Gorillas are the biggest primates alive. They live in the forests of equatorial Africa and nowhere else, share somewhere between 96% and 98% of our DNA, and are the closest living relatives we have after chimpanzees and bonobos. This page covers what they are, how they live, how many are left, and how to see them without harming them.
- Genus
- Gorilla — two species, four subspecies
- Largest primate
- Males 136–227 kg; arm spans to 2.6 m
- DNA shared with humans
- Roughly 96–98%
- Range
- Equatorial Africa only — 10 countries
- Lifespan
- 35–40 years in the wild
- Status
- Both species Endangered or Critically Endangered
On this page
- What a gorilla is — taxonomy, and how gorillas differ from monkeys and chimpanzees
- The four subspecies — where each lives and how many remain
- Size, strength and appearance — including what a silverback actually is
- Where gorillas live — range, habitat and altitude
- Diet and a gorilla's day — feeding, nests and how far they travel
- Family life — troops, silverbacks, blackbacks and dispersal
- Communication — 25 vocalisations and the nine-step charge
- Breeding and infancy
- Intelligence, tools and emotion
- How many gorillas are left
- What threatens them
- Conservation, and what has actually worked
- How science found the gorilla
- Myths worth killing
- Seeing gorillas in the wild
What a gorilla is
Gorillas are great apes: large, tailless, forest-dwelling primates in the family Hominidae, which also contains chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans. The genus Gorilla split from the lineage leading to chimpanzees and humans around seven to ten million years ago.
There are two species, separated by the Congo River and its tributaries:
- Western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) — west-central Africa
- Eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei) — east-central Africa
Each has two recognised subspecies, giving four in total. A fifth is sometimes proposed for the Bwindi population of mountain gorillas, which differs slightly from the Virunga population in body proportions and behaviour, but it has not been formally named.
Gorillas are not monkeys
The distinction is real, not pedantic. Monkeys generally have tails, are smaller, and sit on a different branch of the primate tree. Apes — gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, gibbons and humans — have no tail, larger brains relative to body size, greater shoulder mobility, and longer developmental periods.
How gorillas differ from chimpanzees
| Gorilla | Chimpanzee | |
|---|---|---|
| Adult male weight | 136–227 kg | 40–70 kg |
| Diet | Overwhelmingly plant matter | Fruit, plus meat and insects |
| Group structure | One dominant silverback with females and young | Large fission–fusion communities |
| Temperament with people | Calm, deliberate, rarely aggressive | Excitable, fast, capable of lethal aggression |
| Sleeping | Ground nests, rebuilt nightly | Usually tree nests |
| DNA shared with humans | ~96–98% | ~98.8% |
If you have the chance to see both — and in Uganda you do — take it. The two hours could not be less alike. Our chimpanzee trekking page covers the comparison from a visitor's point of view.
The four subspecies
| Subspecies | Where | Estimated number | IUCN status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western lowland gorilla G. g. gorilla | Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, CAR, Equatorial Guinea, Angola | ~316,000 | Critically Endangered |
| Cross River gorilla G. g. diehli | A small area of the Nigeria–Cameroon border | Around 250–300 | Critically Endangered |
| Eastern lowland (Grauer's) gorilla G. b. graueri | Eastern DR Congo only | Several thousand, sharply declined | Critically Endangered |
| Mountain gorilla G. b. beringei | Bwindi (Uganda) and the Virunga massif (Uganda, Rwanda, DRC) | Just over 1,000 | Endangered — and rising |
Western lowland gorilla
By far the most numerous, and the one you will see in zoos — every gorilla in a zoo anywhere in the world is a western lowland gorilla. They are smaller and more slender than mountain gorillas, browner or greyer in colour, often with a reddish crown, and they eat far more fruit. They live at low altitude in dense forest and swamp, range widely, and are extremely hard to census, which is why the figure of roughly 316,000 carries a very wide margin. Despite that number, they are Critically Endangered: Ebola and commercial bushmeat hunting have removed a large proportion of the population in a single human generation.
Cross River gorilla
The rarest gorilla on earth, and the one almost nobody has heard of. Perhaps 250 to 300 survive in a scatter of forest fragments along the Nigeria–Cameroon border, split into small and partly isolated groups. They are not habituated and there is no tourism.
Eastern lowland or Grauer's gorilla
The largest gorilla subspecies by body size, found only in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Grauer's gorillas have suffered catastrophically from conflict, artisanal mining in their forests and the hunting that follows both, and the population has fallen by a very large margin since the 1990s. Kahuzi-Biega National Park is the only place they can be tracked.
Mountain gorilla
The most famous, the most studied, the second rarest — and the only great ape whose numbers are going up. Mountain gorillas live in two populations: the Bwindi–Sarambwe forest in Uganda, and the Virunga massif shared between Uganda, Rwanda and the DR Congo. They have the longest, thickest hair of any gorilla, because they live higher and colder than the rest.
No mountain gorilla has ever survived in captivity. Every one alive is wild, which is the entire reason gorilla trekking exists.
Size, strength and appearance
Gorillas are the largest primates alive. Adult males weigh 136 to 227 kg and stand 1.4 to 1.8 m tall when upright, with arm spans reaching 2.6 m. Females are roughly half the weight, at 68 to 113 kg. The tallest wild gorilla reliably recorded was a silverback of about 1.95 m; the heaviest, around 267 kg.
This is one of the most extreme size differences between the sexes of any mammal, and it follows directly from the social system: a single male defends a group of females against rivals, so size wins.
What a silverback is
Not a species, not a breed — an age
A silverback is simply an adult male gorilla, usually over about twelve years old, who has grown the saddle of silver-grey hair across his back and hips that comes with maturity. Any male who lives long enough becomes one. Younger adult males, aged roughly eight to twelve and still black-backed, are called blackbacks.
Mature silverbacks also develop a pronounced sagittal crest — a ridge of bone along the top of the skull anchoring the enormous jaw muscles needed to chew tough vegetation all day. It is what gives an old male's head its distinctive conical shape, and it is a chewing adaptation rather than a weapon.
Physical details worth knowing
- Nose prints are unique. The pattern of wrinkles above a gorilla's nostrils differs between individuals like a fingerprint, and researchers use nose-print sketches and photographs to identify every habituated animal by name.
- They also have fingerprints, as we do.
- They knuckle-walk, resting weight on the middle bones of the fingers. A study of 77 mountain gorillas in Bwindi found they used a wider variety of hand postures than expected, including fists and flat palms.
- Eyes are dark brown with a black ring around the iris.
- Arms are longer than legs, giving the characteristic forward-leaning stance.
- Gorilla blood does not fit the human ABO system, despite behaving somewhat like type O.
On strength: gorillas are extraordinarily powerful, and reliable measurements are scarce because the animals will not cooperate with tests. The popular multiples you see quoted — four times, ten times, twenty times a human — trace back to nothing solid. What is certain is that a silverback can tear apart vegetation that a person could not, and that he almost never has any reason to.
Where gorillas live
Gorillas live in equatorial Africa and nowhere else in the wild. Their combined range covers about ten countries — Nigeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Angola (Cabinda), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda — but occupies only a small fraction of the continent.
What is remarkable is the altitude range. Western lowland gorillas live from sea level to about 1,600 m in swamp and lowland forest. Mountain gorillas live in Afromontane cloud forest and bamboo between roughly 2,200 m and 4,300 m — high enough for frost. They are the same genus, living in conditions as different as a Louisiana swamp and a Scottish mountainside.
| Subspecies | Habitat | Altitude |
|---|---|---|
| Western lowland | Lowland and swamp forest | Sea level–1,600 m |
| Cross River | Lowland and submontane forest | 150–1,600 m |
| Grauer's | Lowland to montane forest and bamboo | 600–3,300 m |
| Mountain | Montane cloud forest, bamboo, hagenia woodland | 2,200–4,300 m |
The mountain gorilla's two homes are worth naming precisely, because they are the only two places on earth the subspecies exists: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda, and the Virunga massif — Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in Uganda and Virunga National Park in the DR Congo.
Diet and a gorilla's day
Gorillas are overwhelmingly herbivorous, and the details differ sharply between subspecies. Mountain gorillas eat leaves, stems, pith, shoots and bamboo, with very little fruit — their food is abundant and evenly spread, so they travel short distances, often only a few hundred metres a day. Western lowland gorillas depend far more on fruit, which is patchy, so they range much further, averaging over a kilometre a day across home ranges of 7 to 14 km².
Lowland gorillas also eat insects, particularly ants and termites. Gorillas rarely drink; the vegetation they eat is close to half water, and dew supplies the rest.
An adult silverback can eat 18 to 30 kg of vegetation in a day. The day itself divides into a morning feed, a long midday rest with grooming and play, an afternoon feed, and nest-building before dusk.
Nests
Every gorilla over about three years old builds a fresh nest each night from bent branches and leaves, usually on the ground, and never reuses one — even if the group has not moved. Nest counts are how researchers estimate population size in forests too dense to survey any other way. Nest-building is now classed as tool use.
Gorillas sleep around twelve hours a night, considerably more than we do.
Are gorillas arboreal?
Traditionally they were described as ground-dwelling apes. Research published in 2025 comparing Bwindi, Loango and the Virungas found gorillas spend substantially more time in trees than that picture allowed, particularly in Bwindi and Loango, and that adult females are more arboreal than males. Anyone who has watched a four-year-old repeatedly fall out of a sapling in Bwindi will find this unsurprising.
Family life: troops, silverbacks and blackbacks
Gorillas live in stable family groups usually called troops or bands, typically five to thirty animals. The standard structure is one dominant silverback, several adult females, and their offspring — though groups with more than one adult male are common in mountain gorillas.
What the silverback does
He makes the decisions: where the group feeds, when it moves, where it nests. He mediates disputes between females, tolerates and protects infants, and stands between the group and danger. When a group is threatened, the silverback will defend it at the cost of his own life, and there are records of exactly that.
His bond with the females is the core of gorilla social life, maintained by grooming and proximity rather than by force. Research published in 2025 found that female mountain gorillas can outrank non-alpha males in the dominance hierarchy despite being half their size — a reminder that the simplistic 'harem' description does the system no favours.
Leaving home
Both sexes typically leave the group they were born into. Females transfer directly to another group or to a lone silverback. Males may leave to travel alone or in all-male bachelor groups — which are surprisingly amicable, full of play and grooming — before attracting females and founding their own troop. Some male mountain gorillas instead stay and become subordinate, occasionally inheriting the group when the silverback dies.
When a silverback dies
Single-male groups usually disband. Infants are then at risk of infanticide from incoming males, and joining an established group quickly is a female's best protection. This is uncomfortable reading, and it is also why the silverback's protective role is not sentimental language but a measurable survival factor for every infant in his group.
Conflict
Serious violence is rare within stable groups. Between groups it is another matter: when two mountain gorilla silverbacks meet and neither yields, the resulting fight can be lethal, using canines that are among the largest of any primate. Displays exist precisely so that this rarely has to happen.
How gorillas communicate
Researchers recognise around twenty-five distinct gorilla vocalisations. The most common by far is a deep rumbling belch — a contentment sound, exchanged constantly during feeding and resting, which functions rather like conversational murmuring in a room of people who like each other. Grunts and barks keep the group located in dense vegetation. Screams and roars are alarm signals, usually from the silverback.
The chest-beat, properly understood
The chest-beat is not aggression. It is an honest signal of body size: research published in 2021 showed that larger males produce lower-frequency beats, and that the sound carries information rivals and potential mates can use without anyone having to fight. Males beat their chests most when females are receptive. And they cup their hands — the hollow is what makes the sound carry, and it is why it is a knock rather than a slap.
The nine-step charge display
The full ritualised display, described by researchers in a fixed sequence, runs: hooting that quickens; a symbolic piece of feeding; rising onto two legs; throwing vegetation; the chest-beat with cupped hands; a one-leg kick; running sideways; slapping and tearing at vegetation; and finally thumping the ground with both palms.
Almost every part of this is designed to avoid a fight rather than start one. A silverback who completes all nine steps has spent considerable energy on making violence unnecessary.
Breeding, birth and infancy
Females mature at around ten to twelve years, males at eleven to thirteen. Gestation lasts about eight and a half months — close to a human pregnancy — and almost always produces a single infant weighing around 2 kg, roughly half the weight of a human newborn.
Females give birth first at about ten years old and then roughly every four years. Over a whole lifetime, a female may raise only three or four surviving offspring. That single fact explains why gorilla populations recover so slowly, and why the loss of one breeding female matters so much more than it would in a fast-breeding species.
Infants cling to their mother's chest for the first months, ride on her back from around four months, and stay in near-constant contact until about five months. They begin building their own nests around three years old and are weaned by three or four. Males take no direct part in infant care but are central to their socialisation, and infants spend a great deal of time near the silverback.
Intelligence, tool use and emotion
Gorillas are highly intelligent by any reasonable measure. They laugh, they grieve, they form long-term bonds, they show individual preferences, and they pass learned behaviours between generations — different populations prepare the same stinging plants in different ways, which is a working definition of culture.
Tool use
Wild tool use in gorillas was only documented in 2005, in the Republic of Congo. One female was recorded using a stick to test the depth of water before crossing a swamp; another used a tree stump as a bridge and a support. A juvenile was seen using rocks to crack palm nuts. Those observations completed the set: all great apes are now known to use tools in the wild.
Koko, and the limits of what we know
Koko, a western lowland gorilla in California, was taught a large vocabulary of modified sign language and became the most famous gorilla in the world. Her abilities remain genuinely contested among linguists — the disagreement is about whether she used grammar or associated signs with rewards, not about whether she was intelligent. It is worth knowing both that Koko's story is remarkable and that the strongest claims made about it are disputed.
How many gorillas are left
Roughly 320,000 gorillas of all kinds, and that number is dominated by one subspecies whose count carries enormous uncertainty. The rarer three are in a different situation entirely.
| Population | Number | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Western lowland gorilla | ~316,000 | Declining |
| Grauer's (eastern lowland) gorilla | Several thousand | Severe decline since the 1990s |
| Mountain gorilla — Bwindi–Sarambwe | 459 | Increasing |
| Mountain gorilla — Virunga massif | 604 | Increasing |
| Cross River gorilla | ~250–300 | Precarious |
The one number that gives grounds for hope
In 1981 the mountain gorilla population was estimated at around 254 animals and the subspecies was widely expected to be extinct by the end of the century. It now exceeds a thousand. In 2018 the IUCN moved mountain gorillas from Critically Endangered to Endangered — a downgrade that almost never happens, and the only great ape it has happened to.
What threatens gorillas
- Habitat loss. Logging, agriculture, charcoal and mining fragment forests into pieces too small to hold viable populations. Central Africa's forests are being opened by roads faster than they are being protected.
- Poaching and bushmeat. Gorillas are killed for meat, for trophies, and for the live infant trade — which usually means killing the adults defending it. Snares set for antelope maim and kill gorillas incidentally, and snare removal is a daily job for rangers.
- Disease. Ebola has killed thousands of western gorillas; a single outbreak in the Republic of Congo wiped out several hundred in one park. Because gorillas share so much of our physiology, human respiratory illness also transmits readily — a common cold can kill an infant, and captive gorillas have contracted COVID-19.
- Conflict and instability. Grauer's gorillas have suffered most, in a region where armed groups, displacement and artisanal mining have made protection nearly impossible for long stretches.
- Mining for minerals used in consumer electronics, which draws people and hunting deep into gorilla forest.
- Revenue shocks. Where conservation is funded by tourism, a collapse in visitors — as in 2020 — removes the funding for ranger patrols at exactly the moment pressure on the forest rises.
Conservation: what has actually worked
The mountain gorilla recovery is the clearest evidence available of what works, and it is worth being precise about the ingredients, because the story is often told as though good intentions were enough.
- Permanent ranger presence. Daily patrols that monitor every habituated family and remove snares. This is expensive, unglamorous and continuous.
- Veterinary intervention. Field teams treat snare injuries and respiratory infections in wild gorillas. A meaningful share of the mountain gorillas alive today have been treated at some point.
- Tourism revenue. Permit fees fund the first two and generate national political will. Uganda and Rwanda's wildlife authorities are substantially self-funding from tourism.
- Community benefit. Revenue-sharing schemes return a proportion of park income to neighbouring villages for schools, clinics and water. Porters, guides and lodge staff give thousands of people a direct financial stake in living gorillas.
- Cross-border cooperation. The Virunga massif spans three countries, and the gorillas do not recognise the borders. Coordinated monitoring across Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC has continued through periods when very little else did.
Internationally, all gorillas are listed on CITES Appendix I, and the Gorilla Agreement of 2008 under the Convention on Migratory Species was the first legally binding instrument aimed exclusively at gorillas.
The part that is not comfortable
The creation of Bwindi and Mgahinga as national parks in 1991 protected the gorillas and evicted the Batwa, who had lived in those forests for millennia, without land or compensation. They have benefited least from the tourism that followed. An honest account of gorilla conservation has to include this, and visiting well means engaging with it rather than skipping past it.
Our conservation page covers where permit money goes in detail, and responsible travel covers the choices that make the most difference.
How science found the gorilla
The word probably comes from the account of Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer of around 500 BC, whose expedition down the West African coast reported hairy people his interpreters called Gorillae. Whether they saw gorillas, another ape, or people is unknown.
European science took a very long time to catch up. In 1625 the English sailor Andrew Battel described an ape he called the Pongo, and for the next two centuries the animal was widely treated as a traveller's invention. The first scientific description came only in 1847, from the missionary Thomas Staughton Savage and the naturalist Jeffries Wyman, working from bones obtained in Liberia. The explorer Paul Du Chaillu was the first Westerner to report seeing living gorillas, in the late 1850s, and brought specimens to London in 1861 to considerable controversy.
Real field study began with George Schaller, whose systematic work on mountain gorillas in 1959 produced the first accurate picture of their behaviour. Dian Fossey then spent eighteen years at Karisoke in Rwanda, from 1967 until her murder in 1985. Her work — and Gorillas in the Mist — destroyed the myth of the violent gorilla and turned the species into a global conservation cause. She is buried at Karisoke beside Digit, the gorilla whose killing she made the world care about. The hike to her grave is still one of the most affecting things you can do in Rwanda.
The gorilla genome was sequenced in 2012, from a western lowland female named Kamilah. It produced a genuine surprise: for around 15% of the human genome, we are closer to gorillas than to chimpanzees.
Myths worth killing
- 'Gorillas are aggressive.' They are among the most placid of the great apes. Nearly all apparent aggression is display, designed to avoid a fight. Fossey's work overturned this a half-century ago and popular culture has not caught up.
- 'King Kong was based on real behaviour.' No part of it was. The trope of gorillas carrying off women comes from a 19th-century French sculpture, not from observation.
- 'A silverback is a species.' It is an adult male over about twelve. Every male who lives long enough becomes one.
- 'Gorillas eat meat.' Essentially never. Lowland gorillas take some ants and termites; otherwise the diet is plants.
- 'You can see mountain gorillas in a zoo.' There has never been a mountain gorilla in captivity that survived. Every zoo gorilla is a western lowland gorilla.
- 'They beat their chests with fists.' Cupped hands. That is what makes the sound carry.
- 'Gorillas and humans are 99% identical.' That figure belongs to chimpanzees. Gorillas are around 96–98% depending on what is measured.
Seeing gorillas in the wild
Two of the four subspecies can be visited. Mountain gorillas are tracked in Uganda, Rwanda and — when the park is open — the DR Congo. Grauer's gorillas are tracked only at Kahuzi-Biega in the DRC. Western lowland gorillas are visited in a few places in the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic, on a much smaller scale.
The model is the same everywhere it works: a family is habituated over several years, a strictly limited number of visitors spend one hour with it per day, and the fee funds the protection. Eight visitors, one hour, seven metres, no visiting while ill. Those rules are not bureaucracy — they are the reason the numbers are going up.
| Where | Gorillas | Permit |
|---|---|---|
| Bwindi, Uganda | Mountain — around half the world population | US$800 |
| Mgahinga, Uganda | Mountain | US$800 |
| Volcanoes, Rwanda | Mountain | US$1,500 |
| Virunga, DR Congo | Mountain | US$400 |
| Kahuzi-Biega, DR Congo | Grauer's | US$400 |
If you are weighing up where to go, our Uganda versus Rwanda comparison is the decision most people need to make first, and the complete trekking guide covers what the day involves. If you would rather read what it actually feels like, one of our guides wrote an account of the hour.
Questions
Frequently asked
How many types of gorillas are there?
Two species — western and eastern — and four subspecies: western lowland, Cross River, Grauer's (eastern lowland) and mountain gorilla. A fifth subspecies is sometimes proposed for the Bwindi mountain gorilla population but has not been formally named.
How many gorillas are left in the world?
Around 320,000 in total, but that figure is misleading: roughly 316,000 are western lowland gorillas with a very wide margin of error. Mountain gorillas number just over 1,000, Cross River gorillas perhaps 250–300, and Grauer's gorillas a few thousand after a severe decline.
Are gorillas dangerous to humans?
Very rarely. Gorillas are placid and avoid conflict, and habituated families are calm around people. Silverbacks will mock-charge; the correct response is to crouch, look down and stay still. Injuries to visitors on gorilla treks are vanishingly rare — the drive to the trailhead is the riskiest part of the day.
What is a silverback gorilla?
An adult male, usually over about twelve years old, named for the saddle of silver-grey hair that develops across his back with maturity. He leads the group, makes its decisions and defends it. It is an age category, not a species or a rank you compete for.
How strong is a gorilla?
Extremely — but the specific multiples widely quoted online have no reliable source behind them. Direct measurement is close to impossible with wild animals that will not cooperate. What is certain is that a silverback can tear apart vegetation no person could, and that he almost never has reason to use that strength on anything.
What do gorillas eat?
Almost entirely plants. Mountain gorillas eat leaves, stems, pith, shoots and bamboo with very little fruit; lowland gorillas eat much more fruit and some ants and termites. An adult silverback can get through 18–30 kg of vegetation a day, and gorillas rarely need to drink because their food is about half water.
Where do gorillas live?
Only in equatorial Africa, across about ten countries. Western gorillas live in west-central Africa; eastern gorillas in the DR Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Mountain gorillas live in just two places: Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, and the Virunga massif shared by Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC.
How long do gorillas live?
Typically 35–40 years in the wild, and sometimes over 50 in captivity. The oldest known gorilla, Fatou, has passed 69.
Do gorillas share DNA with humans?
Roughly 96–98%, depending on what is measured. Gorillas are our closest living relatives after chimpanzees and bonobos. The similarity is also why human respiratory infections are dangerous to them, and why nobody should trek with a cold.
Why are gorillas endangered?
Habitat loss, poaching for bushmeat and the live infant trade, snares set for other animals, disease including Ebola and human respiratory infections, mining, and armed conflict across much of their range. All four subspecies are Endangered or Critically Endangered.
Can you see mountain gorillas in a zoo?
No. No mountain gorilla has ever survived in captivity, and every gorilla in every zoo in the world is a western lowland gorilla. Trekking in Uganda, Rwanda or the DR Congo is the only way to see a mountain gorilla.
What is the difference between a gorilla and a chimpanzee?
Gorillas are three to four times heavier, almost entirely herbivorous, calm and deliberate, and live in stable groups led by one silverback. Chimpanzees are smaller, faster, omnivorous, live in large fluid communities and are capable of lethal aggression. Chimpanzees share slightly more DNA with us.
Why do gorillas beat their chests?
It is an honest signal of body size rather than a threat display in the usual sense. Larger males produce lower-frequency beats, so rivals and potential mates can assess a male without a fight. They cup their hands, which is what makes the sound carry.
Do gorillas make nests?
Yes, a fresh one every night, built from bent branches and leaves and usually on the ground. They never reuse a nest. Counting nests is how researchers estimate populations in forests too dense to survey directly.
Is gorilla tourism good or bad for gorillas?
Managed as it is — eight visitors, one hour a day per family, strict distance and health rules — the evidence is strongly that it has helped. The mountain gorilla population has risen through the period in which controlled tourism has funded rangers and given communities a stake in the forest. The rules are the reason that is true, which is why they are worth taking seriously.
Next
Keep planning
- Gorilla trekking: the complete guide — what it involves, and how to plan it
- Mountain gorillas in Bwindi — around half the world population, across four sectors
- Conservation — how the recovery happened and what still threatens it
- Uganda vs Rwanda — where to trek, and what it costs
- Congo gorilla trekking — the only place to track Grauer's gorillas
- An hour with mountain gorillas — what it is actually like