The mountain gorilla is another large animal that has become known to Western science only during the last century. Today, we know there are two types of gorillas (separate species or subspecies depending upon which primatologist is making the distinction). The massive mountain gorilla with its rich black crown of head hair is easy to distinguish from the lowland gorilla whose cap of hair is clearly red. (The silverback gorillas seen in television documentaries are older male mountain gorillas, though white-tipped or silver-tinted hair is infrequently found on the backs of some male lowland gorillas.)

Though the lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) was officially recognized only as late as 1847, the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringa) was not discovered until the twentieth century—despite many expeditions mounted by universities, zoos, and museums specifically sent to Africa to kill or capture gorillas. It was only in 1861 that the first native accounts of a monster ape (ngagi and ngila) came to the attention of Western scientists. The animal was said to live on the misty heights of the Virunga Volcanoes of eastern Africa. Westerners, however, refused to credit what seemed like absurd legends.

Then, in 1898, a trekker named Ewart Grogan found a mountain gorilla skeleton—but as in so many other tales of the finds of pieces of unknown hairy primates, Grogan failed to bring the skeleton out of the mountains. Finally, in October 1902, a Belgian army captain named von Beringe and his companion killed two gorillas on the Virungas’ Mount Sabinio.

Beringe almost missed his chance of proving the mountain gorilla’s existence. When he shot his two mountain gorillas, both the animals fell into a valley. Only after great difficulty were Beringe and his companion able to recover one of the great apes and prove the species’ reality to a skeptical world.

The first expeditions to study mountain gorillas in Africa in their natural habitat failed. Late in die 1960s, however, Dr. Dian Fossey founded the Karisoke Research Centre in Rwanda and launched a long-running study of the creature. Today, no more than 350 mountain gorillas survive in the wild.

SOURCE:

The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters,Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature
Written by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark – Copyright 1999 Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark