Why Do Silver Backs Fight : The mountain gorillas are wild apes that inhabit in the central parts of Africa as well as in Uganda in Bwindi impenetrable national park and Mgahinga national park, Volcanoes national park in Rwanda and Virunga national park in Congo.
The national parks that protect these endangered species have habituated families that have been trained to be close to human beings as they carry out their day to day activities such as playing, feeding, and grooming among others. The habituated families have a leader and the leader is called a silverback which has grey hair on its back thus the name silverback the family consists of 15 to 30 individuals.
Silverbacks are the elder mountain gorillas and leader of the gorilla families and each family has got one. Silverbacks are the dominating males of gorilla groups and can easily be identified from others by the silver hair at the back that grows at the age of 11 or 12. These weigh 350 pounds and 6 feet tall with big muscles on legs and chest.
Since the silverbacks are leaders, they tend to spear head activities such as building their nests for the next night move, movement in the forest, and search for food among others. The young male gorillas aren’t allowed to make decisions for the group.
Silver backs are as well in charge of teaching the young ones and black backs how to fetch water, build nests among others as they will become the future leaders.
Below are the reasons to why silverbacks fight;
The silverbacks always fight in order to protect their families and the young ones. Therefore, the silverbacks have to protect their families from being harmed and mostly those who want to get some of their members to start up their own families.
Breaking off; incase a male silverback within a family wanted to break off from the main family, a fight has to take place for it to acquire some family members to start up a family.
Female gorillas; the cause of the fight between silverbacks is the female gorilla. This is so because incase the dominating gorilla can’t allow other silverbacks to mate the females within the group and this would cause a fight.
Therefore a silverback can attack when it’s being threatened by another group, when the groups meet, the leaders at times engage in a fight to death and this is because they use sharp canine teeth to cause deep and gaping injuries.
Gorillas are actually innocent and gentle wild animals where their options aren’t solved by fighting, but they tend to display their warnings by beating their chests and hooting loudly especially by silverbacks.
All in all a normal silverback fights small animals but in case of a threat from its predators the humans as well as the animals such as cheetahs or leopards which have the ability to kill an adult gorilla, it will fight to death, although they can die during the fight but will die because of the wounds inflicted on them and those that have failed to heal.