Eastern lowland gorillas have a similar diet, but eat fruit to a larger extent. They eat mainly leaves and the stems and pith of herbaceous plants in great quantities, but when available they prefer fruit ( Watts, 1984, 2003 Rothman et al., 2007, 2008). Mountain gorillas have the most herbaceous diet of any living ape. The skeleton of a gorilla ( Gorilla gorilla). Gorillas use their great strength to good advantage when foraging, often ripping apart branches or whole trees.įIGURE 7.10. In the trees they are relatively good climbers, but they rarely use suspensory feeding postures. Rather than support their forelimb on the palm of their hand (like most primates) or on the palmar surface of their fingers (like many baboons), they support it on the dorsal surface of the third and fourth digits of their curled hands. On the ground, all gorillas move by quadrupedal walking and running ( Doran, 1996) like chimpanzees, gorillas have an unusual hand posture for quadrupedal standing and moving, called knuckle-walking ( Fig. They are much more arboreal, especially females and youngsters, and they normally feed, rest, and build their sleeping nests both in trees and on the ground ( Mehlman and Doran, 2002). Western gorillas are found in a wide range of forests. Adult mountain gorillas rarely climb trees, and they nest on the ground ( Schaller, 1963 Rothman et al., 2006). Mountain gorillas show a preference for secondary and herbaceous forests and are among the most terrestrial of all primates. Gorillas have a limited distribution in the tropical forests of sub-Saharan Africa. In mountain gorillas, the hallux is somewhat adducted and connected to the other digits by webbing, giving them a very human-like footprint. Their hindlimbs are relatively short, and their feet are broad. Their trunk is relatively short and broad and has a wide thorax and a broad, basin-like pelvis. Their hands are very broad and have a large pollex and (like all African apes) dermal ridges on the dorsal surface of their digits. Gorillas have relatively long snouts, pronounced brow ridges, and, in males, well-developed sagittal and nuchal crests. They have large, tusk-like canines and relatively small incisors. The molar teeth of gorillas have a greater development of crests than those of any other hominoid, a feature associated with their folivory. This dimorphism is also evident in many aspects of their skeletal anatomy, where it manifests itself in the greater general robustness of the males. Gorillas have extreme sexual size dimorphism: females weigh 70–90 kg and males up to 200 kg. The mountain gorilla ( Gorilla beringei) of the Virguna volcanoes of Rwanda. So honestly, I'm not sure if the lion is stronger than a Silverback, more powerful definitely yes. Even easily lifting and tossing huge logs with ONE ARM that took at least 8 adult men to move. I've read accounts of Silverbacks uprooting small tree's and throwing them, easily bending iron bars and tearing apart banana tree's and thick bamboo with ease.

I've never seen nor heard of a lion dragging 1000kg. Lions don't pull down giraffe's using brute strength, they maul the giraffe and the giraffe slowly weakens and then gets pulled down. A male silver-backed gorilla has a maximum strength of around 800 kg, but an adult African male lion can overcome much more than that. in reality, an African lion is stronger than the silverback gorilla, as it is heavier and has more muscle mass to pull heavier things than the gorilla, such as taking down a 1,200 kg giraffe bull using its own body weight and dragging an animal weighing more than 1,000 kg, the African lion (male) in nature weighs an average of 188 - 193.7 kg and the silverback gorilla 160 - 172 ks, this indicates that the lion being significantly heavier, he will have more strength physical and more muscle mass.

The Silverback is probably stronger though. Gorilla's have very soft and thin skin, a lions razor-sharp claws is gonna tear right through the Gorilla. Dec 20, 2020I used to think a Silverback Gorilla was capable of killing a lion, but breaking the fight down and weighing both animals advantages, clearly shows that the lion should be heavily favoured in this match-up and would kill the ape.

Silverback gorilla strength