Endangered Species Tigers Fact Guide Main Gorillas Gorillas, the largest of the great apes, were long inaccurately portrayed as ferocious and aggressive. The well-known movie image of King Kong was fed by and has fueled such misconceptions. As humans have become more familiar with gorillas, both in captivity and in the wild, gorillas' true nature as shy, gentle vegetarians that only attack when threatened has become apparent. In the wild, gorillas inhabit rain forests in equatorial Africa. Lowland gorillas are familiar to us as the star attractions of the zoo scene and are the only gorillas to have been studied in captivity.
Females are smaller and weigh only about half as much.
Like the other apes, gorillas have no tails. They usually travel along on all fours with their weight on their feet and on the knuckles of their hands. Their bodies are adapted to this gait, with an armspan that greatly exceeds their standing height. Mountain gorillas have longer, silkier hair than the lowland varieties. Mature males are called silverbacks because the hair across their backs becomes silver with age.