Talk:Gorilla

3 gorillas!!

Wow, there is a species on Earth called gorilla gorilla gorilla. That is darn cool. I want one as a pet. And yes, this is deffo helping the cause of Wikipeida.
Who says so?

The name Gorilla gorilla gorilla (or G. gorilla gorilla) is the name for the subspecies from which the holotype of the species G. gorilla was taken. Stanskis 02:01, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

(I made minor edits above - UtherSRG 02:35, July 20, 2005 (UTC))

Text Away Again

Hopefully the user trying to mess up the page will stop now.

conservation status

someone ought to add conservation status (enandgered i believe) in the taxobox. oops 63.172.168.157 22:52, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

See the individual subspecies articles for conservation status. They aren't all the same: 3 are endangered, one (the Cross River Gorilla) is critically endangered. - UtherSRG (talk) 14:16, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Discovery date?

While watching a show on Bigfoot, a comment was made the other great ape species, such as the Gorilla, had not been known for a long time, but were recently discovered. The impression was that this discovery was during the early 20th century. Is this so?

Jhugart 22:08, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, since the scientific name was assigned in the mid 19th Century, it's fair to say that it was known at least that long. I have a PDF on my work computer detailing the history of the gorilla to some extent, so I'll post something more informative on Monday. - UtherSRG (talk) 02:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Here we go: Colin S. Grove (2002). "A history of gorilla taxonomy". In Andrea B. Taylor & Michele L. Goldsmith (editors), Gorilla Biology: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 15–34. - UtherSRG (talk) 20:27, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Climb Trees?

Came to wikipedia to see if Gorillas climbed trees. This information is missing from the article. Further research suggests that they do.

Younger gorillas and females (a bit) do, but Silverbacks are far too heavy.

Strength of a Gorilla

I think I read somehwere that a gorilla is 27 x stronger than a man. Is this true? I notice that the article says that the strength of a gorilla has never been measured...

There should defintely be more information in that section. One line isn't enough. I find it hard to believe that the strength can't be measured. Are there any resources that give more insight on this? Lengis 04:30, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I did some research and most of the sites I found either said that the gorilla's strength has never been measured, or just that the gorilla is really strong. Some sites, though, tried to give a good idea of how strong a gorilla really is. 1. from http://www.sfzoo.org/cgi-bin/animals.py?ID=31 - "Silverback gorillas possess the strength of four to eight strong men." 2. from http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dtrapp/bigfoot.htm - "Chimpanzees (with near human weight) have been estimated to possess five times human strength and gorillas supposedly have 10 times human strength." 3. from http://www.mattfurey.com/pullups.html - "Is it any wonder that...a gorilla has the strength of 10 Olympic weight lifters?"

I did some research too, and it said that while measuring strength is difficult because methods of determining strength also require a degree of skill involved. It may be entirely possible that a strong human can bench press more weight than a gorilla (if you could some how get a gorilla to bench press), but that same gorilla could rip that man's arms right off. Lengis 02:28, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

According to Animal Face-Off a gorilla has the strength of 20 men. Animal Planet's The Most Extreme stated that a gorilla can lift 10 times its own bodyweight.Zachorious 09:51, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Neither of those facts is verifiable. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:10, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Havn't you seen the show? I am not lying about those estimations.Zachorious 09:24, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I haven't. Regardless, have you seen any scientific evidence that the information they have is accurate? - UtherSRG (talk) 12:16, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

These were scientific estimations and cannot be dismissed.Zachorious 07:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

They're not scientific. Those television shows you mention are purely for entertainment. What they do on those shows would not be considered proof of anything by any reputable scientist.

Animal Face Off stated that SCIENTISTS estimate a gorilla's arm to be 20 times stronger than a human arm. They are the best estimations we have. Aug is that you? Zachorious 08:27, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Those scientists will have done their best in terms of accuracy, but they know that in the end it doesn't prove anything, and they know it's just for entertainment. It's too bad so few of the people who watch the show realize this. It's sad, in a way, but funny in another.

I question their credentials. What legitimate scientist would have anything to do with a show that does fantasy fights of animals that would never face each other in real life? They have a Kangaroo fighting a Killer Whale! Discovery has sunk to a new low. Template:Unsiged

English weights and heights

Added english weight and heights in paratheses to save people from having to look up a conversion page.

formatting problems

For me anyway, the first line in the section "gorilla culture" is partially obscured by the image. I'm using the latest version of Firefox. I dunno if my 26" widescreen monitor is could possibly have any effect on page rendering - but at any rate I wouldn't know how to fix this, so I'm just mentioning it here. Jafafa Hots 15:04, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Too many image

An anon user recently removed two of the images on the basis that they were 'unnecessary and distracting'. On the one hand they have a point, in that there are probably too many pictures on this page. I'm not so sure about the 3D photo of a skull, but I've restored the tool use image since it does significantly support the section on tool use and comes from the original scientific paper cited. -- Solipsist 15:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

Anon user 70.53.109.170, on 03:28, 2 February 2006, erased legitimate additions to the "Gorillas in pop culture" section. I have restored those additions. -- Tenebrae 04:52, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

That kind of content doesn't belong in an encyclopedia article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.231.12.182 (talk • contribs)

64.231 is a vandal, in case anyone was afraid there was a serious complaint here. [1] --Malthusian (talk) 23:45, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Malthusian! -- Tenebrae 05:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Gee, yeah, what would we have done without Malthusian. The joker strikes me as a vandal himself, he just hides it better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.50.52.181 (talk • contribs)

I try my best. Only the sharpest anons are able to penetrate my mask of lies and deceit. --Malthusian (talk) 12:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Don't try to be witty. You don't have it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.71.142.160 (talk • contribs)

Please use ~~~~ to sign your talk edits. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:32, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Pls do NOT have images face off the page

That's a very, very basic rule of design. Having an image face off the page is like having a football player running the wrong way toward the wrong goal, or a batter in baseball facing away from the pitcher. It really is that basic. I saw that User:Herculaneum tried to mediate, and I accepted his change. User:Last Malthusian keeps moving the image to face off the page. Given the basic design element involved, this does not seem like a good-faith edit but simply contrarian vandalism. Would User:Last Malthusian like to explain to the rest of us, properly, as we're supposed to dicuss, what the point of his action is? - Tenebrae 19:33, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

One basic rule of design can not out weigh other basic rules of design. Having images repeated push the text to the right, is bad design. The best compromise would be to not always push the text to the right, and not always have the images face onto the screen. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:44, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

First off, my apolgies to User:Last Malthusian. All the edits got confusing. I'm afraid I don't follow your reasoning -- images appear on the left of the page, with text to the right of it, all over Wikipedia and in magazines and newspapers all around the world.

I'm deleting the image for now, since if there's no abolutely, positively way for it to ever fit as good design, then it can't belong, obviously. -- Tenebrae 19:53, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Seeing that this seems to be an actively watched page I thought I should let you guys know why I made the 3D image changes I made to the article. There is a proposed guideline (hopefully close to being declared a guideline) at Wikipedia:3D Illustrations that we have developed to specify how 3D images should best be intergrated into articles. Please drop by and leave some feedback if you are interested. --Martyman-(talk) 21:26, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Gorillas in pop culture

An anonymous editor keeps re-adding the "gorillas in pop culture section" that has been split off to a seperate article. There is no need to polute otherwise good articles with this kind of rubbish, it is lucky to get ay mention at all. --Martyman-(talk) 05:46, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

It's okay, of course, for them to have their own separate article. Martyman, you are a FOOL.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.50.52.172 (talk • contribs)

Random trivia on Gorilla suits, movies and tv does not fit in with a proper scientific encyclopedia article and is perfectly accessable from a seperate article. If you look I did not make the change in the first place but I do support it, as it greatly improves the quality of this article. --Martyman-(talk) 10:59, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Martyman (although not with his saying the pop culture information is "random trivia"; popular culture is a very powerful force, yet concrete facts for it are harder to come by than for classical culture).

I think User:70.50.52.172 is very out of line in calling anyone names; there's no reason for it, and it just makes people solidify their positions against you, so why do it? - Herculaneum 14:13, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Many other articles have this sort of section. The article on Coyote has it, with a reference to Wile E. Coyote. This is appropriate. You wouldn't find it in Britannica, but this is supposed to be less formal (though not less factually accurate, ideally). I would prefer to have the list pared down, but still part of the article, than to see it as a separate page.

Image wrangling

There seems to have been a lot of silliness over image placements on this article over the last week or so. When the dust settles, can someone reintroduce the image illustrating tool use that an anon has randomly deleted a couple of times.

[[Image:Gorrila tool use-Efi.jpg||thumb|200px|right|A female gorilla exhibiting tool use by using a tree trunk as a support whilst fishing.]]

After an image of a male gorilla and one of a female gorilla, this is probably the most significant picture we could have here. In case some editors haven't actually read the article, tool use was only observed in the wild for the first time last year. We don't really need that many pictures of male gorilla's in zoos. -- Solipsist 14:56, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you that an image of a gorilla using a tool is important and should be included. I say go for it.

However, it was unnecessary and inaccurate to refer to "a lot of silliness over image placements", first for the needlessly perjorative term -- was there really no other word in the English language you reasonably could have used, in order to maintain civility? Remember, we can't see facial expressions or hear vocal tone, so the word is all we can go by -- and secondly because "image placement" is a component of design, and good design is integral to clear and effective communication. I say this not a graphic designer or anything myself, but as someone who respects that it is an educational discipline and a profession.

I hope you don't mind if I say it might not have been productive to throw stones about editors, you believe, not having read the article; you yourself might not have read the History page regarding an issue that, quite rightly, you bring up. Otherwise you might have seen that "the dust settle[d]" when an image was flipped so that it could remain in the same place without facing out. User:UtherSRG and I worked together on that — not always smoothly, but certainly respectfully toward each others' concerns.

In any event, I agree with the image proposal you described, and I hope and imagine other editors would as well. — Tenebrae 15:22, 10 February 2006 (UTC)