Biomedical Ephemera, or: A Frog for Your Boils

Skull of Gorilla gorilla - The Western Gorilla. Front view.

Unlike many of the other Great Apes, gorillas rarely (if ever) consume non-insect meats, and even insects are a rarity in their diets. The majority of their required proteins are found in tiny quantities in their other foods, but given that an adult gorilla can consume up to 18 kg of food a day, it adds up quickly.

Though they tend to be innate conservationists in that they don’t consume enough to over-exploit an area before moving on (if they did that, it would not produce more food, and what’s the good in that?), the adult males have been observed many times completely tearing apart full-grown banana trees with their immense strength and vicious jaws, just to get at the juicy pith of the trunk. Juicy, juicy pith. Nom. 

Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. 1904.