Gorilla

Great apes are endowed with a semi-precision grip, and have been able to use both simple tools and even weapons, such as improvising a club from a convenient fallen branch. At some time in the future, it will undoubtedly erupt violently again. In September of 2005, a two and a half year old gorilla in the Republic of Congo was discovered using rocks to smash open palm nuts. Santorini was also struck by a devastating earthquake in 1956. [2]. In 1704 an undersea volcano breached the sea surface forming the current centre of activity at Nea Kameni, and eruptions centred on it continue—three times in the twentieth century, the last being in 1950. This means that all of the great apes are now known to use tools. Also unique is the red, sweet and extremely strong Vinsanto.

A second female was seen using a tree stump as a bridge and also as a support whilst fishing in the swamp. They are trained in the shape of baskets, with the grapes hanging inside to protect them from the winds. A female gorilla in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo was recorded using a stick to gauge the depth of water whilst crossing a swamp. They are adopted to their native habitat by being planted far apart and their principal source of moisture is dew. Gorillas are now known to use tools in the wild. Assyrtiko vines are extremely old, as they are resistant to phylloxera and have consequently not needed to be replaced during the great phylloxera epidemic of the early 20th century. The following observations were made by a team led by Thomas Breuer of the Wildlife Conservation Society in September 2005. Santorini is home to a small but flourishing wine industry, based on the indigenous grape variety, Assyrtiko.

A few individuals in captivity, such as Koko, have been taught a subset of sign language (see animal language for a discussion). The pumice quarries have been closed since 1986 in order to preserve the caldera of Santorini. Gorillas are closely related to humans and are considered highly intelligent. The primary industry of Santorini is tourism. If he is killed by disease, accident, fighting or poachers, the group will split up or be taken over in its entirety by a male descendant or even an unrelated male; there is a strong risk that a new male may kill the infants of the dead silverback. Nowadays, there is a desalination plant that provides running, yet nonpotable, water to most houses. If challenged by a younger or even by an outsider male, a silverback will scream, beat his chest, shake broken-off branches at the intruder, bare his teeth then charge forward. Until the early nineties locals used to fill water cisterns from the rain that fell on their roofs and courts, from small springs as well as by importing it from other areas of Greece.

While infant gorillas normally stay with their mother for 3–4 years, silverbacks will care for weaned young orphans. The island has no rivers and water is scarce. Males will slowly begin to leave their original troop when they are about 11 years old, travelling alone or with a group of other males for 2–5 years before being able to attract females to form a new group and start breeding. Akrotiri is a major archaeological site with ruins from the Minoan era. Each typically leads a troop of 5 to 30 gorillas and is the center of the troop's attention, making all the decisions, mediating conflicts, determining the movements of the group, leading the others to feeding sites and taking responsibility for the safety and well-being of the troop. Major settlements in Santorini include Fira (Phira), Oia, Emporio, Kamari, Imerovigli, Pyrgos and Therasia. Silverbacks are the strong, dominant troop leaders. Santorini was annexed to Greece in 1912.

Blackbacks are sexually immature males of up to 11 years of age. The island came under Ottoman rule in 1579.
. A silverback gorilla has large canines that come with maturity. As with other Greek territories, Santorini then was ruled by the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Franks. A silverback is an adult male gorilla, typically more than 12 years of age and named for the distinctive patch of silver hair on his back. According to Herodotus (4.149-165), following a drought of seven years, Thera sent out colonists who founded a number of cities in northern Africa, including Cyrene. All gorillas share a single blood type, B. Thera, the main Hellenic city of the island, on Mesa Vouno, 396 m above sea level was founded in the 9th century BC by Dorian colonists whose leader was Theras, according to tradition, and continued to be inhabited until the early Byzantine period.

Threats to gorilla survival include habitat destruction and the bushmeat trade. Over the following centuries, first Phoenicians, then Dorians, came to control the island. Both species of gorilla are endangered, and have been subject to intense poaching for a long time. 1450 BC. [1]. These significantly smaller values would make Atlantis the size of Crete's Messara Plain and the fall of the Atlantis c. The proposed third subspecies of Gorilla beringei which has not yet received a full latin designation is the Bwindi Gorilla. Galanopoulos argue that the error in date and size could be caused by a mistranscription of the Ancient Egyptian or Mycenaean Linear B symbol for "hundred" as "thousand" (the former is unlikely because there would be little confusion in the visual appearance of hieroglyphic symbols of Egyptian numeric values).

More recently it has been claimed that a third subspecies exists in one of these groups. G. There is now agreement that the gorilla is divided into two species of at least two subspecies each. Scholars such as James Luce and A. Until recently there were considered to be three species of gorilla, the Western Lowland, the Eastern Lowland and the Mountain Gorilla. Detractors of the theory say that Santorini and Crete combined would not be the size of Plato's Atlantis, and the date of the Minoan collapse does not match Plato's dates for the fall of Atlantis. Primatologists continue to explore the relationships between various gorilla populations. Starting with Spyridon Marinatos' 1939 landmark paper, this cataclysm at Santorini and its possibility to have caused the fall of the Minoan Civilization centered on Crete is sometimes regarded as a likely source or inspiration for Plato's story of Atlantis.

Gorillas are renowned for their strength but no research has been conducted into how strong they are compared to humans. Suggestions have also been made that the eruption of Thera and volcanic fallout inspired myths of the Titanomachy in Hesiod's Theogony and calamities of the Admonitions of Ipuwer of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. Due to their diet of plant life, gorillas often have bloated stomachs. Santorini ash deposits were at one time claimed to have been found in the Nile delta, but this is now known to be a misidentification ^[5]. Insects make up 1-2% of their diet. Oddly, there seem to be no surviving Egyptian records of the eruption. Gorillas are mainly vegetarian, eating fruits, leaves, and shoots. Per the Bamboo Annals, the collapse of the dynasty and the rise of the Shang dynasty (independently approximated to 1618 BC) was accompanied by "'yellow fog, a dim sun, then three suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals".

The Philadelphia Zoo's Massa set the longevity record of 54 years at the time of his death. Some scientists correlate a volcanic winter from the Minoan eruption with Chinese records documenting the collapse of the Xia dynasty in China. Lifespan is between 30–50 years. It is still hoped, though, that Santorini ash might be found in another layer of the ice core, which would fix the date of the eruption. Females mature at 10–12 years (earlier in captivity); males 11–13 years, sometimes sooner if they assume leadership early. While an eruption as large as Thera can leave signals in tree rings and ice cores, the absence of such a signal does not mean the absence of an eruption. Infants stay with their mothers for 3–4 years. At the present time no hard evidence linking or refuting the 1628 BC tree-ring date with Thera has been found.

There are typically 3–4 years between births. However, no firm evidence links these two events and, while unlikely but plausible, the two signals could be separate events. Gestation is 8½ months. Tree ring data shows that a large event interfering with normal tree growth occurred in 1629-1628 BC, which may be the same event as the 1644 BC signal in the Greenland ice cores. Females are about half the weight of males. Volcanic ash was retrieved from an ice core, and this was shown not to be from Santorini[4]; so the 1644 BC date is incorrect. Adult males range in height from 1.65 m to 1.75 m (5.4 to 5.7 feet), and in weight from 140 kg to 165 kg (305 to 360 pounds). A large eruption, identified in ice cores and dated to 1644 +/- 20 BC years was suspected to be Santorini.

Gorillas move about by knuckle-walking. It has long been hoped that information from Greenland ice cores would determine the date exactly. . The debate about the date continues.
. Re-scaling archaeological chronologies is controversial, because revising the Aegean Bronze Age chronology could require, by association, revising the well-established conventional Egyptian chronology. With 92-98% of its DNA being identical to that of a human, it is the second closest living relative to humans after the two chimpanzee species. Others look for a compromise between the archaeological and radiocarbon dates for best fits of both sets of data.

Divided into two species and (under debate as of 2006) either four or five subspecies. Some suggest re-scaling archaeological chronologies with the radiocarbon dates. The gorilla, the largest of the primates, is a ground-dwelling herbivore that inhabits the forests of Africa. Some scholars believe the radiocarbon dates to be completely wrong. A popular virtual band "The Gorillaz" is named after the animal. These dates, however, conflict with the usual date from archaeology, which is between about 1500 BC and 1450 BC. In the 1997 film adaptation, Ape is voiced by John Cleese. Current opinion based on radiocarbon dating indicates that the eruption occurred between about 1650 and 1600 BC.

In the Tarzan-parody animated TV series George of the Jungle, George's best friend is an erudite talking gorilla named Ape. The Minoan eruption provides a fixed point for aligning the entire chronology of the 2nd millennium in the Aegean, because evidence of the eruption occurs throughout the region; however, its exact date is unknown. In the animated Disney version of Tarzan, the hero's adopted family are gorillas (unlike the "Great Apes" of the original book), including Kala, Kerchak, Terk, and Tublat. (The VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) of the Thera eruption was thus about 6.) Every vestige of life is likely to have been eliminated or smothered in the Thera ashfall, leaving an island that had essentially been sterilized, as was Krakatau. The British comedy series The Mighty Boosh features a talking gorilla named Bollo. The volume of ejecta is estimated to have been up to four times what was blown into the stratosphere by Krakatau in 1883, a well-recorded event. Its theme is a dance song called "Barking Gorillas Bounce" [6], and its logo features three gorillas dressed as a barbershop trio. (Ash found in Crete is now known to have been from a precursory phase of the eruption, some weeks or months before the main eruptive phases, and would have had little impact ^[3].).

There is a children's musical group called Barking Gorillas [5]. Ash layers in cores drilled from the seabed and from lakes in Turkey, though, show that the heaviest ashfall was towards the east and northeast of Santorini. In the popular video game Halo 2, an alien race nicknamed the Brutes resemble evil gorillas. Elsewhere in the Mediterranean there are pumice deposits that could be caused by the Thera eruption [2]. An intelligent gorilla named Grodd is a recurring super-villain of The Flash in DC Comics and the animated TV series Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. On the island of Anaphi, 27 km to the east, ash layers 10 feet deep have been found, as well as pumice layers on slopes 250 meters above sea level. Gorillas were frequently used as a gimmick to sell comics during the Silver Age of Comic Books: see Gorillas in comics. The tsunami would also certainly have eliminated every timber of the Minoan fleet along Crete's northern shore.

In the award-winning novel Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn, a gorilla teaches the protagonist about the history of humanity and the effect "civilized" culture has had on other species. The impact of the tsunami pummelled coastal towns such as Amnisos, where building walls have been knocked out of alignment. He (she?) also plays backup guitar for "Freddie," a fellow student who may or may not be Freddie Mercury. The eruption also generated a 35 to 150 m high tsunami (estimates vary) that devastated the north coast of Crete, 110 km (70 mi) away. In the anime series "Sakigake! Cromartie High School," a gorilla is one of the more powerful delinquents at Cromartie High. In a classic Plinian eruption marked by columns of smoke and ash extending high into the stratosphere, the Minoan eruption created a plume 30-35 km in height, and magma coming into contact with the shallow marine embayment would have caused a violent phreatic eruption. Writer Mark Evanier promotes this holiday on his web site [3], [4]. It remains to be seen if further excavations will show bodies of people huddled along the coast, too late to get off in a boat to escape the volcano's fury, akin to the finds at Herculaneum, which was buried by the much smaller eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

"National Gorilla-Suit Day" is celebrated every year on January 31st. The thinness of the first ash layer and the likelihood of this layer being eroded by winter rains indicate that the volcano may have given warning at most months in advance and not years as previously believed ^[1]. The protagonist of Don Martin's Mad Magazine strip "National Gorilla-Suit Day" is beset by gorillas (or persons dressed as gorillas). (The single body found on Therasia has now been identified as a much earlier funerary burial). His beast modes get more technological in each incarnation. A series of warning earthquakes must have been alarming enough and early enough before the eruption for all the residents to pack up and move out, as not a single body has been found at the Akrotiri site. Optimus Primal in the TV series and toy line Beast Wars and Beast Machines starts out as a regular gorilla. The layer is divided into three fairly distinct bands indicating different phases of the eruption.

The namesake of the Donkey Kong video game franchise is a gorilla. On Santorini, there is a deposit of white tephra thrown from the eruption; it is up to 60 metres thick overlying the soil marking the ground level before the eruption. In the Planet of the Apes films, comic books, etc., normal-sized gorillas fill security/military roles. The eruption destroyed the sections of the ring between Aspronisi and Therasia, and between Therasia and Thera, creating two new channels. The giant gorilla is a recurring theme in film, especially in the various incarnations of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. Before the Minoan eruption, the caldera formed a nearly continuous ring with the only entrance between the tiny island of Aspronisi and Thera. The Phillips Academy boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, has a gorilla as an informal mascot. The northern part of the caldera was refilled by the volcano and then collapsed again during the Minoan eruption.

Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, is the only public college in the United States to have a gorilla as mascot. It has been filled several times by ignimbrite since then and the process repeated, most recently 21,000 years ago. The NBA's Phoenix Suns mascot is The Gorilla. The caldera itself was formed several hundred thousand years ago by collapse of the centre of a circular island caused by the emptying of the magma chamber during an eruption. A gorilla is a mascot for a number of sports teams: