Photo of the Day #775: Vomiting gorilla

Accurately sums up my feelings about Black Friday. :-)

I saw the same animal doing this same behavior during my visit about two years ago. . .I was fortunate to have to anthropology grad students with me, who speculated that it was some sort of stress/displacement behavior.

He probably doesn't have an upset stomach. This is a common behavior of captive gorillas, referred to as R/R (regurgitation and reingestion). See Lukas (1999 Applied Animal Behaviour Science 63:237 for a relatively recent review.

He probably doesn't have an upset stomach. This is a common behavior of some captive animals, particularly gorillas (65% of gorillas in captivity demonstrate this behavior). It's referred to as R/R (regurgitation and reingestion) and has not been documented in wild gorillas, so probably has something to do with diet, boredom, or stress. See Lukas (1999 Applied Animal Behaviour Science 63:237 for a relatively recent review of this behavior.