[Ubeja Vontell]

Gorilla

Marcelmooij | Dreamstime.com
GORILLA

Today it's hard to imagine a world in which people didn't believe gorillas existed. But it's not so hard to imagine your own skepticism if you were regaled with tales about giant, hairy, savage man-beasts with bad tempers living in the wilds of some far-away place. (And you didn't have access to the Internet to confirm or bust the story.)

Right?

And so it went for Westerners for a long, long time. Some attribute the first sighting of a gorilla by a non-native to Greek explorer Hanno in the 5th century B.C., although today scientists believe he was probably witnessing chimpanzees or baboons --- called "gorillae," as it happened, by his interpreters. Another explorer, Andrew Battel, told tales of human-like "monsters" visiting his camp's fire every morning after the humans had left for the day (although he pointed out that the apes didn't know enough to put MORE wood on the fire, tsk).

But gorillas themselves remained obscure and poorly understood until 1847, when physician and naturalist Thomas Savage obtained several gorilla bones, including skulls, in Liberia, and coauthored with Harvard anatomist Jeffries Wyman the first formal description of the newly discovered species Gorilla gorilla. And it wasn't until a decade after THAT that explorer Paul du Chaillu would see (and, unfortunately, hunt) live gorillas, sending back specimens to the societies funding his expeditions.

But even more unbelievably? The mountain gorilla subspecies Gorilla gorilla beringei remained a myth until 1902, when it was first identified by German captain Robert von Beringe!

`~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Story goes back in the days some loggers way back in the woods of Northern Cali caught a small one. They built a cage and put Jocko in it, they would bring him in when the job was done, well, he escaped.

Pretty sure it can be Googled.