Gorilla at Melbourne Zoo

This is one of a group of Western Lowland Gorillas that live at Melbourne Zoo.

The western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) is a subspecies of the western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) that lives in montane, primary, and secondary forests and lowland swamps in Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

Western lowland gorilla groups travel within a home range averaging 3 to 18 miles². Gorillas do not display territorial behaviour, and neighboring groups often overlap ranges. The group usually favours a certain area within the home range but seems to follow a seasonal pattern depending upon the availability of ripening fruits and, at some sites, localised large open clearings.

Gorillas live in family groupings of one dominant male, five to seven adult females, children and adolescents, and possibly a few non-dominant males. Gorillas reproduce slowly because females do not begin reproducing until the age of nine or ten and usually only produce one baby approximately every five years.

In the 1980s, a census taken of the gorilla populations in equatorial Africa was thought to be 100,000. Researchers adjusted the figure after years of poaching and deforestation had reduced the population to approximately 50,000. Surveys conducted by the Wildlife Conservation Society in 2006 and 2007 found more than 100,000 previously unreported gorillas have been living in the swamp forests of Lake Tele Community Reserve and in neighboring Marantaceae (dryland) forests in the Republic of the Congo. With the new discovery, the current population of western lowland gorillas could be around 150,000–200,000. However, gorillas remain vulnerable to Ebola, deforestation, and poaching.

(Text taken from Wikipedia)