Chimpanzees, as has been horrifically demonstrated in the past, tend to attack humans (and other chimps) by chewing various appendages beyond recognition.
How about gorillas? Plenty of bluff charges and noise-making, but surely they do come to blows now and then. How do they go about inflicting actual physical harm on threats/adversaries? They clearly have the strength to hammer you into something resembling a flank steak, or simply fold your body >8 times, but do they - like chimps - exhibit a preference for biting/gnawing?
Attack instances are very rare and not without sufficient warning by the gorilla. According to the article, gorillas appear to be largely peaceful in this regard.
Not my area of expertise, but from what I’ve read, gorillas will often do a bluff attack where they’ll charge right up to you and stop just short of you. If you bow down and act submissive they’ll usually leave you alone. If you run, they’ll chase after you and bite you or hit you. It’s not uncommon for people to be bit on the first place that the gorilla can grab, which is often the legs or the butt.
Like chimps, gorillas interpret human smiling as a threat since they see it as a baring of teeth.
Gorillas have been known to chew off hands and faces, but it doesn’t seem to be as common as it is for chimps. Here’s an account of a gorilla that attacked a zookeeper:
That tends to be true of most large mammals - because fighting is exponentially energy-expensive the bigger you are and there’s usually no meal in dominance fights, the first resort is to try and avoid it ; preferably by getting the prospective fightee to fuck right off. It’s why lions roar, rhinos and bulls stomp, elephants toot and so on. And why gorillas do that chest thumping thing (among other things).
The notable exception is mating season of course - in which case there’s still no meal in it, but there might could be a fuck, so… :p.
There’s a fair amount of videos showing silverbacks doling out small to moderate amounts of corrective violence on other subordinate gorillas in zoos or sometimes human observers who get too close or commit a social faux pas in the wild, but examples of more serious confrontations with more evenly matched participants are rather rare (at least for the amount of time I’ve spent looking).
Here is a short and not that serious but decent video of a short fight between 2 adult males in a zoo. I’m assuming it’s a dominance squabble, and it seems to me one male is doing the attacking while the other is fighting him off (rather than attacking equally back).
It’s reminiscent of a bar room attack, consisting of a charge/partial tackle, and followed by fast hard swats and scratches - note the flying fur. Had it been more malevolent or drawn out one might expect the biting to start but it didn’t happen here. Still not something I’d like to experience even though it wasn’t that serious.
I worked on a bird survey project in Gabon in which my partner Patrice was a French bird expert who had lived in the country for many years. One day we were walking down a road in our study area when we heard grunting up ahead. Patrice yelled “Gorillas!” and we saw a female run across the road. He immediately ran up to the area where the noise was coming from and began to beat his chest and make grunting noises. I followed cautiously behind.
He said “I like to make the males charge me!” as he continued to beat his chest. We couldn’t see the silverback but could see where he was shaking the thick bushes about 20 feet off the road. I made sure I kept Patrice between me and the male, though I’m not sure it would have done much good since Patrice was about 5’6". Fortunately the silverback was content just making noise.
I met a gorilla researcher later on who told me about an incident in which a male gorillas was fleeing from him down a trail when he unexpectedly collided with the guy’s pygmy assistant coming the other way, to their mutual surprise and dismay. They ended up scuffling on the ground. The pygmy fortunately escaped with nothing worse than bruises and bites on his buttocks.
Sheesh. Does he go around poking sticks into wasps nests for fun too? Seems like he’s just asking for trouble, and gorilla trouble isn’t the kind of trouble you ever want to have.