Gorilla Nesting: Why gorillas build their nests?

Gorilla Nesting the mountain gorillas after all their day activities which always range from feeding, resting and moving, these animals are always found of making their own nests for the night. Interesting to know is that these animals make new night nests every night and so they don’t sleep on the previous nests. The reason behind this is that during the day these animals tend to move some distance away from their previous night nests so they don’t have that time to trace their way back and even though it so happens that they don’t move far away from where they nested the previous night still these animals will have to make new nests. In this case Bweza family has been observed nesting in one area for three consecutive nights but without sleeping in the previous night’s nests.

Each individual in the group has to make its own nest but this is only done by those at the age of the juvenile up to the silverback. The infants have to share the night nests with their mothers as they are not in position to make nests for themselves but the infants at the age of 3 years their mothers have to start teaching them how to make their nests majorly day time when they are just resting. Mountain gorillas also make resting nests during the day in case one needs to do so.

They make up their nests with soft tree branches and leaves, in most cases they make their nests both on the ground and up in trees but the silverbacks majorly make their nests on the ground because they are heavy and some tree branches may not accommodate their weight for the night so they prefer to nest on ground to avoid falling down from trees but the females and other immature offsprings of various ages can nests even in trees.

Mountain gorillas always spend the rest of their night in their nests sleeping , these animals start making their nests by around 6:30pm   and 7:00pm as they are getting prepared for the night and they leave their nests the next morning by around 6:30 am and 7:00 am but on rare occasions majorly during the rainy seasons these animals have always been found still at their night nests even at 8:00am this is because they tend to be too dull if it is too cold they have to wait for the dew to fall off the grass so as to start moving . After getting out of their nests, the silverback decides where to take the group to feed for the day.

Nestling amongst mountain gorillas is a daily routine activity that they have to do. Getting into the nests is much more important to the rangers as this is one way they  identify  how many gorillas are in that particular family and their respective classes and ages .this is done through counting the number of the nests and  observing the sizes of the dung so as to determine their growth stages  Gorillas are always found off defecating on their night nests so this helps us in knowing the group composition and also it helps on monitoring reasons because it gives the assurance of the real number of the individuals which spent a night in a particular group and incase of any one being dead or given birth at the night nests all such can easily be recognized

The size of the dung can tell the age of the individual as the silverbacks dung tends to be bigger about 7.3+cm adult females , sub adult females and black backs 5.5- 7.2cm while juveniles about 4.0-5.4cm and the infants can be 1-3.9cm this varies due to the difference of the amount of food consumed per individual in the group and it is the size of the shit in the nests that tells the age of the gorilla which slept in that particular nest with the exemption of the nest of the silverback where he always tend to leave silvery hair due to scratching of it’s back .

Observing their dung also helps us in monitoring their health status as in most cases the unhealthy ones, the dung may be having some worms in them .Every individual in the group makes it their own nests with the exemption of the infants who are still depending on their mothers so the mother will keep sleeping with her infant for the night in the same nest while the rest their own nests.

Interestingly, the mother will keep teaching the infant on her to make nests for themselves majorly at the age of 3- 4 years this happens majorly during the day while resting. Mountain gorillas make nests even during the day while resting and their rest always last for a period of roughly an hour .while making nests for the night they tend to make nests surrounding themselves while the black back makes their aside a bit from the rest of the individuals in the family.

While nesting for the night the individuals always tend to nest in a defensive way where by the females tend to be in the middle whereas the alpha male and other sub adult males will nest a side surrounding the females as way of giving protection but they will have to keep close to each other .

There are specific reasons as to why gorillas do not repeatedly sleep in their previous night’s nest which among others includes

The day to day movements , a gorilla family  always immediately  after waking up tends to move away from where they nested for the previous  night so they end up moving for a longer distance and hence fail to trace their way back to where they nested for the previous  night besides that the even nay find when they have moved for a longer  distance hence relaxing to nest where the evening finds them.

Gorillas are also fond of defecating on their night nests in the morning when they are waking up since they tend to be so dull and lazy to the extent that they can’t move away to defecate so they defecate on their night nests implying that they leave their nests when they are very smelling because if the dung implies that the smell of dung pushes away.