What do gorillas eat?

What do gorillas eat?

Gorillas are entirely herbivorous, that means they eat only vegetation in the wild. Here in the zoo we replicate that as close as possible by providing the gorillas with a lot of what's called growls, which is basically very leafy branches. But also we give the gorillas a very wide range of vegetables, as well as some fruits, but mainly vegetables. So for example, each of the gorillas here will eat between four and five kilograms of greens per day. We keep the fruit content of their diet to a fair minimum, because gorillas, like humans, will tend to put on weight. So, at the moment, the gorillas just get the one banana each per day. But if we feel the gorillas are looking a bit more athletic at times then we'll certainly give them a bit more fruit. But generally speaking its a very, very controlled diet. We use specialist software called zootrition, which you should think of being a form of zoo nutrition, hence the word zootrition. It's a specific software program that will tell us exactly how many calories are in a particular type of food and then we'll formulate a diet down to the actual gram. So its' very healthy for the gorillas here at ZSL Zoo.