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Mountain gorillas are the most severely endangered, with an estimated population of about 880 left in the wild and none in zoos. [14] [98] Threats to gorilla survival include habitat destruction and poaching for the bushmeat trade. Gorillas are closely related to humans, and are susceptible to diseases that humans also get infected by.
The fossil record of the area where mountain gorillas live is particularly poor and so its evolutionary history is not clear. [5] It was about 8.8 to 12 million years ago that the group of primates who were to evolve into gorillas split from their common ancestor with humans and chimps; this is when the genus Gorilla emerged.
The gorilla–human last common ancestor (GHLCA, GLCA, or G/H LCA) is the last species that the tribes Hominini and Gorillini (i.e. the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor on one hand and gorillas on the other) share as a common ancestor. It is estimated to have lived (T GHLCA) during the late Miocene. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Phylogenetic tree of the primates Notharctus. The evolutionary history of the primates can be traced back 57-90 million years. [1] One of the oldest known primate-like mammal species, Plesiadapis, came from North America; [2] another, Archicebus, came from China. [3]
The Hominidae (/ h ɒ ˈ m ɪ n ɪ d iː /), whose members are known as the great apes [note 1] or hominids (/ ˈ h ɒ m ɪ n ɪ d z /), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); Gorilla (the eastern and western gorilla); Pan (the chimpanzee and the bonobo); and Homo, of which only modern humans ...
Once the gorillas had given twigs to the humans, they would receive one of these objects. If the gorillas did not give them a twig, they would not get their desired object. The gorillas were shown to quickly learn about receiving rewards, as mistakes made by the gorillas at the beginning of the experiments gradually decreased. [25]
Mountain gorillas live in large family groups headed up by a dominant male gorilla known as a silverback due to the saddle of silver hair on the back of some of the older males.
Another study of morphological integration in human and great ape wrists suggests that knuckle-walking did not evolve independently in gorillas and chimpanzees, which "places the emergence of hominins and the evolution of bipedalism in the context of a knuckle-walking background." [28]