Named from Gabon
1847 type
The western animal entered Latin before the mountain one entered film.
Milestones in order. This is history, not a weekly activity grid.
- Savage and Wyman
- Karisoke founded
- Koko project starts
- Digit killed
- Fossey murdered
- Gorillas in the Mist
- Mbeli Bai platform
- Ebola waves
- Koko dies
- Mountain gorilla uplist talk
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Speed30
Intelligence96
Range24
Resilience11
Cultural impact49
Ecological role61
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Why western gorilla as the type?
The taxonomy wiki is Western gorilla. Mountain gorillas are G. beringei, fewer, more filmed, and less CR. The atlas follows the listed type, not the movie.
Did Fossey study this type?
Karisoke watched mountain gorillas in Rwanda. The methods and the murder belong to that species; western gorillas have Mbeli Bai and different threats (Ebola, bushmeat).
What about Koko and language?
Francine Patterson project treated signs as words. Linguists remain split. The atlas files Koko as culture and a research programme, not as proof that wild western gorillas recite English.
Why the lowest resilience in the 24?
CR western gorillas plus Ebola, logging and hunt. Mountain gorilla rebound is real and is a different species card.
What is Mbeli Bai?
A forest clearing in Nouabale-Ndoki where western gorillas come for minerals -- a platform study that rarely makes a biopic.
Did Gorillas in the Mist help the type?
The 1988 film helped mountain gorilla tourism and the Fossey myth. Western lowland numbers kept falling on a different map.
IUCN: Critically Endangered
The gorilla did not enter English as a finished emblem. Hunts, films, listings and field stations rewrote the animal on a dated clock.
This chapter keeps ten timeline points, five eras and three milestones so a later translation can hold the same years.
Where it began
Gorilla-Pan split ~8 MaCentral African forests
Timeline
1847Savage and Wyman
Western gorilla named for science from Gabon material.
1967Karisoke founded
Fossey mountain-gorilla camp -- the public origin, wrong species for this page type.
1971Koko project starts
Patterson and a western-lineage captive gorilla.
1977Digit killed
Poaching death that funded a mountain-gorilla NGO story.
1985Fossey murdered
Karisoke crime that sealed a myth.
1988Gorillas in the Mist
Film that fixed Fossey as the gorilla.
1990sMbeli Bai platform
Western gorilla field site that stayed a paper, not a biopic.
2002-07Ebola waves
Western subpopulations lost large fractions in outbreak years.
2018Koko dies
Obituaries treated a lab ape as a linguist colleague.
2018Mountain gorilla uplist talk
G. beringei beringei to EN -- a rebound that must not be copied onto G. gorilla.
The eras
1967-88
Fossey myth
A mountain camp and a movie stole the public name.
1971-2018
Koko years
A captive western-lineage ape became the language argument.
1990s-2007
Bai and Ebola
The real western field: clearings and outbreaks.
2018-
Two cards
Mountain EN rebound versus western CR -- a split the public still slurs.
Milestones
Karisoke
1967The camp that made gorillas a biography -- of the wrong species for this type, still inescapable.
Ebola years
2000sDisease as a CR mechanism, not only snares.
Koko obituaries
2018Lab signs as a public science funeral.
Reading gorilla history beside the resilience score keeps a recovered stock from standing in for a threatened cousin.
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