More unanimous are the statements which we have regarding the Gorilla. According to Dr. Savage, they live in bands, and all his informants agree in the assertion that but one adult male is seen in every band. “It is said that when the male is first seen he gives a terrific yell that resounds far and wide through the forest.... The females and young at the first cry quickly disappear; he then approaches the enemy in great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick succession.”[45] Again, Mr. Du Chaillu found “almost always one male with one female, though sometimes the old male wanders companionless;”[46] and Mr. Winwood Reade states likewise that the Gorilla goes “sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by his female and young one.”[47] The same traveller was told that, when a family of Gorillas ascend a tree and eat a certain fruit, the old father remains seated at the foot of the tree. And when the female is pregnant, he builds a rude nest, usually about fifteen or twenty feet from the ground; here she is delivered, and the nest is then abandoned.[48]
For more recent information about the Gorilla we are indebted to Herr von Koppenfells. He states that the male spends the night crouching at the foot of the tree, against which he places his back, and thus protects the female and their young, which are in the nest above, from the nocturnal attacks of leopards. Once he observed a male and female with two young ones of different ages, the elder being perhaps about six years old, the younger about one.[49]
When all these statements are compared, it is impossible to doubt that the Gorilla lives in families, the male parent being in the habit of building the nest and protecting the family. And the same is the case with the Chimpanzee. According to Dr. Savage, “it is not unusual to see ‘the old folks’ sitting under a tree regaling themselves with fruit and friendly chat, while ‘their children’ are leaping around them and swinging from branch to branch in boisterous merriment.”[50] And Herr von Koppenfells assures us that the Chimpanzee, like the Gorilla, builds a nest for the young and female on a forked branch, the male himself spending the night lower down in the tree.[51]