Yessss

This was an honour and a captivating experience. To be within 10m of these Gorillas is an experience I’ll never forget. They are gentle yet scary and not worried by your presence at all. Watching the young play around put a smile on everyone’s face. It’s one thing to see it on a video but to be there is extraordinary. I have named the images to what I thought they were thinking at the time.

Kwisanga group is found in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and is led by the dominant Silverback Kigoma. Kwisanga is one of the newest groups, formed on 4^th May 2021 as a result of a split. Silverback Kigoma left Kwitonda group with 16 members and since then, they have never returned. There was no interaction prior to the split, it just happened that Kigoma as well wanted to lead a group! Kwisanga is composed of 17 members including 2 Silverbacks, 3 Adult females, 2 Blackbacks, 2 Sub-adult males, 3 Juveniles and 5 Infants.

The eastern gorilla is a large hominid with a large head, broad chest, and long arms. It has a flat nose with large nostrils. The face, hands, feet and breast are bald. The fur is mainly black, but adult males have a silvery “saddle” on their back. When the gorilla gets older, the hair on the saddle of the back becomes white, much like the gray hair of elderly people. This is why the older males are called silverbacks. Grauer’s gorilla has a shorter, thicker, deep black fur, while the mountain gorilla has a more bluish color. The mountain gorilla is slightly smaller and lighter than Grauer’s gorilla, but still larger and heavier than the western lowland gorilla and the Cross River gorilla. Males are much larger than females. A full-grown male eastern gorilla typically weighs 140–205.5 kg (309–453 lb) and stands 1.7 m (5.6 ft) upright.