What do gorillas eat
It is perhaps surprising that an animal as large and robust as the mountain gorilla is typically a herbivore. Gorillas eat over 120 different species of plants – feeding on stems, bamboo shoots and fruits. They rarely need to drink water since their diet is so rich in succulent herbs, from which gorillas get a higher level of water and given that gorillas start feeding early, they consume dew which keeps them going throughout the day. once you take a gorilla safari with us, while with the for that one hour, keenly look at how they might be using the hair at the back of their hands, they end up absorb water and definitely you will watch gorillas sucking it.
Most of the day they are feeding and you find young females with big bellies and look pregnant but in essence its filled with leave, on a good day without any disturbance, and feeding at ease, an adult male gorilla may consume more than 18 kg (40 lb) of vegetation on a daily basis.
Given that we are mostly focusing an Mountain Gorillas which live in high altitude areas in Bwindi and the Virungas conservation area, Gorilla beringei beringei hardly find fruits available as it is hard for then to shrive successfully at beyond certain attitudinal ranges. in summary gorilla diet is about 85% fresh leaves and shoots, bamboo shoots are the favorite, and stems which helps them mostly in breaking down digestion, 7% is roots, 4% is flowers, 2% is fruit all these are supplemented by 2% ants, snails, and grubs.
In their feeding adventures, Gorillas are incredibly to the extent that they trees which delicious leaves that are not in their reach, this is mostly done by silver bucks as they are heavier and cannot climb like the young ones do, this is also evident as we have observed adult males and females shred apart banana trees to get to the interior tender pith which is not dead, its always very fresh even after the banana has been cut down for a period of 3 months and has a lot of water.
Gorillas being closer to humans, that is to say 98% genetically identical, and to chimps to, they are very selective foragers, unlike other apes and primates, gorillas usually consume a few parts of the vegetation which is specific just like a human mind and a set menu all this in aided by the agile lips and hand dexterity which helps the gorilla to manipulate the vegetation for that particular portion they want to consume.
Just like humans, Gorillas do plan for the next couple of weeks away, they do not over consume and exploit one particular area for food, they feed with conscience and this allows food to quickly replenish in a shorter time and this is evident that the habituated gorilla groups almost feed in the same ranges for almost a whole year and taking a case from Rwanda, at times we have groups which offer shorter trekking experiences all year round viz aviz others which are longer.