Posted on: 8 November, 2024
As a group, the gorillas eat just over 50kg of vegetables a day, with one fifth of this being consumed by the troop’s silverback, Jock. From receiving and collecting deliveries to storing them away, prepping vegetables, creating enrichment activities, putting out food for scatter feeds, and ensuring all the gorillas receive the correct amount of food and nutrients throughout the day, the keepers are kept extremely busy caring for the magnificent group.
Primarily vegetarian, wild gorillas spend nearly a quarter of their day eating a huge variety of plants, including fruit, leaves and stems. They also enjoy munching away on roots and bark.
Here at Bristol Zoological Society, we do our best to imitate the diet they would have in their native central African habitat, which is rich in fibre and composed of seasonal items. All diets are made according to the individual gorilla and as a result, the growing boys, Juni and Hasani, receive almost twice as much food as their mums, and the sub adults, Afia and Ayana, with their ongoing growth spurts, get almost as much food as Jock.
Fruit is heavily consumed by western lowland gorillas in the wild, however, like all of our primate species, the gorillas have a fruit-free diet because commercially available fruits are far higher in sugar content than those available in their native habitat. As a result, the gorillas have their favourite vegetables, which include carrots, tomatoes, beetroot, chicory, red peppers and corn on the cob being amongst the most exciting. However, unlike all our other primates, especially the lemurs, they really do not care for sweet potato!
Breakfast tends to be a selection of leafy, watery and starchy vegetables scattered on their island for them to forage through, with each gorilla rushing to their favourite available food. Celeriac, a large, beige root vegetable, is not the most exciting flavour-wise, but when placed whole on the island it is great to carry around, sit on and play with it (at least, it is if you’re a four-year-old gorilla) before, inevitably, eating it when the more exciting food is gone - we all like to play with our food sometimes.
Lunch is also a foraging exercise for the troop, with a wide offering of vegetables to be enjoyed amongst as much browse as possible. Some browse, such as hawthorn and bramble, would be much too spiky for some animals to eat due to the number of thick thorns or tough bark, but gorillas have super hardy mouths, gums, and teeth, which make it easy pickings. Each member of the troop has their preferred spot on the island to eat lunch, with Jock always making his way to his rock with an armful of delicious food. However, the adolescent girls, Afia and Ayana, are very cheeky and team up to distract him, stealing his food when he is not looking.
For dinner, each gorilla has their own bucket of individually weighed food. This helps the team make sure that all the gorillas get plenty to eat and those that may struggle more during the foraging feed times have all the nutrients they require. Dinner includes yet another array of vegetables alongside specially formulated primate pellets that provide the troop with the correct balance of nutrients, vitamins and minerals, alongside their plant-based diet. For this meal, we will mix the food amongst lucerne, also known as alfalfa, and straw, so that they still have plenty of chance to forage for their favourite nibbles. The gorillas also spend a lot of time foraging from their habitat and can find many native species of plants growing in abundance.
Our Critically Endangered western lowland gorilla silverback, Jock, eats up to 12kg of vegetable delights each day, including aubergine, celery, peppers, turnips, parsnips, lettuce, kale, broccoli, and many more - so much so, he needs two buckets for dinner!
At the moment the team have reversed the order in which the gorillas receive their meals with dinner being served in the morning and breakfast late afternoon, as this gives them more time to focus on crate training exercises to prepare the troop for the move to their new Central African Forest habitat at Bristol Zoo Project, which is currently being built.
Enrichment is also a very important part of the feeding process for our troop, to promote positive mental and physical stimulation, encouraging natural behaviours whilst exercising their cognitive abilities through items such as puzzle feeders and forage-filled boomer balls. Porridge is a troop favourite and the Animal team use this as an enrichment exercise by filling the inside lengths of a fire hose with porridge and scattering them across the top floor of their house. The gorillas then pull the hose lengths through the gaps in the ceiling to get to them before taking them out to the island. Some of the troop then scavenge for a stick that is the perfect length and width to be used as utensils to scoop the porridge out and eat it.
Bristol Zoological Society has cared for gorillas for nearly 90 years, contributing to the European captive breeding programme, helping to safeguard the future of this Critically Endangered species.
As a conservation charity, we work in nine countries, across four continents, and direct 14 field conservation projects with 31 local partner organisations to conserve and protect some of the world’s most threatened species. One of these projects is based in Monte Alén National Park, Equatorial Guinea where we work with local communities to find ways for people to co-exist with the park’s wildlife, which includes the Critically Endangered western lowland gorilla and African forest elephant.
Our troop will move into the new Central African Forest habitat at Bristol Zoo Project well ahead of the public opening next year when they will be introduced to a new group of Endangered cherry-crowned mangabeys that will live alongside them.
More information about our new conservation zoo can be found below.
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