Gorilla
Featured in: Year 1: Animals, including humans
Gorilla
Mammal
The largest living primate, which mainly eats leaves, shoots, and fruit.
💡 Fun Facts
- Gorillas share about 98% of their DNA with humans.
- They build a new 'nest' out of leaves and branches every single night to sleep in.
- Adult male gorillas are called 'silverbacks' because of the silver hair on their backs.
Name Story
Gorilla gorilla gorilla
means “the hairy wild-one”
a traditional storyThe link to the explorer Hanno's "Gorillai" is the accepted story, but those wild "people" in the ancient tale may not have been apes at all.
What does its name mean?
- Gorilla (×3) — from 'Gorillai', a name for hairy wild peopleGreek, reported by the explorer Hanno long ago
The gorilla's name travels back over two thousand years, to an explorer's tale of hairy "wild people" seen on the African coast — a word later borrowed for this great, gentle, powerful ape (whose full name says "gorilla" three times over).