Ologies with Alie Ward - Gorillaology (GORILLAS) with Tara Stoinski

Episode Date: June 9, 2022

Gorillas. These chest-beating, salad-munching, communal living, thick-furred beauties have so many surprises for you. Gorillaologist (IT’S A WORD) Dr. Tara Stoinski has been a gorilla scientist for nearly 3 decades and dishes on everything from fieldwork in cloudy mountains to dick facts, forest farts, banana flim-flam, the intersection of animal conservation and community investment, night-time nesting, grief, what those big teeth are for, gorilla musk, the legacy of primatologist Dr. Dian Fossey and the Gorilla Fund, and why our closest relatives need and deserve our protection. Also some weird asides about jaw exercises and online dating, because I want to. Follow Dr. Tara Stoinski on Twitter, Instagram and FacebookDonations were made to Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund & LA Regional Food BankMore episode sources and linksYou may also enjoy our episodes on: Primatology (APES & MONKEYS), Scatology (POOP), Biological Anthropology (SEXY APES), Phallology (PENISES), Urology (CROTCH PARTS), Environmental Microbiology (TESTING WASTEWATER FOR DISEASES), Thantology (DEATH & DYING)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, masks, totes!Follow @Ologies on Twitter and InstagramFollow @AlieWard on Twitter and InstagramSound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam MediaTranscripts by Emily White of The WordaryWebsite by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's that extra stick of deodorant that you keep in the glove compartment. Allie Ward, I'm here for you with a fresh new episode dedicated to apes just like us. So perhaps you have heard the primatology episode. It was released as episode two back when we were just tiny little babies in 2017. But primates, it's a big ass category. So when I got an email from someone that started, quote, I'm probably one of only a few people in the world whose job involves feeling a 400 pound silverbacks breath on the back of my neck.

I was like, game on woman, let's do it. So I googled to see if I was making up the term guerrilla ology. And sure enough, it does exist in the literature. So there's a 2007 textbook, guerrilla society, conflict, compromise and cooperation between the sexes. And it involves the word guerrilla ology. So it's on. Now the word guerrilla itself comes from an account written by a carthaginian explorer,

circa 500 BCE, who described a group of beings that his African guides called guerrilla. And the translation says that the females outnumbered males and then goes into this brutal, horrible account of chasing and trying to capture, being counterattacked by the males, abducting females who tried to defend themselves and were eventually killed and skinned. So right there, historical accounts of guerrilla sightings involve a bunch of bad shit going down as colonists. P.S. The word guerrilla in Greek then went on to mean a group of hairy women, which sounds like my family reunion.

What? Anyway, okay. So thanks for listening. Thank you for subscribing. Thanks for supporting on Patreon for wearing ologysmerch.com items on your naked hairy body. And for no dollars, you can help out and leave a review of which I read all like this one that was left just a couple of days ago by the Fang who rated and wrote, Swiping right

on ologies. I love this show so much that my dating profile response to the prompt I won't shut up about is Ali Ward's ologies podcast. Love from the Fang, a Patreon supporter. Also Shane loves podcasts. Thank you for being a patron at patreon.com slash ologies. You can submit questions for the guests. It costs a dollar a month.

But yes, I read every review that you leave, including the ones that you've been sending with love to me and my family right now as I spend some time with my ailing pop, your grand pod. And you can listen to the secrets at the end of episodes starting at around the squid on core in mid-April for more on that. But yes, this week we have a fresh episode for you. It is being recorded right now in my sister's garage. So this guerrilla ologist is a longtime primatologist and is the chief scientific officer and the

CEO of the Diane Fosse guerrilla fund. And she's dedicated her life to these animals. She's published over a hundred papers on them. She loves talking about them, so we love her. And she did her undergrad at Tufts, got her master's in zoology at the University of Oxford, and did the PhD at the Georgia Institute of Technology in experimental psychology. And she's worked extensively on the ground and in the field with them. So gather some branches and nest up for AP Chit Chat about hair, harems, chest pounding,

poaching, pooping, mating, mycology, crested skulls, thick fur, field work, primate emotions, banana flim flam, and the hidden secrets of guerrilla weeners. With primatologist, conservationist, and guerrilla ologist indeed, Dr. Tara Stowinski. Tara Stowinski, she, her. And doctor, of course. Yes, Dr. Tara Stowinski. Where are you based exactly? Atlanta, Georgia.

Atlanta. Okay. Yeah. Because you were at the Atlanta Zoo for a long time, right? I was. Yep. I always tease. I'm like in the same exact office I was in in grad school.

I went from a student to CEO and I'm still in the same office. I just don't have to share it now with three other people, but. You've been studying guerrillas for decades, right? Decades and decades? I have. I have. It's getting close to 30, 30. It's getting close to three decades, 30 years, yeah.

Is it really? So did you have a fascination with them as a kid? I mean, this is such a question you must get at every single business meeting, every dinner party, but that's a lot of experience to have with guerrillas. Yeah. I did not actually have a fascination with guerrillas as a child. I had a fascination with animals. And for the longest time was planning to be a veterinarian and then had the opportunity

to go to Africa and study animal behavior. And really that sort of changed the trajectory of my career and came back and decided to do a PhD instead of go to vet school and then had the opportunity to start working with guerrillas during my PhD time. So I think I started studying them in 1995. 1995. Yeah. What was the animal that you were studying that got you hooked or what was that field

work like? I was studying jackals, actually. So I was living in Zimbabwe and we were studying jackals, their ecology. So looking at how far they ranged, when they dispersed from their natal group, where did they go? What were their eating habits? And we never saw them. They were completely nocturnal.

They wore radio collars. So we just had equipment that would let us track the radio collar. It was freezing cold. I had no idea how chilly sub-Saharan African can be in their winter at nighttime. Okay. I'm a Chihuahua and I needed to know how cold it was. And so I found the paper that she worked on and the location, which was in Zimbabwe. And the overnight lows in the winter are around 45 degrees Fahrenheit, which technically

is warmer than the New Jersey where she grew up and Atlanta where she's now based. But you wait outdoors in the winter for an invisible jackal to show up for months and you tell me how comfy that is. So I'm cold. It's pitch black. We never saw the animals, but I just absolutely loved it. And that just decided I really wanted to come back and do that. And then was lucky enough to get to work with the species that are actually active during

the day where you can see them. Was there a moment where there were advisors saying, stay with jackals. And you're like, no, fuck jackals right now, absolutely no offense jackals. How are you able to make that leap? And was it something about primates or was it something about the region that gorillas are endemic to? What was it? Because in terms of charismatic fauna, gorillas are it.

They are. I would agree with you there, 100%. I was just very lucky to get into a PhD program where, whereas in a lot of places, you know, if you're in a program, you might work with fish or mice or things that can live conveniently in a lab. We had the zoo in Atlanta as our lab. So my PhD advisor was also the director of the zoo in Atlanta. So we got to come out and work with all of the amazing species that lived at Zoo Atlanta

and they have a very large gorilla collection. And so I just came in. And I did have some previous experience with primates and came in and starting setting the gorillas there. I actually thought I might do my PhD on elephants. I was really fascinated and I love elephants. I also looked at a PhD program with lions. I ended up studying a small South American primate for my PhD.

So I didn't even do my PhD on gorillas. I did it on an animal called the golden lion tamarin that is native to Brazil. But all the while was studying the gorillas here in the zoo and then started working with them in the wild. And that's just become my career path. In terms of what you do, how much of the study is in the wild versus captivity? And what are their populations like in the wild versus captivity right now? So for the past eight years, I've been completely focused on wild gorillas.

I spent about 13 years working in conjunction with Zoo Atlanta. I split my time between Zoo Atlanta and the diamond fossil gorilla fund. So I did a little bit of both. But really, since I took over the CEO role, I've just been completely focused on protecting wild gorillas. And your question is a really good one. A lot of people don't realize there are four types of gorillas in the wild. And actually only one of them are found in zoos.

So the other three are only found in Africa. And of the four types, there's two species and two subspecies. At the species level, they are all considered critically endangered, which is the highest level of endangerment. The next level up is extinction in the wild. We have Western lowland gorillas. They actually have by far the healthiest population. We think there are probably about 300,000 of them left.

So that's a nice, robust population. There's another type in Western Africa called cross river gorillas. And there are only about 300 of that subspecies left on the planet. And then if you skip over to Central East Africa, which is where the Fosse fund works, there are, again, one species, two subspecies there. The mountain gorilla, which is the gorilla that most people know from Diane Fosse's time. There are about 1,000 of them remaining on the planet. And then probably one that most people haven't heard of called the grower's gorilla.

They are found only in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. And we estimate there's about 6,500 of them left. So very, very small populations for the most part across Africa. Okay. That is a whole lot of gorilla. So let's recap to get a visual picture here. So all of these gorillas are from equatorial Africa, so the band of the continent right around the middle.

And the Western gorilla is a species. And genus and species is gorilla gorilla. So the one that you may have seen in the zoo is the Western lowland gorilla, which at around 400 pounds, they're the smaller of the four types of gorilla. And usually they're more brownish. They might have red fur on their face. And the number of Western lowland gorillas left is about the population of Lincoln, Nebraska. Now north of their range is a little pocket.

And in that lives another subspecies, the cross river type. And there are fewer of those than would fill a large college lecture hall like 300, which would be a party of gorilla gorillas, gotta say. Now the other species, we move east on the continent, still equatorial Africa to the gorilla beringii species, which are a little larger and they have darker black fur. And we have another two subspecies of these Eastern gorillas. There is the Eastern lowland gorilla, that's also called the grower's gorilla. There's about a Radio City music hall's worth of Eastern lowland grower's gorillas remaining.

And then up in the volcano cloud forests on the borders of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda are about a thousand thick furred stockier mountain gorillas that were the subjects of studies by the legendary primatologist and conservationist and gorillas in the mist author, Diane Fosse. And her work with them spanned from the late 60s until her death in 1985, which was a homicide it was suspected by those who opposed her opposition to poaching. And is habitat loss responsible for the population decline or is it human activity, is it poaching? What would be good populations or past populations for gorillas?

Yeah, but it really depends on which gorilla subspecies you're looking at when we talk about the threats that are there. For mountain gorillas, they are not actively poached. They were in Diane Fosse's time 50 years ago, but they are not anymore, which is wonderful. That's good. There is poaching that happens, snares that are set for other animals and the gorillas can get caught in them. So indirectly hunting is a threat, but luckily they're not directly being hunted.

The biggest threat for mountain gorillas is just their small population size and also very, very small habitat. There's only about 800 square kilometers total left for the subspecies. So you've got them literally living in these islands of forests that are surrounded by heavy human population density. And so those populations still rely on the forest for food, for water, for firewood and so because the population is so small and the habitat is so small, we don't want any further degradation or impact on that habitat.

When you look to the other three types of gorillas, unfortunately there it really is poaching. That is primarily responsible for their decline. So poaching for food, people eat them. There is habitat destruction, certainly that's happening, but luckily there is still, unlike for mountain gorillas, there still is a lot of beautiful rainforest left in the Congo basin, but it is direct poaching and disease. Gorillas can be highly affected by Ebola, just like people.

And so in some parts of Western Africa, populations have been experienced 95% decline because Ebola's come into the population and killed a lot of the gorillas. And what is it like to go and study them? What does that fieldwork look like? Are you doing population counts? Are you doing behavioral observations? It really, again, it kind of varies depending on where you are. So in Rwanda where we work, you know, Dianfossi started that work 55 years ago now in 1967

and those animals became habituated to human presence, which basically means that they just became accustomed to having people around them. And so there we get very close to the animals, you know, we're within 30 feet of them and we collect data on everything. You name it, we want to study it. So we do a lot of behavioral work and that dates back to Dianfossi's time. We do demographic work, which is basically understanding the structure of the population. So birth, deaths, you know, what gorillas live in, what group and how they move around.

We study their ranging habits. We study what they eat. We do a lot of physiology work. So we collect a lot of biological samples such as like gorilla poop. We can spend hours talking about poop, but that gives us insights into, you know, their hormones, their genetics, their health, their parasite loads. So you name it, we study it. If you're like, I can listen to a whole episode on studying the feces of animals, I'm just

going to gently direct you toward the scatology episode with the number one fan of number two, Dr. Rachel Santimer. We'll link that in the show notes. But some gorillas are totally used to having other apes around them gawking, carrying clipboards and cameras. But with the field work in the eastern Congo basin forest, the strategy with these critically endangered eastern lowland, aka grower's gorilla, is different. It's a little more low key.

Where we work in Congo, the gorillas there have not been habituated to people and that's for their own safety because they are hunted. We don't want them to lose their fear of people. So there we follow them one day behind. So we can still get a lot of data. We can still see, you know, food remains to get an idea of what they're eating. We can still look at their ranging pattern. So how much space do they need?

The biggest thing we're missing is those detailed behavioral observations on what they're doing on a day-to-day basis because we're not close enough to see them. What are they doing on a day-to-day basis? What is a gorilla's life like and how chill is it? How many naps? What are they eating? Are they fighting? They love to nap.

So like a typical day for a gorilla family, and I'll talk about mountain gorillas, is they wake up, each family member makes their own nest every night. So they make nests on the ground. They don't reuse them, so every night they have to build their own nest. And it probably has a lot to do with thermal regulation. It's really cold. They live up at 10, 11,000 feet. It's wet.

It's cold. So they build this nest. They go to bed. When the sun goes down, they wake up. When the sun comes up, they'll get up. They'll move a little bit. They'll forage for a while, and then they will rest. They have, you know, middle of the morning, they like to take a rest.

The adults will sleep. The kids will play. They'll get up. They'll forage again. They might walk a half a kilometer through the course of a day, just this intermittent eating and feeding, and then it's the end of the day, and they make their nest again. This schedule can vary, for example, if they run into another gorilla family. So the interactions that they have with these other families vary, depending on whether

they knew that family or not. So if it's a family that they are unfamiliar with, then a lot of times those interactions can be quite aggressive. It's an opportunity for males to attract females to join them, and for females to make decisions about their reproductive future if they want to leave the group they're in and join a new male. We could run away together. If it's a family that they maybe had lived with before, sometimes families will split.

Then it can be quite peaceful. You know, the adults will kind of hang out near each other, and the kids will play. So it really depends that, you know, they have incredibly long memories like we do. They form lifelong relationships like we do. And that really impacts how they move through space and how they interact with other gorillas that live in the habitat. How big are these families? Great question.

It really can vary. So an average gorilla family is usually 10 individuals. But we have had groups of up to 65 animals, which is phenomenal. The other really funny thing about mountain gorillas, you know, again, they're all very unique, the different subspecies. But mountain gorillas are particularly special. Of the four types of gorillas, they live in the most extreme environment, these really high elevation forests, where there's not a lot of fruit.

They basically kind of live in the equivalent of a salad bowl. And the reason that that's important is that the kind of food that you eat and its availability affects the kind of group that you live in. And so because mountain gorillas aren't dependent on fruit, which is very seasonally available, and you know, you might have one fruiting tree and then you have to travel a kilometer to get to the next fruiting tree, that really constrains how big your group can be. So when we look at the other types of gorillas that rely a lot on fruit, their groups really sort of average around 10 individuals.

Mountain gorillas, because they live in a salad bowl and foods kind of everywhere, it gives them a lot more flexibility. So number one, their groups can be a lot bigger. As I said, we've had one that was 65. Number two, and this is what becomes really interesting for us as scientists, is their group's structure can be quite a bit different in that multiple males can live in the same group with females. For the other three subspecies, you really have a group structure that's one male, the

silverback, that's the adult male, he leads the group, a couple of females and their kids. In mountain gorillas, we've had groups that have had, you know, up to 8 to 10 adult males living in the group, which just, you know, introduces all sorts of interesting behavioral elements around, you know, female choice and male competition. I understand that that affects the size of their junk also, correct? If there's more competition, don't you tend to have, perhaps, let's just say a larger nutsack, but I understand that if you don't have as much competition, you have smaller air go, having giant balls is not a compliment as much as we think it is.

Well, and that's the really, when you look at gorillas and when you look at their junk, you see that they shouldn't be living in these large multi-male groups. They are not equipped. They have very small testicles, very small penis compared to a chimpanzee, which evolved in this multi-male structure where there's all this competition in the group for access with gorillas, that once you get your females, normally you shouldn't have any competition in the group, so they don't have large testicles, they don't engage in sperm competition. So when we laugh at the mountain gorillas, we're like, you guys are not chimps, but

you're kind of living in chimp-like groups, so how is this all working? Well, also, what's the math on that? Because one silverback to, let's say, a handful of females, where are all the other silverbacks and where are they getting all these ladies? Great question. A lot of males actually never form family groups, so in the sort of traditional gorilla structure at like age 15 or so, a male, by the age of 15, they can leave earlier, but by the age of 15, a male has reached maturity and he needs to strike out on his own and

he is not allowed to join another family, so he goes out on his own and he tries to interact with families and tries to recruit females to join him, and that's how you form a family. A lot of males are just never successful. They never actually form a group, and so they may live their entire lives as bachelors. I'm a Luna, a rebel. Mountain gorilla males do have this other option, though. They can choose to strike out on their own and form a family, or because their groups

can have multiple males, they can also make the decision to kind of queue up and wait and see if they can inherit dominance, should the dominant male die, or maybe as he gets older, he's not quite as fit, and so they can sort of take over dominance. That's one of the things that I'm super fascinated with is what influences whether a male chooses to stay or go. What about the dominant male? They're typically for that species and subspecies called silverbacks, right? Why do they have silverbacks, and how do they end up in that position?

A silverback is ... People often say to me, like, oh, do you study the silverback species? Silverback is simply the term for an adult male, so all four types of gorillas have silverbacks. It's a process of maturation. It starts roughly around the age of 12, and again, depending on the subspecies, is done by 15 or 18. Just as in humans, as males mature, they get broad chest, facial hair, their voice deepens. For gorillas, they get this mantle of silver hair on their back, and no one's ever asked

the question of why, but I imagine it's just a signal. It's so clearly visible in the forest when you see these black creatures walking through the forest that silverback really stands out, and given that he's the leader, makes it easy to follow, et cetera. But yeah, it's just a simple process of maturation, that they get these big, big, big heads, which is where their jaw muscles attach. They're completely vegetarian. They eat the same thing as females, so the jaw muscles are not for processing food.

It's really for fighting and defending their family and attracting females to join them. When you see a male silverback with what looks like just a fantastic beehive of an updo, that's actually that bony crest plus a thick, temporalis muscle giving all that volume. Now, if you have ever considered chewing plastic to look like a chad, and that's when we came up with the jaws of size, that's actually your masseter muscle at the crook of your jawline, and maybe a more square one will make someone love you. The great news is, you can also just inject fillers there, or maybe you're a lady and

society tells you yours is too angular. You can have botulism toxins injected there so that your masseter muscle is less square, and all these things are kind of normal to us, I guess, and for that reason, it's astounding that there are not aliens following us around with clipboards, getting PhDs about this. Well, I guess there are. They're just other apes. They're just us. Wow.

Oh, I have so many questions. You mentioned the voice deepening, and that makes me wonder, how are we seeing them communicate? Is it through vocalizations? Is it through chest beating? Is it through body language, eye contact? All of the above. All of the above. I would say they don't use their faces as much for communication like we do, and I think

it's one of the reasons that people often see gorillas say in a zoo and say they look bored, but they have the same exact facial expression in the wild. It's very serious. And part of it is, you think about it, they live in a jungle where there's not really great visibility, so they're not looking at each other's faces and using faces to communicate in the same way that we are. But they use a lot of vocalizations, and it's just a way to kind of keep in touch. They do this vocalization called the belch vocalization, which is like, and they'll do

that, and you'll hear one will do it, and then another one that's 50 feet away will do it, and it'll sort of go around the room, and everyone, it's like saying, I'm here. I'm present. I'm over here. And it's also the vocalization that we do as we approach them to kind of let them know we're coming, we don't mean any harm, because you just don't want to surprise them as you're approaching them. And then they use things like chest beats, which is primarily used by adult males, but

it's a really important communication signal. And we've just recently found in some collaborative works we've done with a long-term partner called the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, that those chest beats are an honest communication signal. So bigger is better for male gorillas. The bigger you are, the more likely you are to become dominant, the more likely you are to attract females, and the bigger you are, the lower your chest beat, the lower the noise of your chest beat.

And so males can use this to sort of size up rival males by hearing this chest beat, which can travel as much as a kilometer. And females can also use it to size up a potential mate, you know, does this male sound like he's big? Yeah, I might want him as my, you know, as my new mate. You know, I'm like listening to this, and I'm thinking of like all of the women on Tinder who are like six foot and over, and you're like, Christ! For more on this, you can see the 2014 study, Does Height Matter?

An Examination of Height Preferences in Romantic Coupling. It's about people. And the researchers report that women gravitate toward tall guys for a bunch of reasons, but that, quote, most of the explanations were connected to societal expectations or gender stereotypes. And the study goes on to explain this is because height is seen as a signifier of childhood health, which is a marker of class, and also potentially the ability to fend off attackers of your shared babies.

But nowadays, there aren't like a lot of loose raccoons trying to eat our babies alive. So is a tall partner better at talking through maybe threats like classroom bullies? Probably not as much as a short guy. In fact, if you're out dating, don't sleep on short guys. Maybe sleep with them. So under five, seven dudes, 32% less likely to divorce. And they do a greater share of housework than average and tall guys. And once in a relationship, researchers found they tend to compensate for their shortness

by earning a higher relative share of income. Is this going to get so many short kings laid? No. You know why? Because they're already pointing more. According to a study in the Journal of Sexual Health titled, sexual activity of young men is not related to their anthropometric parameters. Men under five nine already have a higher coital frequency than their taller peers.

And I bet right now there's a bunch of tall guys being like, why are you shitting on us right now? I'm just saying, this is how a lot of shorter guys feel all the time on apps. So suck it up, bros. And if you are swiping for a mate, maybe get that height requirement out of your bio. Because if you like TikToks of people finding treasures while thrifting, you're going to love the cool shorter guys who are constantly overlooked, who rule. Now there's this one guy named Dave, who was quoted in a 2015 Yahoo lifestyle article

about height and dating. And he said, when you're horizontal, there's only a couple of places the inches count. And Dave, boy howdy, that's actually wrong, according to a few studies. You can see the philology and urology episodes for more on that. Apparently those inches don't really matter either. Also we're going to discuss gorilla junk in a bit. But wow, yes, males are judged by height from LA to New York, to the mountains of Central Africa.

And if you're like, Ward, why are you doing a two minute aside about online dating and divorce rates in a gorilla episode? Because number one, it's my show. Fuck off. They share 98% of our DNA. And you and I both know, you do not click on an ape episode to not learn about how you and ape work. I mean, is it so difficult not to extrapolate gorilla lifestyle and behavior and think about

your own? Because right now I'm like, I should be vegan and nap more. Do you ever watch this and like modify your life? Totally. I mean, so I think it goes both ways. So to start on the gorilla side, I remember when I was pregnant and I'm like, oh my gosh, am I going to be a good mom? This is how this is going to work.

And they always tell you, when you go to the hospital, you should nest. Make yourself feel really comfortable. And so I took all these pictures of gorilla moms and their babies to the hospital with me. Because I'm like, if I can be half as good a mom as a gorilla mom, they're so patient. They nurse their kids for three years. They let them sleep with them every night. They never get frustrated with them.

The kids will throw temper tantrums and cry when they're getting weaned and the moms are just like, OK, it's OK. I love you mom. So I'm like, if I can be half as good a mom as a gorilla mom, then I will be all set. And certainly watching them and seeing the way that they interact with their young, it's very inspiring. And we think about that a lot, I think, as primatologists when we have our own kids. But I also think what's really fun sometimes is to think about human behavior and to sort

of, if you sit back and objectively watch humans the way that we objectively watch animals, it is really interesting to see all of these subtle power plays that go on, that we just, you know, we're used to it because it's our society. But when you really sort of sit back and if you were to sit there with a clipboard and take notes, it's really funny to see like my one daughter, every time she gets a new piece of food, she she smells it before she eats it. And that's totally what primates do, you know. And so every time I watch her do that, it just makes me laugh because I'm like, oh my gosh,

you're a little gorilla. You smell your food before you eat it. And what about that nexus between humans and gorillas, where gorillas are in captivity, maybe modifying their behavior to be more human like or using sign language or learning zookeeper cues? What are the ethics of that? Like what are the ethics of cocoa learning sign language and things like that? Yeah.

Yeah. So I feel like, you know, in zoos, I think the real effort that zoos have made is to let gorillas live in social structures that are that replicate what they would be in the wild. And that's that by far the most enriching for them so that they can have these complex social relationships that that they would have in the wild. But they also do a lot of work with them, you know, that aids them in keeping them in captivity.

So a lot of positive reinforcement training. And it's amazing the things that gorillas can do. So they've been trained to present their bellies for ultrasounds when they're pregnant, so they can see the health of the baby. They've been trained to present, you know, their ear to have a thermometer put in so they can see if they have a fever, trained to present, you know, their hand if they have a wound so it can be cleaned. And all of this really enables improved care in a captive setting.

And it's really amazing. And the gorillas, I really enjoy it too. It's interactive for them. I think just the same way our pets enjoy being trained. I think the gorillas really, they like the human interaction. They like that they get treats, obviously, their food motivated just like us. But it is really amazing to see these relationships that keepers have with the gorillas.

But at the end of the day, the most important relationship is the one that the gorillas have with the other gorillas, with their family. In the wild, it's very different. So, you know, when Diane Fosse first went there, she did develop relationships with the animals. And I think that's part of what makes her story amazing. And it really resonates with people. And if you see early images of her, or you watch gorillas in the mist, the

movie that was made about her life, you'll see that she was very interactive with the gorillas. But she would risk it all to save the gorillas in the mist. That is not something that we do anymore for several reasons. First and foremost, as scientists, we really want to know what, what gorilla society is all about. And if we're putting ourselves in the middle of that, then we're influencing that.

So we really want as much as possible to be a fly on the wall. And that's like the biggest compliment. If you walk into a gorilla family and they completely ignore you, because then you really are like just another tree that's, that's in their environment. But the other really important reason is that they are susceptible to human respiratory viruses. And so things that can make us just a little ill can be, make them quite sick or even be lethal.

So wanting to keep that distance from them, that physical distance, so that if you're carrying something and you don't, you're not aware of it, that you're, you're minimizing any risk of transmitting that to them. And I have so many questions from listeners. Can I wrap it for you? Sure, of course. But before we do, we're going to toss some coin at a charity. Big, huge surprise.

This one's pretty obvious. It's headed to the Diane Fosse Gorilla Fund, which is dedicated to the conservation, protection and study of gorillas and their habitats in Africa. And their successful integrated approach includes close collaboration with local governments and communities, as well as partners from around the world. They have more than 50 years of successful conservation work in saving gorillas. And it's based on a model of protecting gorillas, conducting science, training conservationists and helping communities.

So thank you to sponsors of allergies who make that donation possible. Okay, let's go real hard on this lightning round. Y'all ask some sick questions, including about illnesses. And I'm looking at you. First time question and askers, Larissa Parsons, Bafiades and Elise Chesik, who asked about gorilla ailments. A lot of people actually asked first time question, ask her the awkward cactus. And Mike Minikowski and Kayla Chung asked, can gorillas get COVID-19?

There are other listeners asked about natural illnesses that they get. But yeah, are you having to mirror what we're studying in humans on gorilla populations in the wild and in captivity? Yeah, that's a great question. We have known from the start of the pandemic that gorillas and most old world primates or primates that live in African Asia have a genetically identical receptor system to COVID-19 that we do, which means that they can get it. So we immediately in the field put in place measures to minimize the

chance that we would take it to it. So take any risk of taking COVID-19 to them. So normally our trackers go in and out of the forest every day. So when COVID started, we put them in remote camps where they're isolated from their friends and family and community for a month at a time. So they get tested before they go in. They're in isolation. They work for a month on and then they come off the rotation.

And they've been doing that now for two plus years and they're used to it now. But I mean, when we remember the beginning of COVID and how scary that was and all I wanted to do was hunker down with my family and be there with them. And these amazing trackers, you know, put the health and safety of the gorillas at the forefront to be out there and make sure that there was minimal, minimal risk that that we could be carrying COVID and bring it to them. And with a thousand of them left on the planet, that's always a concern of ours. We're always thinking about how do we minimize any risk to the gorillas?

To our knowledge, no wild gorillas have gotten COVID. There has been COVID that has happened in several zoo populations. And it obviously zoos take that same level of protection. They wear masks, people are tested, vaccinated. But because there is that closer proximity, there is the opportunity, more of an opportunity for transfer. And three or four zoos have had gorillas that have gotten COVID. The great news is no gorillas have died of COVID.

And it seems to really mimic what we see in humans that really mild symptoms in most healthy individuals. In fact, I think a population that got Omicron, they didn't show any symptoms. The only reason they knew they had it was because they were testing their fecal samples to see if they were shedding virus. And one day the fecal sample showed up positive, but they couldn't tell from the gorillas themselves. Early on with some of the earlier variants, I think some of the older gorillas

that just like in people had some preexisting health conditions, they suffered a little bit more and they showed more symptoms. But luckily, knock on wood, they've handled it in a similar way to the human population. For more on this, you can see the recent environmental microbiology episode about testing wastewater for COVID with Dr. Amy Kirby from the CDC. Because listen, you're not using your number two anymore. Let the science people have it, run some numbers, finders keepers. Now, what about pre-poo, a.k.a. their diet?

Let's dig into some gorilla cuisine. We had a bunch of questions about diet. I know we've covered a little bit, but Jacob Bowman, Chandler Witherington, Julia McDonald, Jesse Hurlbert, Carly Posek wanted to know, what are gorillas' favorite thing to eat? And Adam McInnis wanted to know, is it true that because of their diets, gorillas are just like constantly farting? And then also Kalia Allahi wanted to know if they need to drink water.

They say that their dad told them that gorillas didn't need to drink water because they ate so much parsley. And this person says that they believed it until they were way too old. Also, do they even eat parsley? They want to know. A lot of questions, what do they love to eat? Do they fart all the time? Do they have to drink water?

Phenomenal questions. And again, they are, they're great questions. And again, it does vary depending on which gorilla subspecies you're talking about. But I will just focus on mountain gorillas for the moment. They love basically, we call it herbaceous vegetation, vines. They eat tons of vines. So gallium is a hugely preferred food, which we actually have here in the states. I don't know if it's the same species or not,

but it's just like when you walk through a field, it sticks to your leg. They love, love gallium. They'll pull it down. It sort of grows everywhere. They'll pull it down and make a ball and munch on it. They love wild celery, which has incredibly high water content, which we'll get to our water question in a moment. They love bamboo, but particularly they love bamboo shoots.

So there's two times a year when the bamboo, it's bamboo shooting season. It's right now, actually, it's when there's high rainfall. And one of the really interesting things about bamboo is we've been able through studying their urine to know kind of their energy balance. And like most wild animals, gorillas kind of are always teetering. Unlike us, who, you know, we have, we're always in the positive, at least, you know, most Western cultures were always in a positive energy balance because we have way easy access to food and we don't exercise as much as we probably should.

I just want to pop in and say even in Western cultures, of course, a lot of people go hungry, food insecurity and related problems. I just looked this up because I wasn't depressed enough and found out that 25,000 people on earth a day die from food insecurity and hunger. So if you have any extra calories in the form of food to donate, you can look up your local food pantry and see what they need. Maybe drop off a bag of things like applesauce, canned beans, instant potatoes, granola bars, canned meats, other staples.

I looked up, they always tend to need. Also, let's donate to the LA Regional Food Bank for this episode too, shall we? OK. But in general, our species tends to have access to more calories than we need to survive. But for gorillas, Dr. Stoinski says, for most wild animals, you know, you're constantly teetering like just enough. And what we found in gorillas, that's the case, are kind of eating, getting just enough calories, you know, for all that they're burning off during the day.

But when they eat bamboo shoots, that's when they get sort of like it's like the equivalent of a gorilla candy bar. So they're often described as like being drunk when they eat bamboo shoots. But really what it is is they've just got, I think, kind of like a sugar high. Like they just have a ton of extra energy, so they're playful and they run around. And I mean, they're always playful, but even more so during bamboo shooting season. So they eat bamboo, they eat gallium, they eat celery, they love nettles. These incredibly, I mean, these nettles are insane.

These huge leaves with like stinging, like it's almost like asbestos. Like if you've ever touched asbestos and you get, not asbestos, like insulation, insulation and you get all those little fine hair. Yeah, fiberglass, exactly. They have basically the equivalent of fiberglass on the back of them. And so how the gorillas eat these, I don't know. Like if you brush up against them, your hand will hurt for a half an hour. But they carefully fold them to protect their mouths and then they eat them.

So it's just incredible. How many calories a day does a grown ass gorilla need? How many pounds a day? Yeah, the males eat about 60 pounds of vegetation a day. Think about that. 60 pounds of salad a day. You know, like when I get my salad at the store and it weighs, you know, like, yeah, a half a pound, I feel like I'm eating an enormous salad and 60 pounds a day, which is why they nap a lot.

And to get to the second point, they do fart a lot. There are a lot of farting noises that you hear. And I still giggle most of the time. And it's kind of like when you're dogfarts and they just like they don't they act like nothing's happened and it makes me feel really immature. But I'm like, oh my gosh, did you just hear that? You need to come home. But with a gorilla, you may well hear them before you see them.

Damn. Nice. I heard a gorilla fart. Just a side note. Thank you to YouTubers, natural world safaris and Fiji 27 for those publicly available audio resources. Very much enjoyed that. I just wanted to toot your horns there.

So, yes, lots of farting as they process all of that vegetation. And then to the to the last question is they really don't drink water a lot because they they don't get it from parsley, but they get it from things like wild celery, which is pretty close. We are seeing we just published a paper earlier this year showing that their water drinking is increasing and we don't know if that's perhaps tied to climate change. These guys live in an area that is experiencing climate change

and it's it is there are days that are getting warmer. And so are they going to become more dependent on water? We don't know. But for the most part, they really don't need to drink because they get a lot of moisture from what they eat. Wow. Chelsea, rabble and Margarita, Kurchova and Alia Myers all asked about their teeth. Margarita said question.

If gorillas don't eat meat, why do they have huge canines? And then Chelsea wants to know they don't brush their teeth. And sometimes their teeth look yellow, but they must not rot out. So how do they maintain good dental health? Is it just all the chewing? Yes. I think all that mastication, that chewing really helps. They chew fibrous stuff, so it probably gets some of the, you know, the dirt and debris on.

You'll see a lot in the mountain gorillas that when they open their mouth, their teeth are actually black and the inside of their mouth is black. And that is because of all the tannins in some of the plants that they eat. So it actually stains their mouth just like when we drink a lot of tea. You know, our teeth get stained so their mouths actually get stained. Would you like a spot of tea? But those huge teeth are they're much bigger in males than females. And again, it's all for attracting mates and defending your family.

So the males use all that size and strength to look sexy. And then once they have a family to make sure that they can protect them from other males. Wow. So that's just like having a shiv, kind of having a knife packing. Rory Jenkins and Kristen Rosenblum and Courtney Jones all had reproduction questions. Courtney wanted to know how long a gorilla is pregnant. And Rory wants to know, do gorillas experience something like menstruation? Do they get their periods?

They surely do. They do. They have monthly cycles just like we do. They're pregnant for eight and a half months. I mean, gorillas share 98 percent of our DNA. And I mean, their reproductive system is very, very similar to ours. In fact, in zoos, you know, if a female is not breeding, like if they don't want her to breed for whatever reason, they take human birth control pills.

I mean, human birth control pills can work in them the way that same way they work in us. So yeah, pregnant for eight and a half months, they generally give birth every four years. So they will nurse for about three years. And when they're nursing, they don't cycle. So they don't get their period when they're nursing. They don't cycle. And then they'll start cycling again. And usually within three or four cycles, they'll get pregnant.

So they only have about three or four cycles every four years just because of their reproductive system. So they don't have it nearly as frequently as we do. But yeah, that's that's a bit about their reproduction. Yep. More primate mating is in the behavioral anthropology episode with Dr. Lara Durgovic and the primatology episode in which chimp scientist Kate Gilmore divulged that primates in zoos such as gorillas take regular old human birth control bananas.

Oh, also gorillas don't really eat bananas because the ones that we get at the store are highly cultivated and are not native to their central African habitat. But they do like bananas, apparently. They'll eat a banana, but they're not evolved. Bananas are a part of their diet that is not a banana in their pocket. Oh, speaking of which, Jesse Moses wants to know, what's the deal with dick bones?

Why do they have them? Do they have bacula? I don't think so. OK, sorry again, me again. This is a great fun fact because they kind of do and they kind of don't. I had to look this up. They actually have a penis bone, but it's around six millimeters long. So it's there, but no one really knows how much heavy lifting it's doing

on a gorilla's formidable two and a half inch long dong. They have tiny penises. And FYI, a fact check this via the textbook, primate sexuality comparative studies of the prosimians, monkeys, apes, and humans, which was written by a scientist named Dr. Dixon. It is available in hardcover only. Several people had a great question. Scalebar, Hannah Riley, Timothy Anderson, Williams,

Lauren McGregor all wanted to know about their smell. Timothy asked, why do they smell kind of like onions and why is the smell so strong? And Lauren McGregor wants to know, is it weird that I like their musty smell? Ha, ha, they say, do they smell like onions or is that only if they've been eating onions? I would not describe it as smelling like onions. And I think they smell amazing. I love it. It is a very musty. It's it's a little bit kind of like a human body odor smell.

And it's really primarily the males. And it also is when they're excited or when they're fighting. If males come together, a lot of times you can smell them well before you see them. And I think it's just an odor that they put out when they get excited. It probably also contains information that, you know, we're not aware of that that they use that as a communication tool, but it's primarily the males. And I agree. I think it smells great. I wouldn't describe it as an onion, but, you know, maybe my smell might be off.

One reporter, Sarah Ivins of the Louisville Courier Journal, described gorilla musk thusly, quote, it does indeed smell like a teenage boy's bedroom. Think stale sweat mingling with rancid sneakers. And according to the 2014 study, wild western lowland gorillas signal selectively using odor. Apparently, silverbacks in particular can turn the sense on and off, depending on how conspicuous they want to be. And if you're wondering, this data was, quote, measured through a human pungency scale. I don't know what that means, but they do get smellier when they're mad or stressed.

And anyone who has ever smeared deodorant on all kinds of body areas before a job interview, you get it. Speaking of nerves, patrons Sean Thomas Kane, Kristen Donne Urban, Ruby Johnstone and Rory Jenkins wondered about the feelings of these complex, beautiful primates. How do scientists perform a vibe check? A lot of folks had questions about emotions. And Krista Avampato wanted to know if they have the same emotions. Humans have joy, grief, anger.

Chris Moore wants to know, do gorillas cry? Christina Johnson says, yes. And do they laugh? Jory West wants to know about gorilla grieving. Do they grieve for lost loved ones? And how, what is their mental health like? I always, you know, people often ask me, like, you know, why is it important to conserve gorillas? We have so many challenges out there in the world.

Why is saving this one species important? And I like to give three reasons. The first one is because they need us. As we've already kind of talked about, they're critically endangered. They're among the most at risk of the million species that are at risk of extinction right now. So they need our help. Number two, we need them. Gorillas live in these beautiful rainforests in Central Africa.

They're the second largest standing rainforest, tropical rainforest left on the planet. And they're one of our best natural defenses against climate change. And the gorillas are the gardeners of these forests. So by protecting gorillas, we're ultimately helping our own species. And the third reason to get to your, to the listeners questions is that the gorillas, you know, they share 98% of our DNA and they share our humanity. So when you look at them, you know, we see so many of the behaviors that we think of as being human, reflected in the gorillas.

They form lifelong relationships. One of the things I love about them the most is they take care of their most vulnerable. They grieve the loss of family members. And you see all of this when you watch them. So definitely when a family member dies, it really depends on who the family member is and how central they were. And a lot of times gorillas, if they're not well, they will actually kind of choose to separate themselves from the group.

But for example, when Titus died, he was a silverback in a very kind of just elder state man in his group. And when he died, the group refused to leave him. They stayed with him for multiple days. Youngsters in the groups laid with him. Sometimes they'll groom individuals. And sometimes they'll even sort of kick and hit them. And I think it's really to get a reaction like, why aren't you moving?

We need to go. We need to eat. We just had a male die in the groups that we helped protect. He died about three weeks ago. He died overnight in his nest. He had been sick and he died in his nest. And we saw his family come back to that area a few days later. And this video is actually on our website.

And the kids in his group, these are his offspring, were all picking up pieces of vegetation from the nest and smelling it. Like I'm sure his scent was still there. And they were, you know, they spent lots of time just around his nest smelling his nest, investigating where he had last been before he died. Was I choking back tears during this? I sure was. So they definitely grieve.

They, they do laugh. They have a wonderful laugh that they do when they play. And it's great when you're in the forest and you just hear this chuckling off. You can't see them and you hear this chuckling and you know that, that two gorillas are having a great time playing. They don't cry, but they do this pitiful vocalization that sounds a lot like crying. So kids will do it like when they're getting weaned or if they're unhappy about something. And adults will do it if a family member is lost.

So we call it hooting, but it's sort of like and it sounds very sad, particularly when little kids do it. And it is, you know, the equivalent of crying, but no tears. We don't see tears come out of their eyes the way that we do in people. That just made me think too of Jane Goodall. Do you guys get to kick it ever? Do you guys get to hang out? Jane is super busy.

You know, she is on the road like 330 days a year advocating for the environment and for chimpanzees. But I have had the privilege, the distinct privilege of meeting Jane on multiple occasions. And I work with a lot of students that did their PhDs at Gombe or a lot of my colleagues. I've been involved in a long-term collaboration where we're actually combining data on the chimps that Jane and others have studied with the gorillas that we study and several other primate species to kind of, you know, see what can we tell about primates in general when we pool our data and look beyond the individual species level kind of at primates more broadly.

So yeah, it's been a huge honor. And I actually have pictures of Jane and Diane together in my office. So it's an amazing legacy that these early female primatologists left for those of us that are working in the field today. You know, on the topic of conservation, Megan Stanton, Laura M. Smith, Kelly Brockenton, Scotty D., Amanda Grype, and Celeste all wanted to know more about conservation. Megan Stanton says, poaching seems to be done generally by people who may not have other means of supporting their families.

Are there incentives or opportunities being made available to nearby communities who may be relying on poaching for income? And Laura Smith asked, how do gorilla conservation organizations work with local communities? Other listeners just wanted to know, what can we do like to help gorillas in general if you're on the other side of the world? Should you recycle your electronics because silicon is harvested? Yeah, things like that. Yes. Yeah, those are excellent questions and ones that I really love answering.

And so I really appreciate them. I mean, our motto at the Fosse Fund is helping people saving gorillas because we know that for gorillas to thrive, the people that live near them must thrive. And yes, a lot of these populations that live near gorillas suffer from poverty, particularly in Congo. Congo has the second highest rate of extreme poverty in the world, with more than 75% of their people living on less than $1.90 a day. And they don't have other options.

So we really very strongly believe that, you know, that people are part of conservation. And we always say we take a people-centered approach to conservation. And what we really focus on at our organization is the root causes of why people are reliant on those forest ecosystems. So it's oftentimes food security. It's water security. So they go into the forest to get water.

It's livelihoods going into the forest to have something to make money. So those are really the areas that we focus on. So helping people, like we just did a phenomenal mushroom growing project in Rwanda. So mushrooms are super high in protein. So they're a really good thing for people to eat. And so we supported local communities to actually come in. We built huts for them.

So mushrooms have this really interesting growing cycle, which you never think as a primatologist, you're going to end up learning about mushrooms. But we helped build these huts. They grow in these very specific conditions. Bought the tubers for the community. We taught them how to grow the mushrooms. We helped them with the harvest.

We taught them how to cook the mushrooms, because you have to make sure that people want to incorporate this into their diet. So they were able to feed themselves. They distributed mushrooms to some of the most vulnerable in their community that couldn't afford to buy it. And then they actually sold mushrooms and made a profit. And so it's these types of programs. So it touches on all of the things that we're interested in.

It touches on livelihoods. It touches on food security. And it also touches on education. And those are the areas where we work with local communities. And then also just providing jobs where we work in Eastern Congo. There are no other job opportunities. And there we're working with gorillas that actually don't live in national parks. So all of the mountain gorillas are lucky.

They live in a national park in one of the three countries where they're found. So they're afforded a level of protection just by being in that national park. For growers gorillas in Congo, the vast majority of them actually live outside of national parks. So they're living on people's land. And so we are now protecting an area that's about 2,400 square kilometers. So three times the size of New York City. But previously had no protection.

We've entered into a management agreement with the communities. So we agree that they agree that this will have conservation as a priority. They won't hunt gorillas. They won't hunt chimpanzees or other endangered species. We will help them manage that forest. And in exchange for that, they get employment. They're hired as trackers. They're hired as biodiversity scientists, et cetera.

And then we'll also make these investments in their community around livelihoods, infrastructure, like building health clinics or schools, food security. So definitely for conservation to work, people have to be part of it. And I think the point is a lot of times people want to vilify poachers. These people are bad. What's happening with gorillas, and it's not like the organized poaching we see for rhino horn or for elephant tusks. These are really people that are trying to, you know,

trying to survive and trying to keep their families alive. And so how we can help them make them part of conservation is a big part of our mission. And for people that want to help, I think it's a great question. Definitely recycling your electronics. A lot of people don't know that some of the minerals that are critical for small electronics, like computers and cell phones, come out of eastern Congo. So if we recycling everything, you know, is a good thing, but particularly if we can lessen the need to bring these out of the forest,

just being educated about these issues. I always say I eat, sleep and, you know, breathe gorillas. And it always surprises me to realize that most people don't know these guys are endangered, that we're at risk of losing them. So being educated, being an advocate, voting, you know, using your voice when you vote to vote for politicians that believe climate change is real, that want to have environmental priorities, that is a huge thing. And then supporting organizations that are doing great work on the ground.

Like we always want to encourage people, if they like the Fosse fund to support us, you can donate, you can adopt a gorilla. So these are real gorillas that we're protecting in the wild. And so when you adopt them, symbolically, obviously, we're not going to deliver a gorilla to your doorstep. All that money goes to help keep, you know, I have, we have more than 300 staff in Africa that are out every single day, protecting gorillas, working with communities,

training that next generation of leaders in Africa and beyond. So all of that, those funds help support those activities. And last questions I always ask, something must suck about working with gorillas. Clearly the fact that they're endangered and you're up against a lot of challenges must be one of them. Anything petty about gorillas that you'd like to talk shit on? Anything about the job in general that is more difficult than you would think it is? Taking, I take a lot of equipment to Africa, like, you know,

500 pounds of equipment at a time. And as I get older, that part, you know, gets worse. But no, I think the hardest thing for me is, you know, I came to this job as a scientist. And that's the part that I really, you know, get jazzed about and I love doing science. But a lot of my day to day now is, is enabling the, you know, getting the resources to enable other people to do that work, which I love to do. And I love to see the next generation coming up underneath.

But, you know, there are moments during the pandemic, at one point when I was working at home all the time, my one daughter was like, Mom, your job really stinks. Like, all you do is email and Zoom calls. And I had never really thought about it that way, because for me, it's all about the bigger picture. But I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I used to get to sit and watch animals all the time.

And now, you know, I do a lot of other stuff. But I love it. I mean, I feel so lucky to have had this amazing career and work with the incredible people in my organization, but all the partner organizations, the governments that we work with, it's so inspiring. And it gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning when some mornings you may not really want to get out of bed.

So I really have no complaints. What about your favorite thing about being a gorillologist? Which, by the way, looked it up. It's a word. It's a real word. I forgot to address that, but it's a word. Yeah. It is, I mean, hey, I get to study the coolest species on the planet

and constantly learning new things. And just to be in their presence is an honor. It's also a sort of really fun, you know, cocktail party talk when people are like, what do you do? I'm like, well, I study gorillas. That's usually they're like, well, I didn't expect to hear that answer. My husband was an attorney. And so definitely like I was, people either thought my job was really cool

when we would go to attorney parties. It was either really cool or they were like, okay, this lady's strange, and I'm just going to kind of walk away. So, but it is fun. I mean, it's a non-traditional job. And so it's fun to get to talk about it. Every once in a while though, I want to be incognito. And I won't say what I do because it inevitably leads to lots of questions.

And, you know, there are most times I'm totally love talking about gorillas. And every once in a while, I'm like, I need a little bit of a break today. So I'm an architect. I work at Target. Although I would have a lot of questions for someone who worked at Target, probably too. Thank you so much for spending some of your day on a Zoom call and doing emails. To do this interview, I really appreciate it. Well, I love it.

It gave me, you know, a whole hour to talk about gorillas. Awesome questions from your listeners. Thank you guys so much for that. And please check us out. I mean, we are with the gorillas every day. So we post multiple times a day about the, you know, I always say it's like the gorillas soap operas, the lives of these guys, the work that we do with communities. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

I think we're getting on TikTok. And so we would love to have people just come and learn more about these amazing creatures and the important work that's happening to make sure that they have a future as well as us. So ask apes, excellent questions. You're an ape. Isn't that fucking weird? I'm just an animal making noises with my mouth that you understand to mean abstract concepts. And we're allowed to drive cars.

It's so fucked. Anyway, find links to the Diane Fosse Gorilla Fund in the show notes. You can tell them, hello, they've been doing excellent work for 50 years. You'll also find links to the primatology and behavioral anthropology episodes if you're into that, as well as philology and urology. Allergies Merch is available at olergiesmerch.com. Thank you, Susan Hale, for handling that and so, so much else for olergies. Thank you, Noel Dilworth, for all the scheduling.

Thank you, Aaron Tauber, Bonnie Dutch, and Shannon Feltas, for all the help admining the olergies podcast Facebook group. Emily White of The Wordery heads up our professional transcripts and Caleb Patton bleeps them. And those are up for free at alliword.com slash olergies-extras or the link in the show notes. Kelly R. Dwyer helps maintain the website. She can make you one. She's great. Link in the show notes.

Zeke Rodriguez-Thomas and Mercedes-Maitland of Mind Jam Media head up these small olergies episodes, which are T-filthed and shortened for all ages. We release those every few weeks. Stephen Ray Morris helps out as well. And to my main ape and lead editor at Jared Sleeper of Mind Jam Media, thank you so much for making these episodes at my sister's dining room table in between helping out my dad so much. He's a good one.

Nick Thorburn made the olergies music. And if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this week, a little BTS, right after we stopped recording, Tara mentioned, happened to mention that she's a huge fan of Doran Doran. She has a Doran Doran poster in her office. And I was like, do you think that the members of the band should be their own genus and species like Doran Doran? Like Gorilla Gorilla?

And she was like, nice. And I was like, thanks. If you've been tuning in also to see how we're doing with your grandpa, we're hanging in there. He's a really robust dude. He tends to bust through a lot of his oncologist prognoses. So man, oh man, we're just soaking up every moment with him. We're eating a lot of tiny miniature drumstick ice creams.

We're looking at photos. We're crying. We're telling him how much we appreciate him. And remember in the Thanatology episode about death and dying from 2017, the lady that I met in the Hampton Inconference Room in Cincinnati, her name is Cole and Perry, turned out to be one of my dearest friends. I don't know how I would be getting through this without her right now. She's so good.

So yeah, we'll link that up in the show notes too, Thanatology. It's a real life changer. Okay, go wonder at the world. I appreciate each other out there. Bye-bye. Save the grills.