Caring for the Young
Mountain gorillas have a slow rate of reproduction. Females give birth for the first time at about age 10 and will have more offspring every three or four years. A male begins to breed between 12 and 15 years, when he is in charge of his own group. Able to conceive for only about three days each month, the female produces a single young. Newborn gorillas are weak and tiny, weighing in at about 4 pounds. Their movements are as awkward as those of human infants, but their development is roughly twice as fast. At 3 or 4 months, the gorilla infant can sit upright and can stand with support soon after. It suckles regularly for about a year and is gradually weaned at about 31/2 years, when it becomes more independent.

Vocal communication among gorillas is important in within-group interactions as well as extra-group interactions. Within-group calls, include “copulatory grunts” and “whimpers” during copulation, “whines” and “whimpers” by infants, “play chuckles” during play, “intense” and “mild cough grunts” during mild threat displays, and “close” calls that include both “syllabled” and “non-syllabled” calls such as “train-grunts” and “dog whines”.”Close” calls are commonly given within the group in situations of either potential separation or potential conflict. Extra-group calls serve to alert group members of potential predation and include “barks” or are given as long-distance threat displays upon detection of another group and include the “hoot series,” which may be accompanied by chest beating. Most calling occurs within-groups during feeding times, though gorillas also call during rest periods as well.

Habitat
The most serious threat to gorillas is habitat loss. The rich volcanic soil of the Virungas is as highly valued as farming land. In Rwanda, Uganda and Congo, a regional conservation program stressing the importance of maintaining the virgin forest watershed and the need to habituate some groups of mountain gorillas for tourist visits has helped ease encroachment.

Silverbacks are typically more aggressive than other group members since the troop’s safety is their responsibility. The silverback makes all group decisions, is responsible for most of the calls, receives the dominant portion of food (even when resources are limited) and can terminate troublesome behavior with just a look. A male must have an established home range and great strength to confront any rival before acquiring his own troop. Therefore most silverbacks are usually solitary for about four years and turn 15 before acquiring a troop of their own.

The oldest and strongest adult male silverback is usually dominant in the troop and has exclusive breeding rights to the females. Adolescent females transfer to another troop before reproducing at around eight years of age. Generally the first troop a female reproduces in will become her permanent family. A female’s status or rank in the family is generally determined by the order in which she was recruited into the troop. Late arrivals do not receive the benefits of high ranking females such as having their offspring remain close to the dominant silverback for protection. It is for this reason that females most often join a lone silverback or a newly formed troop rather than a long-established one.

An adolescent male most often splits from his parent group due to lack of breeding opportunity. Usually the adolescent male will remain solitary until he forms his own troop. This process takes several years and begins by the juvenile male separating himself just outside from the troop. As time progresses, his distances increase from the parental group.

Troop populations usually range in size from 2 to 12 individuals with 9 being the average. They are highly synchronized in their activity patterns. If a troop consists of multiple silverbacks they are usually the sons of the dominant adult male silverback. One of the largest gorilla troops identified had 4 silverbacks, 5 blackbacks, 12 adult females, and 16 young.

Am a writer from Uganda, who started posting articles in different forums pages 3 years a go. I have found some of this articles very interesting and educative in that a number of different articles are written to teach other how to write stories that they do not know about not entirely about personal life but the happening s that occur in the world.

I majorly on articles of tourism based in east Africa, about the safaris, travel and updates about what is happening in this destination. As I write it so happened that we have begun loosing animals that are very good for ever body in the world to see, recently in Rwanda, the country lost 4 Mountain gorillas, how the died not known, then in Uganda in Queen Elizabeth National park near the fishing villages the country lost 5 Lions. Know that these are the key animals that people whole over the world come to see apart from Culture, Eco-tours, birding the gorillas are the most wanted primates. There are about 700 gorillas in total in the world and the over half of the population are in the virungas area ( Uganda, Rwanda and Congo)

The Lions are the other interesting animals that make the big five after the Leopard, Buffalo, Rino and the elephant, a safari is incomplete if a visitor has not seen all these animals.

All the death of animals is all around mention of the growing population around the park areas where people think that this are abandoned places, so they move in with Domestic animals which they think are eaten by the lions so the poison this cats, reducing the number and hardening the search for this

http://www.seekyourtrip.com/travel-directory/africa.htm – Africa travel directory