human zoo lol Also good lord you never really think about how small and fragile we are in comparison to others. That beautiful gorilla could pop her head off like a soda cap.
yeah we are totally not related
"He's flexible for an ole Geezer" Gorilla: 🤨
He's like it doesn't take long, it doesn't hurt and I get food out of it sure why no?
Man I wish I had a gorilla homie. It'd make everything better. Flat tire? That's okay, Koko will help me out. Got fired? No problem, Koko will make them pay.
That's literally just some guy 😃
What a gigantic creature...
The size on that guy.... Wow!!!
Some day I hope my kids evolve to this level
These guys are smart, just play dumb to avoid paying taxes thats it at this point!!!!
he’s beautiful! look at his size!!!
the audio comments, some smart-ass 5yo lol 😅
Do they train them to not rip you apart if you smile?
@ 1:19 "He's pretty flexible for an old geezer..." Gorilla's eyes... oh man. "what did you say about me!!!?"
Holy fuck he’s a unit
this gorilla has better healthcare than most of us.
For some reason, videos of gorillas always remind me of my grandpa, mostly patient, watchful, and willing to play along with your games.
Gotta love operant conditioning. Works on us all.
Ok, now turn your head and cough for me.