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Gorilla

Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus Gorilla is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or five subspecies. The DNA of gorillas is highly similar to that of humans, from 95 to 99% depending on what is included, and they are the next closest living relatives to humans after chimpanzees and bonobos.

Gorillas are the largest living primates, reaching heights between 1.25 and 1.8 metres, weights between 100 and 270 kg, and arm spans up to 2.6 metres, depending on species and sex. They tend to live in troops, with the leader being called a silverback. The eastern gorilla is distinguished from the western by darker fur colour and some other minor morphological differences. Gorillas tend to live 35–40 years in the wild.

Gorillas' natural habitats cover tropical or subtropical forest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Although their range covers a small percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa, gorillas cover a wide range of elevations. The mountain gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forests of the Virunga Volcanoes, ranging in altitude from 2200 to 4300 m. Lowland gorillas live in dense forests and lowland swamps and marshes as low as sea level, with western lowland gorillas living in Central West African countries and eastern lowland gorillas living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo near its border with Rwanda.

There are thought to be around 316,000 western gorillas in the wild, and 5,000 eastern gorillas. Both species are classified as Critically Endangered by the IUCN; all subspecies are classified as Critically Endangered with the exception of the mountain gorilla, which is classified as Endangered. There are many threats to their survival, such as poaching, habitat destruction, and disease, which threaten the survival of the species. However, conservation efforts have been successful in some areas where they live.

History and etymology
The word gorilla comes from the history of Hanno the Navigator (c. 500 BC), a Carthaginian explorer on an expedition to the west African coast to the area that later became Sierra Leone. Members of the expedition encountered "savage people, the greater part of whom were women, whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called Gorillae". It is unknown whether what the explorers encountered were what we now call gorillas, another species of ape or monkeys, or humans. Skins of gorillai women, brought back by Hanno, are reputed to have been kept at Carthage until Rome destroyed the city 350 years later at the end of the Punic Wars, 146 BC.

In 1625 Andrew Battel mentioned the existence of the animal, under the named of pongo:

"This Pongo is in all proportion like a man, but... he is more like a Giant in stature, than a man: for he is very tall, [and] hath a man's face, hollow-eyed, with long haire vpon his browes. His face and eares are without haire, and his hands also. His bodie is full of haire, but not very thicke, and it is a dunnish colour. . . Hee goeth alwaies vpon his legs, and carrieth his hands clasped on the nape of his necke, when he goeth upon the ground... They goe many together, and kill many Negroes that trauaile in the Woods . . . Those Pongos are neuer taken aliue, because they are so strong, that ten men cannot hold one of them..."

- Andrew Battel, 1625

A century and a half after Battel's story was published, one writer claimed that "the large species, described by Buffon and other authors as of the size of a man, is held by many to be a Chimera."

The American physician and missionary Thomas Staughton Savage and naturalist Jeffries Wyman first described the western gorilla in 1847 from specimens obtained in Liberia. They called it Troglodytes gorilla, using the then-current name of the chimpanzee genus. The species name was derived, as described by Hanno.

Evolution and classification
The closest relatives of gorillas are the other two Homininae genera, chimpanzees and humans, all of them having diverged from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago. Human gene sequences differ only 1.6% on average from the sequences of corresponding gorilla genes, but there is further difference in how many copies each gene has.

Until recently, gorillas were considered to be a single species, with three subspecies: the western lowland gorilla, the eastern lowland gorilla and the mountain gorilla. There is now agreement that there are two species, each with two subspecies. More recently, a third subspecies has been claimed to exist in one of the species. The separate species and subspecies developed from a single type of gorilla during the Ice Age, when their forest habitats shrank and became isolated from each other. Primatologists continue to explore the relationships between various gorilla populations. The species and subspecies listed here are the ones upon which most scientists agree.

The proposed third subspecies of Gorilla beringei, which has not yet received a trinomen, is the Bwindi population of the mountain gorilla, sometimes called the Bwindi gorilla.

Some variations that distinguish the classifications of gorilla include varying density, size, hair colour, length, culture, and facial widths. Population genetics of the lowland gorillas suggest that the western and eastern lowland populations diverged around 261 thousand years ago.

Characteristics

Wild male gorillas weigh 136 to 227 kg, while adult females weigh 68 - 113 kg. Adult males are 1.4 to 1.8 m tall, with an arm span that stretches from 2.3 to 2.6 m. Female gorillas are shorter at 1.25 to 1.5 m, with smaller arm spans. Colin Groves (1970) calculated the average weight of 42 wild adult male gorillas at 144 kg, while Smith and Jungers (1997) found the average weight of 19 wild adult male gorillas to be 169 kg. Adult male gorillas are known as silverbacks due to the characteristic silver hair on their backs reaching to the hips. The tallest gorilla recorded was a 1.95 m silverback with an arm span of 2.7 m, a chest of 1.98 m, and a weight of 219 kg, shot in Alimbongo, northern Kivu in May 1938. The heaviest gorilla recorded was a 1.83 m silverback shot in Ambam, Cameroon, which weighed 267 kg. Males in captivity can be overweight and reach weights up to 310 kg.

The eastern gorilla is more darkly coloured than the western gorilla, with the mountain gorilla being the darkest of all. The mountain gorilla also has the thickest hair. The western lowland gorilla can be brown or greyish with a reddish forehead. In addition, gorillas that live in lowland forest are more slender and agile than the more bulky mountain gorillas. The eastern gorilla also has a longer face and broader chest than the western gorilla. Like humans, gorillas have individual fingerprints. Their eye colour is dark brown, framed by a black ring around the iris. Gorilla facial structure is described as mandibular prognathism, that is, the mandible protrudes farther out than the maxilla. Adult males also have a prominent sagittal crest.

Gorillas move around by knuckle-walking, although they sometimes walk upright for short distances, typically while carrying food or in defensive situations. A 2018 study investigating the hand posture of 77 mountain gorillas at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (8% of the population) found that knuckle walking was done only 60% of the time, and they also supported their weight on their fists, the backs of their hands/feet, and on their palms/soles (with the digits flexed). Such a range of hand postures was previously thought to have been used by only orangutans. Studies of gorilla handedness have yielded varying results, with some arguing for no preference for either hand, and others right-hand dominance for the general population.

Studies have shown gorilla blood is not reactive to anti-A and anti-B monoclonal antibodies, which would, in humans, indicate type O blood. Due to novel sequences, though, it is different enough to not conform with the human ABO blood group system, into which the other great apes fit.

A gorilla's lifespan is normally between 35 and 40 years, although zoo gorillas may live for 50 years or more. Colo, a female western gorilla at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, was the oldest known gorilla at 60 years of age when she died on 17 January 2017. Another gorilla, Ozzie, was 61 years old at the time of his death in January 2022.

Distribution and habitat
Gorillas have a patchy distribution. The range of the two species is separated by the Congo River and its tributaries. The western gorilla lives in west central Africa, while the eastern gorilla lives in east central Africa. Between the species, and even within the species, gorillas live in a variety of habitats and elevations. Gorilla habitat ranges from montane forest to swampland. Eastern gorillas inhabit montane and submontane forests between 650 and 4000 m above sea level.

Mountain gorillas live in montane forests at the higher end of the elevation range, while eastern lowland gorillas live in submontane forests at the lower end. In addition, eastern lowland gorillas live in montane bamboo forests, as well as lowland forests ranging from 600 – in elevation. Western gorillas live in both lowland swamp forests and montane forests, at elevations ranging from sea level to 1600 m. Western lowland gorillas live in swamp and lowland forests ranging up to 1600 m, and Cross River gorillas live in low-lying and submontane forests ranging from 150 –.

Diet and foraging
A gorilla's day is divided between rest periods and travel or feeding periods. Diets differ between and within species. Mountain gorillas mostly eat foliage, such as leaves, stems, pith, and shoots, while fruit makes up a very small part of their diets. Mountain gorilla food is widely distributed and neither individuals nor groups have to compete with one another. Their home ranges vary from 3 to 15 km2, and their movements range around 500 m or less on an average day. Despite eating a few species in each habitat, mountain gorillas have flexible diets and can live in a variety of habitats.

Eastern lowland gorillas have more diverse diets, which vary seasonally. Leaves and pith are commonly eaten, but fruits can make up as much as 25% of their diets. Since fruit is less available, lowland gorillas must travel farther each day, and their home ranges vary from 2.7 to 6.5 km2, with day ranges 154–2280 m. Eastern lowland gorillas will also eat insects, preferably ants. Western lowland gorillas depend on fruits more than the others and they are more dispersed across their range. They travel even farther than the other gorilla subspecies, at 1105 m per day on average, and have larger home ranges of 7–14 km2. Western lowland gorillas have less access to terrestrial herbs, although they can access aquatic herbs in some areas. Termites and ants are also eaten.

Gorillas rarely drink water "because they consume succulent vegetation that is comprisedof [sic] almost half water as well as morning dew", although both mountain and lowland gorillas have been observed drinking.

Nesting
Gorillas construct nests for daytime and night use. Nests tend to be simple aggregations of branches and leaves about 2 to 5 ft in diameter and are constructed by individuals. Gorillas, unlike chimpanzees or orangutans, tend to sleep in nests on the ground. The young nest with their mothers, but construct nests after three years of age, initially close to those of their mothers. Gorilla nests are distributed arbitrarily and use of tree species for site and construction appears to be opportunistic. Nest-building by great apes is now considered to be not just animal architecture, but as an important instance of tool use.

Gorillas make a new nest to sleep on each day; even if remaining in the same place, they do not use the previous one. Usually, they are made an hour before dusk, to be ready to sleep when night falls. Gorillas sleep longer than humans, an average of 12 hours per day.

Interspecies interactions
One possible predator of gorillas is the leopard. Gorilla remains have been found in leopard scat, but this may be the result of scavenging. When the group is attacked by humans, leopards, or other gorillas, an individual silverback will protect the group, even at the cost of his own life. Gorillas do not appear to directly compete with chimpanzees in areas where they overlap. When fruit is abundant, gorilla and chimpanzee diets converge, but when fruit is scarce gorillas resort to vegetation. The two apes may also feed on different species, whether fruit or insects. Gorillas and chimpanzees may ignore or avoid each other when feeding on the same tree, but they have also been documented to form social bonds. Conversely, coalitions of chimpanzees have been observed attacking families of gorillas including silverbacks and killing infants.

Social structure
Gorillas live in groups called troops. Troops tend to be made of one adult male or silverback, with a harem of multiple adult females and their offspring. However, multiple-male troops also exist. A silverback is typically more than 12 years of age, and is named for the distinctive patch of silver hair on his back, which comes with maturity. Silverbacks have large canine teeth that also come with maturity. Both males and females tend to emigrate from their natal groups. For mountain gorillas, females disperse from their natal troops more than males. Mountain gorillas and western lowland gorillas also commonly transfer to second new groups.

Mature males also tend to leave their groups and establish their own troops by attracting emigrating females. However, male mountain gorillas sometimes stay in their natal troops and become subordinate to the silverback. If the silverback dies, these males may be able to become dominant or mate with the females. This behaviour has not been observed in eastern lowland gorillas. In a single male group, when the silverback dies, the females and their offspring disperse and find a new troop. Without a silverback to protect them, the infants will likely fall victim to infanticide. Joining a new group is likely to be a tactic against this. However, while gorilla troops usually disband after the silverback dies, female eastern lowlands gorillas and their offspring have been recorded staying together until a new silverback transfers into the group. This likely serves as protection from leopards. The silverback is the centre of the troop's attention, making all the decisions, mediating conflicts, determining the movements of the group, leading the others to feeding sites, and taking responsibility for the safety and well-being of the troop. Younger males subordinate to the silverback, known as blackbacks, may serve as backup protection. Blackbacks are aged between 8 and 12 years and lack the silver back hair. The bond that a silverback has with his females forms the core of gorilla social life. Bonds between them are maintained by grooming and staying close together. Females form strong relationships with males to gain mating opportunities and protection from predators and infanticidal outside males. However, aggressive behaviours between males and females do occur, but rarely lead to serious injury. Relationships between females may vary. Maternally related females in a troop tend to be friendly towards each other and associate closely. Otherwise, females have few friendly encounters and commonly act aggressively towards each other.

Females may fight for social access to males and a male may intervene. Male gorillas have weak social bonds, particularly in multiple-male groups with apparent dominance hierarchies and strong competition for mates. Males in all-male groups, though, tend to have friendly interactions and socialise through play, grooming, and staying together, and occasionally they even engage in homosexual interactions. Severe aggression is rare in stable groups, but when two mountain gorilla groups meet the two silverbacks can sometimes engage in a fight to the death, using their canines to cause deep, gaping injuries.

Reproduction and parenting
Females mature at 10–12 years (earlier in captivity), and males at 11–13 years. A female's first ovulatory cycle occurs when she is six years of age, and is followed by a two-year period of adolescent infertility. The estrous cycle lasts 30–33 days, with outward ovulation signs subtle compared to those of chimpanzees. The gestation period lasts 8.5 months. Female mountain gorillas first give birth at 10 years of age and have four-year interbirth intervals. Males can be fertile before reaching adulthood. Gorillas mate year round.

Females will purse their lips and slowly approach a male while making eye contact. This serves to urge the male to mount her. If the male does not respond, then she will try to attract his attention by reaching towards him or slapping the ground. In multiple-male groups, solicitation indicates female preference, but females can be forced to mate with multiple males. Males incite copulation by approaching a female and displaying at her or touching her and giving a "train grunt". Recently, gorillas have been observed engaging in face-to-face sex, a trait once considered unique to humans and bonobos.

Gorilla infants are vulnerable and dependent, thus mothers, their primary caregivers, are important to their survival. Male gorillas are not active in caring for the young, but they do play a role in socialising them to other youngsters. The silverback has a largely supportive relationship with the infants in his troop and shields them from aggression within the group. Infants remain in contact with their mothers for the first five months and mothers stay near the silverback for protection. Infants suckle at least once per hour and sleep with their mothers in the same nest.

Infants begin to break contact with their mothers after five months, but only for a brief period each time. By 12 months old, infants move up to 5 m from their mothers. At around 18–21 months, the distance between mother and offspring increases and they regularly spend time away from each other. In addition, nursing decreases to once every two hours. Infants spend only half of their time with their mothers by 30 months. They enter their juvenile period at their third year, and this lasts until their sixth year. At this time, gorillas are weaned and they sleep in a separate nest from their mothers. After their offspring are weaned, females begin to ovulate and soon become pregnant again. The presence of play partners, including the silverback, minimizes conflicts in weaning between mother and offspring.

Communication
Twenty-five distinct vocalisations are recognised, many of which are used primarily for group communication within dense vegetation. Sounds classified as grunts and barks are heard most frequently while traveling, and indicate the whereabouts of individual group members. They may also be used during social interactions when discipline is required. Screams and roars signal alarm or warning, and are produced most often by silverbacks. Deep, rumbling belches suggest contentment and are heard frequently during feeding and resting periods. They are the most common form of intragroup communication.

For this reason, conflicts are most often resolved by displays and other threat behaviours that are intended to intimidate without becoming physical. As a result, fights do not occur very frequently. The ritualized charge display is unique to gorillas. The entire sequence has nine steps: (1) progressively quickening hooting, (2) symbolic feeding, (3) rising bipedally, (4) throwing vegetation, (5) chest-beating with cupped hands, (6) one leg kick, (7) sideways running, two-legged to four-legged, (8) slapping and tearing vegetation, and (9) thumping the ground with palms to end display.

A gorilla's chest-beat may vary in frequency depending on its size. Smaller ones tend to have higher frequencies, while larger ones tend to be lower. They also do it the most when females are ready to mate.

Intelligence

Gorillas are considered highly intelligent. A few individuals in captivity, such as Koko, have been taught a subset of sign language. Like the other great apes, gorillas can laugh, grieve, have "rich emotional lives", develop strong family bonds, make and use tools, and think about the past and future. Some researchers believe gorillas have spiritual feelings or religious sentiments. They have been shown to have cultures in different areas revolving around different methods of food preparation, and will show individual colour preferences.

Tool use
The following observations were made by a team led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society in September 2005. Gorillas are now known to use tools in the wild. A female gorilla in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo was recorded using a stick as if to gauge the depth of water whilst crossing a swamp. A second female was seen using a tree stump as a bridge and also as a support whilst fishing in the swamp. This means all of the great apes are now known to use tools.

In September 2005, a two-and-a-half-year-old gorilla in the Republic of Congo was discovered using rocks to smash open palm nuts inside a game sanctuary. While this was the first such observation for a gorilla, over 40 years previously, chimpanzees had been seen using tools in the wild 'fishing' for termites. Nonhuman great apes are endowed with semiprecision grips, and have been able to use both simple tools and even weapons, such as improvising a club from a convenient fallen branch.

Scientific study
American physician and missionary Thomas Staughton Savage obtained the first specimens (the skull and other bones) during his time in Liberia. The first scientific description of gorillas dates back to an article by Savage and the naturalist Jeffries Wyman in 1847 in Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, where Troglodytes gorilla is described, now known as the western gorilla. Other species of gorilla were described in the next few years. The explorer Paul Du Chaillu was the first westerner to see a live gorilla during his travel through western equatorial Africa from 1856 to 1859. He brought dead specimens to the UK in 1861.

The first systematic study was not conducted until the 1920s, when Carl Akeley of the American Museum of Natural History traveled to Africa to hunt for an animal to be shot and stuffed. On his first trip, he was accompanied by his friends Mary Bradley, a mystery writer, her husband, and their young daughter Alice, who would later write science fiction under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. After their trip, Mary Bradley wrote On the Gorilla Trail. She later became an advocate for the conservation of gorillas, and wrote several more books (mainly for children). In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Robert Yerkes and his wife Ava helped further the study of gorillas when they sent Harold Bigham to Africa. Yerkes also wrote a book in 1929 about the great apes.

After World War II, George Schaller was one of the first researchers to go into the field and study primates. In 1959, he conducted a systematic study of the mountain gorilla in the wild and published his work. Years later, at the behest of Louis Leakey and the National Geographic, Dian Fossey conducted a much longer and more comprehensive study of the mountain gorilla. When she published her work, many misconceptions and myths about gorillas were finally disproved, including the myth that gorillas are violent.

Western lowland gorillas (G. g. gorilla) are believed to be one of the zoonotic origins of HIV/AIDS. The SIVgor Simian immunodeficiency virus that infects them is similar to a certain strain of HIV-1.

Genome sequencing
The gorilla became the next-to-last great ape genus to have its genome sequenced. The first gorilla genome was generated with short read and Sanger sequencing using DNA from a female western lowland gorilla named Kamilah. This gave scientists further insight into the evolution and origin of humans. Despite the chimpanzees being the closest extant relatives of humans, 15% of the human genome was found to be more like that of the gorilla. In addition, 30% of the gorilla genome "is closer to human or chimpanzee than the latter are to each other; this is rarer around coding genes, indicating pervasive selection throughout great ape evolution, and has functional consequences in gene expression." Analysis of the gorilla genome has cast doubt on the idea that the rapid evolution of hearing genes gave rise to language in humans, as it also occurred in gorillas.

Captivity
Gorillas became highly prized by western zoos since the 19th century, though the earliest attempts to keep them in captive facilities ended in their early death. In the late 1920s, the care of captive gorillas significantly improved. Colo (December 22, 1956 – January 17, 2017) of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium was the first gorilla to be born in captivity.

Captive gorillas exhibit stereotypic behaviors, including eating disorders —such as regurgitation, reingestion and coprophagy —self-injurious or conspecific aggression, pacing, rocking, sucking of fingers or lip smacking, and overgrooming. Negative vigilance of visitor behaviors have been identified as starting, posturing and charging at visitors. Groups of bachelor gorillas containing young silverbacks have significantly higher levels of aggression and wounding rates than mixed age and sex groups.

The use of both internal and external privacy screens on exhibit windows has been shown to alleviate stresses from visual effects of high crowd densities, leading to decreased stereotypic behaviors in the gorillas. Playing naturalistic auditory stimuli as opposed to classical music, rock music, or no auditory enrichment (which allows for crowd noise, machinery, etc. to be heard) has been noted to reduce stress behavior as well. Enrichment modifications to feed and foraging, where clover-hay is added to an exhibit floor, decrease stereotypic activities while simultaneously increasing positive food-related behaviors.

Recent research on captive gorilla welfare emphasizes a need to shift to individual assessments instead of a one-size-fits-all group approach to understanding how welfare increases or decreases based on a variety of factors. Individual characteristics such as age, sex, personality and individual histories are essential in understanding that stressors will affect each individual gorilla and their welfare differently.

Conservation status
All species (and subspecies) of gorilla are listed as endangered or critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. All gorillas are listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), meaning that international export/import of the species, including in parts and derivatives, is regulated. Around 316,000 western lowland gorillas are thought to exist in the wild, 4,000 in zoos, thanks to conservation; eastern lowland gorillas have a population of under 5,000 in the wild and 24 in zoos. Mountain gorillas are the most severely endangered, with an estimated population of about 880 left in the wild and none in zoos. Threats to gorilla survival include habitat destruction and poaching for the bushmeat trade. Gorillas are closely related to humans, and are susceptible to diseases that humans also get infected by. In 2004, a population of several hundred gorillas in the Odzala National Park, Republic of Congo was essentially wiped out by the Ebola virus. A 2006 study published in Science concluded more than 5,000 gorillas may have died in recent outbreaks of the Ebola virus in central Africa. The researchers indicated in conjunction with commercial hunting of these apes, the virus creates "a recipe for rapid ecological extinction". In captivity, it has also been observed that gorillas can also be infected with COVID-19.

Conservation efforts include the Great Apes Survival Project, a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme and the UNESCO, and also an international treaty, the Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats, concluded under UNEP-administered Convention on Migratory Species. The Gorilla Agreement is the first legally binding instrument exclusively targeting gorilla conservation; it came into effect on 1 June 2008. Governments of countries where gorillas live placed a ban on their killing and trading, but weak law enforcement still poses a threat to them, since the governments rarely apprehend poachers, traders and consumers that rely on gorillas for profit.

Cultural significance
In Cameroon's Lebialem highlands, folk stories connect people and gorillas via totems; a gorilla's death means the connected person will die also. This creates a local conservation ethic. Many different indigenous peoples interact with wild gorillas. Some have detailed knowledge; the Baka have words to distinguish at least ten types of gorilla individuals, by sex, age, and relationships. In 1861, alongside tales of hunting enormous gorillas, the traveller and anthropologist Paul Du Chaillu reported the Cameroonian story that a pregnant woman who sees a gorilla will give birth to one.

In 1911, the anthropologist Albert Jenks noted the Bulu people's knowledge of gorilla behaviour and ecology, and their gorilla stories. In one such story, "The Gorilla and the Child", a gorilla speaks to people, seeking help and trust, and stealing a baby; a man accidentally kills the baby while attacking the gorilla. Even far from where gorillas live, savannah tribes pursue "cult-like worship" of the apes. Some beliefs are widespread among indigenous peoples. The Fang name for gorilla is ngi while the Bulu name is njamong; the root ngi means fire, denoting a positive energy. From the Central African Republic to Cameroon and Gabon, stories of reincarnations as gorillas, totems, and transformations similar to those recorded by Du Chaillu are still told in the 21st century.

Since gaining international attention, gorillas have been a recurring element of many aspects of popular culture and media. They were usually portrayed as murderous and aggressive. Inspired by Emmanuel Frémiet's Gorilla Carrying off a Woman, gorillas have been depicted kidnapping human women. This theme was used in films such as Ingagi (1930) and most notably King Kong (1933). The comedic play The Gorilla, which debuted in 1925, featured an escaped gorilla taking a woman from her house. Several films would use the "escaped gorilla" trope including The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942), The Gorilla Man (1943), Gorilla at Large (1954) and the Disney cartoons The Gorilla Mystery (1930) and Donald Duck and the Gorilla (1944).

Gorillas have been used as opponents to jungle-themed heroes such as Tarzan and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, as well as superheroes. The DC Comics supervillain Gorilla Grodd is an enemy of the Flash. Gorillas also serve as antagonists in the 1968 film Planet of the Apes. More positive and sympathetic portrayals of gorillas include the films Son of Kong (1933), Mighty Joe Young (1949), Gorillas in the Mist (1988) and Instinct (1999) and the 1992 novel Ishmael. Gorillas have been featured in video games as well, notably Donkey Kong.

title: Gorilla


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GURPS Supers

GURPS Supers is a superhero roleplaying game written by Loyd Blankenship and published by Steve Jackson Games. The first edition was published in 1989.

Contents
GURPS Supers is a supplement of rules for comic-book superhero characters and campaigns for GURPS. The first edition book includes new combat rules, 24 superpowers, bionic superlimbs, gadgets and equipment, and rules for creating new powers, sample heroes and villains, and a briefly described campaign world. The second edition book is revised and corrected.

GURPS Supers deals with super-powered characters in a modern-day setting, and contains all the necessary rules to create superheroes for the GURPS basic system. The book also contains suggestions for running a superhero campaign, and a detailed background setting with the UN controlling most superheroes.

Setting
The official "house setting" for GURPS Supers is the "IST World", described briefly in chapter 7 of GURPS Supers and later appearing in its own full-length supplement, GURPS International Super Teams.

System
GURPS Supers is a supplement for the GURPS roleplaying game and uses that basic rule system. The supplement offers additional rules and options for characters with superpowers.

Players can choose from several different basic types of superhero characters that influence how the character's powers are selected. Players can select from a wide variety of powers and their modifications given in GURPS Supers, augmented by those in the GURPS Basic, plus any other GURPS book included by the campaign. The rules book included advice on creating superhero campaigns, and ways for the game master to customize the style of the campaign.

As part of the GURPS system, GURPS Supers allows the exchange of a player's characters between any of the numerous other genres supported by GURPS. GURPS Supers favors lower-powered heroes over higher-powered ones. Many of the superpowers unique to GURPS Supers appear as Advantages and Disadvantages in the GURPS 4e Basic Set.

History
GURPS Supers was written by Loyd Blankenship, with a cover by Alan Gutierrez and Charlie Weidman, and was first published by Steve Jackson Games in 1988 as a 112-page book. GURPS Space was one of the broad genre books that was published after the GURPS Basic Set.

The 2nd edition of GURPS Supers was published in 1990 and featured a cover by John Zeleznik.

Earlier editions and supplements
The first edition of GURPS Supers was printed in 1989, and the second edition was published in 1990. The first edition had groupings of character powers that were not used in the second edition. Both were based on the Third Edition of GURPS Basic.

There were various aids, supplements and ready-made adventures available, including:
 * GURPS Supers Adventures
 * GURPS Supers: Death Wish
 * GURPS Supers: Mixed Doubles
 * GURPS Supers: School of Hard Knocks
 * GURPS Supers: Superscum
 * GURPS Supers: Supertemps
 * Hellboy Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game (based on the Hellboy series)
 * GURPS Wild Cards (based on Wild Cards series)
 * GURPS Wild Cards: Aces Abroad

4th Edition
GURPS Supers for 4e was published in 2007, one of several genre books published by Steve Jackson Games for the new edition.

For the 4th edition of GURPS, the majority of rules governing the creation of superhero characters are covered in the more generic GURPS Powers. A PDF release by William H. Stoddard covers the genre specific information in a similar style to GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Space books for the fourth edition of GURPS.

Reception
In the August 1989 edition of Games International (Issue #8), James Wallis liked the design and layout of the book, but pointed out that "the rewriting of a large number of rules [...] shows that GURPS is not a truly generic rolegame and makes GURPS Supers substantially harder to learn". He disliked the additional complexities around character generation, and was disturbed that the book did not spend much time on the creation of character background, saying this was a failure of the system to properly engage with the nature of comic books. He also commented that GURPS combat was frequently deadly, whereas in comic books combat is not usually lethal. Wallis concluded by giving this book a below average rating of only 2 out of 5: "For my money, GURPS Supers is flawed [...] There is too much emphasis on rules changes; it fails as a superhero rolegame because of the overrealism of the GURPS rules, and it fails as a generic sourcebook because it is not generic".

In the September 1996 edition of Dragon (Issue #233), Rick Swan compared the second edition of GURPS Supers to Champions, and commented that "GURPS Super takes a more realistic route, stressing personality over punch-outs. That's not to say it's stodgy; a typical chapter is titled 'Unnatural Multiple Limbs from Another World'. The Second Edition streamlines the occasionally awkward mechanics of the First Edition and adds some nifty new powers".

In the May 1996 edition of Arcane (issue #6), Steve Faragher gave the second edition of GURPS Supers a below-average rating of only 6 out of 10, and called the background setting "rather dull", saying it is "fine if you want to recreate a Saturday afternoon TV show, but not so great for a more fantastic, underground campaign of the Watchmen variety". Faragher concluded that "it's a competent enough set of rules - and one that's well presented - but GURPS Supers is not exactly compulsive playing material".

Other reviews

 * Games Review, vol. 2 #1
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Gallifrey

Gallifrey (sometimes, in the classic series, ), is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is the original home world of the Time Lords, the civilisation to which the protagonist, the Doctor belongs. It is located in a binary star system 250 million light years from Earth.

It was first shown in The War Games (1969) during the Second Doctor's trial, though it was not identified by name until The Time Warrior (1973–74).

In the revived series (2005 onwards), Gallifrey was originally referred to as having been destroyed in the Time War, which was fought between the Time Lords and the Daleks. It was depicted in a flashback in "The Sound of Drums" (2007) and appeared prominently in "The End of Time" (2009–10). At the conclusion of "The Day of the Doctor" (2013), Gallifrey is revealed to have actually survived the Time War, though it was frozen in time and transported into a bubble universe, before being unfrozen and arriving at the end of the universe at a chronological point before "Hell Bent" (2015). By "Spyfall" (2020), it had been reduced to ruin by The Master who described the planet as hiding in its bubble universe again. At the end of "The Timeless Children" (2020), one of the Doctor's allies, Ko Sharmus, detonates the "Death Particle" on Gallifrey, wiping out all organic life on the planet.

The points in time when Gallifrey appears are never definitively stated. As the planet is often reached by means of time travel, its relative present could conceivably exist almost anywhere in the Earth's past or future, as well as anywhere in the conceivable universe.

Geography and appearances
From space, Gallifrey is seen as a yellow-orange planet and was close enough to central space lanes for spacecraft to require clearance from Gallifreyan Space Traffic Control as they pass through its system. The planet was protected from physical attack by an impenetrable barrier called the quantum force field, and from teleportation incursions by the transduction barrier—which could be reinforced to repel most levels of this type of technological attack.

The Time Lords' principal city, named The Capitol, consists of shining towers protected by a mighty glass dome. Outside The Capitol is a wilderness with plains of red grass, as mentioned by the Doctor in Gridlock as well as "The End of Time". The planet's so-called "second city" is Arcadia, and is seen falling to the Daleks in the 2013 minisode "The Last Day."

The Doctor's granddaughter Susan first describes her home world (not named as "Gallifrey" at the time) as having bright, silver-leafed trees and a burnt orange sky at night in the serial The Sensorites (1964). This casts an amber tint on anything outside the city, as seen in The Invasion of Time. However, Gallifrey's sky appears blue and Earth-like in "The Five Doctors" (1983) within the isolated Death Zone.

In The Time Monster, the Third Doctor says that "When I was a little boy, we used to live in a house that was perched halfway up the top of a mountain", explaining, "I ran down that mountain and I found that the rocks weren't grey at all—but they were red, brown and purple and gold. And those pathetic little patches of sludgy snow were shining white. Shining white in the sunlight." In "Gridlock", the Tenth Doctor echoes Susan's description of the world now named as Gallifrey and goes further by mentioning the vast mountain ranges "with fields of deep red grass, capped with snow". He then elaborates how Gallifrey's second sun would "rise in the south and the mountains would shine", with the silver-leafed trees looking like "a forest on fire" in the mornings.

Outer Gallifrey's wastelands are where the "Outsiders" reside, The Doctor Who Role Playing Game released by FASA equates the Outsiders with the "Shobogans", who are briefly mentioned in the serial The Deadly Assassin. The wastes of Gallifrey include the Death Zone, an area that was used as a gladiatorial arena by the first Time Lords, pitting various species kidnapped from their respective time zones against each other (although Daleks and Cybermen were considered too dangerous to use). Inside the Death Zone stands the Tomb of Rassilon, the founder of Time Lord society.

Somewhere on Gallifrey there is also an institute called the Academy, which the Doctor and various other Time Lords have attended.

"The Last Day" mentions birds as something expected in Gallifrey's skies. Gallifrey appeared in the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special, "The Day of the Doctor" which aired on 23 November 2013.

Spin-off material
Several of the spin-off novels have further information about Gallifrey. It is said to have at least two moons, one being the copper-coloured Pazithi Gallifreya (first named in Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible); the novel Lungbarrow also places Karn (setting of The Brain of Morbius, 1976) in Gallifrey's solar system, along with a frozen gas giant named Polarfrey and an "astrological figure" of "Kasterborous the Fibster". Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible also mentions edible rodent-like mammals called tafelshrews.

Relative time
The Three Doctors (1972–73) seemed to set Gallifrey's relative present contemporary with the events of the story set on Earth, with its sequel Arc of Infinity (1983) setting it in the 1980s. Alternatively, The Trial of a Time Lord (1986) seems to imply that the planet's relative present is in the Earth's far future. This is also the position taken by The Doctor Who Role Playing Game released by FASA, although the information in it is not usually considered canon. In the episode "Utopia" (2007), the Tenth Doctor describes the year 100 trillion as a time period not even the Time Lords travelled to. The present of Gallifrey from after it returns to the universe from another dimension is stated to be around the end of the universe, "several billion years in the future", in "Hell Bent" (2015). Both the Virgin New Adventures and the BBC Books Doctor Who novels seem to take the stance that Gallifrey's relative present is far in the Earth's relative past. In "Spyfall," the Master states that Gallifrey is once again in the bubble universe it was sent to in "The Day of the Doctor." The Master causes a wormhole called "The Boundary" to connect to Gallifrey from the far future in "Ascension of the Cybermen" and "The Timeless Children" though he refuses to answer the Doctor's questions about how he accomplished this.

Race of Gallifrey
The television series and people involved in its production repeatedly refer to the Time Lords, interchangeably, as a species or race.

In The War Games (1969), the Second Doctor says the Time Lords are "an immensely civilised race". Writer Malcolm Hulke and writer and script editor Terrance Dicks repeat this description in their 1972 book The Making of Doctor Who.

In The Time Warrior (1973–74), Commander Linx quotes Sontaran military intelligence as describing the Time Lords as "A race of great technical achievement, but lacking the morale to withstand a determined assault."

In Pyramids of Mars (1975), Sutekh calls the Time Lords "a perfidious species".

In "School Reunion" (2006), the alien Krillitane Mr Finch calls the Time Lords "such a pompous race".

In "Smith and Jones" (2007), the Tenth Doctor answers "what sort of species [he is]" with "I'm a Time Lord."

In "Human Nature" (2007), Tim Latimer hears a voice saying, "Last of the Time Lords, the last of that wise and ancient race."

In "Utopia" (2007), the Tenth Doctor answers "what species are you" with "Time Lord, last of."

In "The Sound of Drums" (2007), the Tenth Doctor calls the Time Lords "the oldest and most mighty race in the universe".

In "Planet of the Dead" (2009), the Tenth Doctor says, "I come from a race of people called Time Lords."

About sixteen minutes into "Let's Kill Hitler" (2011), a computer readout describes the "Pilot Species" of the Doctor's ship the TARDIS as "Time Lord".

In "The Witch's Familiar" (2015), Davros describes a prophecy that spoke of a "hybrid creature [of] two great warrior races forced together to create a warrior greater than either," and believes that the creature being referred to was "half Dalek, half Time Lord."

In "Before the Flood" (2015), the Fisher King describes the Time Lords as "the most warlike race in the galaxy".

In "Hell Bent" (2015), the General describes the Hybrid as being "crossbred between two warrior races". He says it is supposed that these races are "the Daleks and the Time Lords".

In "Knock Knock" (2017), the Twelfth Doctor tells Bill Potts the Time Lords are "my species".

Writing in issue No. 356 of Doctor Who Magazine, head writer and executive producer Russell T Davies describes the Time Lords as "the Doctor's race".

In a special feature on the DVD set of The Invasion of Time, script editor Anthony Read called the Time Lords "an interesting species to somebody coming in".

In a special feature on the DVD and Blu-ray set of series 8, actor Peter Capaldi said the Doctor belongs to "a race called the Time Lords".

Terrance Dicks recalled in a 2016 interview in The Essential Doctor Who magazine that during a discussion of The War Games, producer Derrick Sherwin said the Doctor belongs to "this mysterious race called Time Lords".

The Time Lords are also referred to as a race by media outlets including the Radio Times and The New York Times, while a correction in a 2014 NPR article claims that "not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords".

"The Stolen Tardis" (1979), a spin-off comic printed in issue No. 9 of Doctor Who Weekly (the original name of Doctor Who Magazine) also claims that "not everyone on Gallifrey is a Time Lord", while a feature in issue No. 21 instead states that the Doctor is "a member of a race called the Time Lords".

On screen

Few details on the history of the planet itself emerge from the original series run from 1963 to 1989. In "The End of the World" (2005), the Ninth Doctor states that his home planet has been destroyed in a war and the Time Lords with it. The episode also indicates that the Time Lords are remembered in the far future. Subsequently, in "Dalek" (2005), it is revealed that the last great Time War was fought between the Time Lords and the Daleks, ending in the obliteration of both sides and with only two apparent survivors; the Doctor and a lone Dalek that had somehow fallen through time and crashed on Earth. At the conclusion of that episode, that surviving Dalek self-destructs, leaving the Ninth Doctor believing that he was the sole survivor of the Time War. However, the Daleks return in "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways" (2005), and subsequently in several other stories.

The Tenth Doctor's reference to Gallifrey in "The Runaway Bride" (2006) is the first time the name of his homeworld has been given onscreen since the new series began. The Doctor's revelation that he is from Gallifrey elicits terror from the Empress of the Racnoss. The Tenth Doctor in human form (as "John Smith") mentions Gallifrey in "Human Nature" (2007) and is asked if it was in Ireland; this is the same question asked in the 1970s stories The Hand of Fear and The Invisible Enemy.

The planet makes its first appearance in the revived series in "The Sound of Drums" (2007), where the Citadel, enclosed in a glass dome (as described by the Doctor in "Gridlock", 2007), is seen in flashback as the Doctor describes it. Also seen is a ceremony initiating 8-year-old Gallifreyans – in particular the Master – into the Time Lord Academy.

"The End of Time" (2009–10) once again featured Gallifrey. By the end of the war, Gallifrey is depicted in ruins. The dome of the main city, the Time Lord capital, the Citadel, is shattered and dozens of Dalek saucers have crashed on the plains below. The Master releases Gallifrey from its time lock. However, Gallifrey's reemergence is eventually stopped and reversed after it is made clear that the release of Gallifrey would lead to the Time Lords destroying time – in effect destroying the universe – to defeat the Daleks and ultimately to preserve the Time Lords at the expense of all creation. Lord President Rassilon also believes that this action would elevate them to a higher form of existence, becoming "creatures of consciousness". Upon realising the scope of Rassilon's plan for self-preservation, the Tenth Doctor recalls that the Doctor that fought in the Time War had attempted to stop them during the war. Eventually, the Master comes to the aid of the Tenth Doctor and prevents Rassilon and the rest of Gallifrey from coming through, breaking the link that held Gallifrey in relative time to 21st-century Earth.

It is stated by the Tenth Doctor in "The End of Time" that Gallifrey is not how he and the Master knew it in their youth. Implying that the Time Lords had resorted to desperate and deplorable measures to fight the Daleks, the Doctor is willing to break his code of non-violence to stop the return of the Time Lords. This is reinforced within a short feature that discloses the hitherto unknown circumstances of the Eighth Doctor's regeneration into the War Doctor, entitled "The Night of the Doctor" (2013). A young pilot rejects assistance from the Eighth Doctor due to her fear of the Time Lords.

In the series seven finale, "The Name of the Doctor", two Gallifreyan mechanics were seen on Gallifrey watching the First Doctor and Susan steal a TARDIS.

In the 50th anniversary special of the television series, "The Day of the Doctor" (2013), scenes are shown during the fall of Arcadia, Gallifrey's second city. Subsequently, it is shown that Gallifrey wasn't actually destroyed. The final scenes depict three of the Doctor's incarnations—the Tenth Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor and the War Doctor; the interface of the weapon, the Moment, that was supposed to destroy the planet; and the Eleventh Doctor's companion Clara Oswald decide against destroying it. Instead, they freeze the planet in time within a parallel pocket universe. This occurs with the help of the other Doctors, including the Twelfth Doctor, whose eyes alone are seen at this point. Instead of destroying Gallifrey, the Dalek fleet echelons open fire on and destroy each other.

In "The Time of the Doctor" (2013), the Time Lords are depicted as trying to re-enter the universe through a crack in the Universe on the planet Trenzalore. They broadcast a message throughout space and time, the question "Doctor Who?", a question which only the Doctor could answer. When the Doctor answers, they will know that it is safe to leave. However, this message inadvertently attracts various races, including the Daleks and Cybermen, to lay siege to Trenzalore; the Eleventh Doctor remaining to protect the inhabitants, but not wanting to release the Time Lords as this would mean the destruction of Trenzalore and the initiation of another Time War. Hundreds of years later, Clara convinces the Time Lords to help the Doctor, dying from old age in his final regeneration, and the crack closes, before reopening in the sky above Trenzalore. The Time Lords give the Doctor a new regeneration cycle, before the crack seals for good with the Time Lords still lost, but a newly regenerated Twelfth Doctor ready to find them. In "Death in Heaven" (2014), Missy tells the Twelfth Doctor that Gallifrey is located at its original coordinates. These claims prove to be false, leaving the Doctor distraught.

The Twelfth Doctor returns to Gallifrey in "Heaven Sent" (2015), having taken the "long way around" through breaking a wall of azbantium after he is teleported inside his confession dial. In "Hell Bent" (2015), Gallifrey is revealed to have indeed returned to its original coordinates as described by Missy, but that it is now situated "several billion years in the future, and [when] the universe is pretty much over" for its own protection. After Rassilon is deposed and exiled by the Twelfth Doctor, Gallifrey is seen in a much later period in the episode abandoned apart from the human immortal Ashildr, who is protected in the Cloisters beneath the Citadel by a reality bubble. The Thirteenth Doctor returns to Gallifrey at the end of the events of "Spyfall" to find everything on it destroyed and a recording of the Master revealing that he orchestrated the planet's destruction. Gallifrey is revealed to have moved to a hitherto unknown wormhole called the Boundary, guarded by Ko Sharmus, at the end of the episode "Ascension of the Cybermen" with the Master reappearing from the planet as well. The Doctor goes through to Gallifrey where she is captured by the Master and through the Matrix the Master shows her she is really the Timeless Child, a figure from Gallifrey's past from whom the secret of regeneration was gained. The Master converts the corpses of Time Lords into Cybermasters, with the power to regenerate. The Doctor threatens him with the Death Particle, a weapon created by the Cyberium capable of destroying all organic life. She was unable to press it but Ko Sharmus did so for her, apparently destroying all life on the planet.

Novels
Various spin-off novels have expanded on the history and nature of Gallifrey.

Marc Platt's novels Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and Lungbarrow, provide a detailed backstory for the civilisation seen in the main series. In the Dark Times (occasionally mentioned in the televised serials such as "The Five Doctors"), Gallifrey was at the centre of an empire covering dozens of worlds and continually being extended by heroes such as Prydonius (after whom the Time Lord chapter is named). Ancient Gallifreyans are all telepathic and were ruled by a female cult centred on a figure called the Pythia, who controlled the population through mysticism and prophecies. When the prophetic powers of the last of the Pythias failed her, Rassilion, Omega and a shadowy figure known as The Other seized power in the name of science and rationality. Seeing this, the Pythia committed suicide and cursed Gallifrey, killing all children in their wombs and making the world sterile. To combat this, Rassilion restructured society and used genetic looms to create new generations of Gallifreyans, who emerge from the looms as fully grown adults. Each of the Great Houses is allotted a total of forty-five cousins and given a regeneration cycle of thirteen lives. The Houses themselves are to some degree alive, in the same way TARDISes are, and the furniture can move about, occasionally growing into 'Drudges' who function as servants for the family. The Doctor was loomed in the House of Lungbarrow in the mountains of South Gallifrey, but unique among the house's cousins, he has a belly button. This sterility backstory is contradicted by on screen depictions and descriptions of the Master and the Doctor as children,       the Eleventh Doctor stating he slept in the cot he brings out of his TARDIS and references made to the Doctor and the Master having parents,   the Doctor himself being a father   and the Master having a daughter.

The Virgin New Adventuresestablish a religion on Gallifrey centred around the three main gods, Time, Death and Pain. The Time Lords use these figures to understand the concepts they represent and in some cases make deals with them and become their chosen champions. The Seventh Doctor is Time's Champion (as well as someone who makes frequent deals with or wages against Death to save his friends) and the audio play Master states that the Master is Death's champion. It's also briefly implied in Vampire Science, that the Eighth Doctor is Life's champion, implying the existence of another unseen figure. Happy Endings and other books imply that these gods are Eternals as seen in the serial Enlightenment.

In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Ancestor Cell by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole, Gallifrey is destroyed as a result of the Eighth Doctor's desire to prevent the voodoo cult Faction Paradox from starting a war between the Time Lords and an unnamed Enemy. Hints about this future war are dropped in several books earlier in the series beginning with Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies. To have boltholes or decoys in case of attack, the Time Lords have created nine separate planet Gallifreys (it even hinted that the original Gallifrey may at some point be reduced to ruins) and special looms to constantly produce new soldiers. By this time TARDISes have evolved to point where they appear human and reproduce sexually (the Doctor's companion Compassion is the first such TARDIS). It is also hinted that the Celestial Intervention Agency will evolve into the beings of pure thought known as the Celestis, who observe the war from outside this dimension (the Last Parliament in which they sit resembles the Panopticon on Gallifrey and the closest anyone gets to describing them is similar to the Time Lords' robes). Faction Paradox itself is a counter to Time Lord society, dedicated to creating time-travel paradoxes, in contrast to the Time Lords' web of time. It was founded by a mysterious figure Grandfather Paradox, who it is believed was once a Time Lord from the House of Lungbarrow. The Ancestor Cell suggests that he is a future version of the Doctor, but this is retconned in The Gallifrey Chronicles, to him being everyone's potential future self. When the Doctor destroys Gallifrey the war no longer happens and his actions also apparently (and retroactively) wipe the Time Lords from history.

In the last regular Eighth Doctor novel, The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin, it is revealed that while Gallifrey was destroyed, the Time Lords were not erased from history. However, the cataclysm sets up an event horizon in time that prevents anyone from entering Gallifrey's relative past or travelling from it to the present or future. The Time Lords also survive within the Matrix, which has been downloaded into the Eighth Doctor's mind, but their reconstruction requires a sufficiently advanced computer. At the novel's end, the question of whether or not the Time Lords will be restored remains unanswered.

Television series executive producer Russell T Davies wrote in Doctor Who Magazine No. 356 that there is no connection between the War of the books and the Time War of the television series. In the same Doctor Who Magazine column, Davies compared Gallifrey being destroyed twice with Earth's two World Wars. He also said that he was "usually happy for old and new fans to invent the Complete History of the Doctor in their heads, completely free of the production team's hot and heavy hands".

title: Gallifrey