Gorilla

Gorilla gorilla

Enormous, vegetarian, mostly worried about the family.

Only 3.5% of people are Gorillas. (estimated)

If you're a Gorilla

You are strong, calm, and far gentler than your build suggests. Gorillas spend the day eating leaves and resting with the family, and the silverback's job is mostly to settle squabbles and keep everyone together; you take the same role in any group. You are curious and thoughtful, you dislike moving house, and you beat your chest only when it is warranted.

Gorillas build a fresh nest of leaves and branches to sleep in every night and almost never use the same one twice.

Find out if you're a Gorilla

The Gorilla as a spirit animal

You are the steady center of your group. You are patient, protective, and physically imposing in a way you barely use, which is what makes it work. You are a deeper thinker than people assume of someone that size. The flaw is that you dislike change to a degree that stops being a preference, and you settle disputes by sitting on them. Nobody argues. That is not the same as agreeing.

Grounded in how the species actually lives; nothing borrowed from anyone's tradition. Why we put it that way.

How to get along with a Gorilla

Do

Keep the group calm and the gorilla is calm; the silverback reads the family's mood first.
Feed them often; a gorilla's day is eating, with rest breaks.
Approach from the side with your eyes down; the direct stare is a challenge.

Don't

Don't move their home; gorillas range over small areas and like it that way.
Don't mistake quiet for passivity; the chest beat comes with very little warning.

When it goes wrong: A threatened gorilla bluffs first, a roar, a chest beat, a short charge; crouch, look away, and let the display finish.

The Gorilla in a relationship

You are a family person before you are a romantic. Gorilla groups are one male and several females with their young, held together for years, and the silverback plays with and protects the infants. You love by being present and dependable. Partners get stability, a warm back, and very few surprises.

Engraving of an elephant, from Brehm's Life of Animals (1895)

Best matchElephantTwo large, slow herbivores that run on family, patience and memory; they would spend an afternoon together and not say a word.

Engraving of a shark, from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th edition (1911)

Handle with careSharkA shark has no family, no home range and never stops moving; a gorilla cannot imagine a worse life.

Field notes

Every animal is placed on six personality traits derived from how the species lives. Your answers are placed on the same six, and the closest animal wins. How the scoring works

Sociability
Boldness
Energy
Curiosity
Devotion
Roaming

A gorilla's diet is almost entirely leaves, stems, shoots and fruit, eaten in very large quantities, and it rarely needs to drink.
A chest beat is an honest advertisement: bigger males produce lower-pitched beats, so rivals can judge size by ear through the forest.
Gorillas share around 98 percent of their DNA with humans, and wild gorillas have been seen using a stick to test the depth of water before wading in.

Gorillas in literature

Bolgani — Tarzan of the Apes, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
The gorillas — Stories of the Gorilla Country, Paul Du Chaillu (1867)
The Gorillai — Periplus of Hanno, Hanno the Navigator (500 BCE)

Characters from public-domain works. Company, not a verdict.

Closest personalities

The animals whose profiles sit nearest to the Gorilla's. If you got Gorilla, one of these was probably your runner-up.

Other mammals

Wolf Red Fox Brown Bear Polar Bear Lion Tiger Leopard Cheetah Elephant Giraffe Hippopotamus Orangutan Sloth Koala Kangaroo Platypus Otter Beaver Badger Raccoon Hedgehog Bat Camel Dolphin Sperm Whale

Among the 60

Brehms Tierleben, Alfred Brehm (1890). Public domain, viacommons.wikimedia.org.All credits