Do Mountain Gorillas eat a vegan diet?

Question

A Mountain Gorilla eats an entirely vegan diet, however, it has enough strength to rip a car door off its hinges. What more proof do you need meat eaters? If a Mountain Gorilla can live a full healthy life on a vegan diet, then so can you. There is no excuse to eat meat. The Mountain Gorilla is proof.

Harry D, first of all, please learn how to spell. Secondly, your ignorance really shines through on every post you make.

zeggy, nice try, but they don't eat red meat. Your attempt to justify the senseless murder of billions of animals every year has failed. As you will notice from that website, it mentioned scarce. I laugh when I read the failed attempts of you meat eaters. You meat eaters are always trying to justify the murder of innocent animal beings.

I feel sorry for you people, I really do. You will never be able to justify the senseless killing of innocent animal beings. I am no longer requesting, but I am demanding, that animals have the same rights as humans. I will not rest until animals are fully liberated from you evil people. I will always fight for justice against your kind.

You know what, Mountain Gorillas do not raise animals in harsh conditions to eat them like humans. You morons eat meat even when you have grocery store full of fresh fruits and vegetables. You don't have any excuse to eat meat and you are wrong to try and justify the senseless murder of billions of innocent animal beings every year.

Answer 1

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/apes/gorilla/Mtgorillaprintout.shtml

Google is your friend!
Mountain Gorillas will also eat termites and ants when food is scarce and another site I have looked at they will also eat slugs.

So no they are not vegan although their diet consists MOSTLY of vegetation.

Oh Ashley do some research please.

http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-2b.shtml

The following is from the link regarding an apes diet and a humans

Less predominant foods often "assumed away" by fiat. We have already (briefly) discussed insect consumption by gorillas and orangutans. Though insects are a small component of their diet, we note the following:


Such a dietary component cannot be "assumed away," as it may be nutritionally significant as discussed above.

A human who consumes insects (live insects are obviously a "living food"!) would not be considered a vegan or vegetarian according to the strict dietary definitions promoted by dietary advocates.

You back up everything you spout with absolutely nothing and then abuse the people who actually give you documented evidence to prove you wrong. Read the link.
You say Gorillas are vegans because they don't eat 'red meat'. So if they eat white meat and other animals/insects they are?
So if I decided to live on a diet of termites (living creatures eaten by gorillas) very similarly to this Aardwolf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/700.shtml
I would be a vegan would I even though I'm eating another living creature? Aardwolfs are not considered vegan!

Research Ashley research is very important if you want anyone to actually take any notice of you. If you were given the task of converting me to a vegan I would run a mile because you border on the psychotic and when other vegans disagree with you as much as they say surely by now you must realise you are seriously losing the battle!

Answer 2

You are wrong Sorry! The mountain Gorilla actually eats whatever vegetation is available and eats insects, grubs slugs etc. Just because it isn't a predator doesn't mean it's a vegan! It's adapted to suit it's environment.
Man-kind had to eat meat to survive in their environments and still would if they lived a natural life like the 'Gorilla'. However we don't live a natural life do we?
If you had to live on a diet of native British fruit, vegetables and cereal crops and only when they were in season, how long would you stay healthy? The only reason you can live on a Vegan diet is because you can get food from all over the world, and man has cultivated those items for thousands of years. Have you ever seen a wild strawberry or wild wheat? They are tiny! Even the potatoes you probably DO EAT are not native!
The Mountain Gorilla is no stronger than the Grizzly Bear which is a meat and fish eater but I'm not stupid enough to claim that it is proof we should eat meat!
You have a choice, be thankful for it and leave others to choose their own paths through life!

Answer 3

I think the better question is "if i am vegan and eating a totally vegan diet, why am i not as strong as a gorilla?" Sorry to burst your bubble, but gorillas eat literally tons of termites a year which will have more protein than beef or chicken, also the plants and shoots they eat are infested with larvae, surely this isnt a complete vegan diet. Another point EVERY vegan forgets when they TRY to validate this argument is bones, yes bones! Gorillas bone are WAY bigger and heavier than humans, its not all muscles, and as you said they live ON MOUNTAINS, regardless what you ate if you climbed up and down a mountain everyday youd be super strong too. My last point is that gorillas can produce their own amino acid, this helps greatly with protein synthesis- or the bodies ability to make protein BY ITSELF. Just because you believe in a way of life doesnt mean you are right and everyone is wrong. What is the soft part of fruit called? Meat... You are a meat eater ;)

Answer 4

Sorry, you are wrong yet again.

Read this quote.

The diets of the eastern and western gorilla populations differ considerably. Eastern animals are predominantly folivorous, but those in the west eat great quantities of fruit. Eastern gorillas feed primarily on leaves, shoots and stems (86% of the diet in one study). Galium vines, wild celery and three or four other species make up a high proportion of the diet. Small amounts of wood, roots, flowers, fruits, and grubs also are eaten. In the western populations, fruits are the most important element in the gorillas’ diet, although they also eat leaves, pith and stems (e.g. wild ginger). In a study undertaken on one western lowland gorilla group in Gabon, it was found that the fruits of at least 95 plant species were utilized. It was also found in Gabon that the gorilla frequently breaks into termite nests to feed on the insects inside. Western gorillas have also been observed wading through shallow pools and swamps to harvest water plants. They further differ from eastern animals in that they occasionally include some animal food in their diet. On the other hand, it has been observed that mountain gorillas had ample opportunity to eat eggs, helpless young birds, and the honey of stingless bees but never did. (Stuart & Stuart 1996, Kingdon 1997, Nowak 1999)

Certainly not Vegetarian, and definately not Vegan.

I would say omnivore - just like Humans!.

Answer 5

So here is another moral issue for you - how can a Gorilla of any description have a vegan diet? Do the babies not suckle at their mothers breasts or does gorilla milk not count? I know how much you hate people disagreeing with you but Zeggy is totally correct & you are totally wrong Gorillas ARE omnivores. Also there have been many documented accounts of cannibalism due to tribal selection.

Answer 6

The information I could find on the Internet differs slightly. Some of it says the mountain gorilla eats only plants while other gorillas eat termites and snails, etc. Other sites I found says the mountain gorilla sometimes does that as well, so I'm just not sure.

Answer 7

They're omnivores, just like black bears, grizzly bears and other gorillas. When food is scarce, they will even cannibalize.

I like how you put any sort of argument against your weak facts as untrue. LOL. (look up infanticide amongst gorilla groups as well. It's a structural thing first off, but eating the young?! Isn't that a tad out of norms for the mountain gorilla we should all learn from?) Good luck and keep the rants coming, they're entertaining.

Answer 8

I think it has been widely proven from the posts above that Mountain Gorillas are not vegan, like they even have a concept what that means or stands for. However, I am more intrerested in how you are going to convert lions, tigers, cheetahs, snakes, sharks and all of the animals in this world that eat meat. Are you going to picket the savannah.....well maybe you should the posts would be more quiet!

Answer 9

Wikipedia is hardly a reliable authority to quote. The .01% of invertebrate intake is taken out of context.

Actually the quote is as follows:

"[T]he daily 2g of invertebrates makes up just 0.01% of the intake...

[However,] when invertebrates occur at high concentration in the environment they are deliberately sought by the gorillas, and not a little time sometimes expended in their procurement...

Invertebrate consumption could be necessary to satisfy trace element requirements in a species with a near-monotypic vegetarian diet [Wise, 1982]."

So the extropolated conclusion is that invertebrate consumption is perceived as needed, and where it is abundant it is actively and arduously sought by the animal.

Answer 10

0,1% of their diet is larvae, snails and ants. The rest of their diet consists of vegetation. Why dont you google this stuff Ashley? You are already online.

update, Meg, you could look it up in *any* other encyclopedia, if you for some reason dont like W. You could even read a book. The point is, mountain gorillas eat MAINLY vegetation. But I dont really see your point??? Do we agree or what?