Keeping up with gorillas in their natural habitat is a challenge but the reward is priceless - fleeting glimpses into their daily life. Kingo is a superb silverback Western Lowland Gorilla in his prime, leader of one of the groups habituated for research at Mondika, a study site run by WCS in northern Congo, near the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park. The video starts in an unpromising thicket but bear with me as I move to find a gap and you'll see mighty hands delicately peeling a slender rattan shoot. At the end, notice Kingo's infant son looking up at him - what a role model, and teacher - with much to learn (mostly from his Mother though) about how to find and identify food plants, which parts are edible and how to prepare each morsel - in other words, geography, botany and food prep skills!
This is No.64 in the #BrightenYourDay series of videos to connect with #nature during the #Covid19 #lockdown. It takes you far from #Covid19 #lockdown, virtually, to the Congo #rainforest where #gorillas, #elephants and other #GardenersoftheForest go about their lives.
What I did not realise when I filmed this a few years ago is the degree to which we all benefit from their lives. As Kingo feeds, he is doing the rainforest equivalent of weeding - removing small plants that compete with tall trees for nutrients, and then fertilising the soils with his droppings the next day enriching the soils. We've not yet worked out the value of this ecosystem service by gorillas in the same way that has been done for elephants* but can extrapolate from that work and predict that primates are likely to increase the #carbonsequestration too.
Watch this space and join the race to Rebalance.Earth
*For an overview of the relationship between forest elephants, #carbon and #climatechange, see [ Ссылка ]
