Gorillas in the Mist - Dian Fossey

Revilo Oliver:

Miss Fossey, with a dedication of which only women are capable, devoted thirteen years of her life to close and intimate observation of mountain gorillas and to personal association with many of them, who accepted her companionship as though she were one of their group. She learned to recognise individuals by their features and distinctive nose-prints. (Portraits of a dozen of her best friends are assembled for comparison on the end-papers of the book.) She carried the young on her shoulders and became such a pal of adults that one photograph shows her playfully tickling a monster that could have literally torn her limb from limb. She gave fanciful names to the gorillas she knew best and followed their individual fortunes for years, often from birth to death. (Four pages of genealogical tables show the descendants of as many prominent males, usually with dates of birth and decease and a notation of the cause of death.)

The book is well printed with apt photographs. Miss Fossey writes a generally acceptable prose, but although the publishers are one of the most respected still in the business, their editorial staff was given to somnolence. One reads, for example, on p. xviii, “Dr. Leakey’s planning was indeed fortuitous [sic!]. In the six and a half years [since the last study of the gorillas] …the ratio of adult gorilla males to females …had dropped …accompanied by a halving of the population.” Miss Fossey did not intend nonsense, so she must have written, or intended to write, ‘fortunate.’ But even that will not do, although readers accustomed to the catachrestic and soloecistic prose of our contemporaries may guess the meaning that is not expressed. What the author meant is, ‘It was fortunate that Dr. Leakey decided to have a new study made so soon after the preceding one,’ i.e., before the population of gorillas dwindled to less than half.)

Miss Fossey, being a woman, even found spiritual values in the anthropoids with whom she associated for so many years. She became especially fond of a female gorilla whom she named Macho. (The name is a Swahili word that means ‘eyes,’ and has, of course, nothing to do with the Spanish adjective that means ‘male’and is commonly misused by ‘hippies’and journalists who try to be cute.) Of one encounter, she writes: “Suddenly I heard a noise in the foliage by my side and looked directly into the beautifully trusting face of Macho, who stood gazing at me. She had left her group to come to me. On perceiving the softness, tranquillity, and trust conveyed by Macho’s eyes, I was overwhelmed by the extraordinary depth of our rapport. The poignancy of her gift will never diminish.”Macho belongedto the harem of a gorilla whom Miss Fossey named Uncle Bert, and she was especially grieved when both were killed, evidently while trying to protect their infant son from either poachers or officials of the nigger government, who wanted to impress visiting journalists. Poachers shoot gorillas to obtain their heads, for sale to tourists, and their ears, tongues, testicles, and small fingers, for use in manufacturing a potent tonic that is prepared and sold by native holy men, who practice sumu, the local variety of the ju-ju that is the common faith of the Blacks, who are, by nature, even more religious than “born again” Americans. Both religions, incidentally, venerate the cross as a sacred symbol.

Miss Fossey has compiled scientifically a vast amount of data about gorillas. They are less intelligent than chimpanzees. They do not think of using twigs or sticks to obtain desired food, and the cries by which they communicate among themselves are less numerous and significant (It would be interesting to see a comparison between gorillas and their nearest congeners, the orangutans of the East Indies.) (Miss Fossey does not mention the experiment conducted at an American zoo — in Atlanta, as I recall — a few years ago. A gorilla was provided with a television receiver, and it was found that his favorite programs were the ones that were most popular with American addicts of the boob-tube.)

Miss Fossey and her White assistants made a detailed study of the pathology of gorillas, and set forth the results with scientific precision in several appendices to her book. Endemic diseases are a chronic dysentery and hepatitis. Gorillas often contract pneumonia, which is usually fatal. They are commonly infested with parasites, ranging from body lice to hookworms and tapeworms. Although male gorillas seem indifferent to adultery by their females, it is noteworthy that when a male has taken a female with her child from another group, he kills the child before engendering offspring of his own. Gorillas, like all mammals except humans, copulate only when the female is in oestrus, but Miss Fossey observed some young males who tried to subigate sexually immature females, perhaps for practice. (...)

The gorillas have an ardent champion in Miss Fossey and, no doubt, some of her colleagues, but it is unlikely that their biologically obsolete species can long be preserved from extinction. Whether our race will follow them into oblivion is still uncertain.