A Gorilla-Style Diet Was Comparable to Lovastatin in Lowering Cholesterol
Maybe the benefits of the “Mediterranean diet” come from the ratatouille, not from the olive oil and fish:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3966
In case you are wondering, aubergine means eggplant.
More Than Enough for a Human Being, and Even More Than Enough for a Pig!
Here’s a rather dry and technical article that describes the amount of “available protein,” as opposed to “crude protein,” in the foods that wild mountain gorillas eat.
http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/anthro/chapman_files/cweb/Pdf/229_FiberNitrogen.pdf
The mountain gorillas in this study were getting more than enough protein, mainly because they were eating so many leaves. Although leaves are low in calories, a substantial proportion of those calories comes from protein. If gorillas eat enough leaves to get enough calories, the protein takes care of itself. A leafy diet is so rich in protein that the gorillas can afford to snack on some low-protein fruit.
Because Gorillas Are Big.
“Large mammalian herbivores, according to accepted ecological theory, may be expected to feed on abundant, low quality food as a result of the relationship between their body size, metabolic requirements, and gut capacity. … Abundant low quality food means nonreproductive plant parts, i.e., stems and leaves, because fruit and flowers are too ephemeral to provide a regular source of food in bulk for large animals. So, large herbivores ought to be folivorous in a broad sense, and usually are.”
http://www.jstor.org/pss/4219431
In other words, big plant-eaters mainly eat leaves.
Lots of Salad!
Gorillas eat plants, mainly leaves. “There is a virtual absence of foods of animal origin.”
Take it from someone who knows:
No one knows [how strong gorillas are], because you can’t take a gorilla down to your local gym, obviously, and if you did it would be at your own peril and the other gym members’ peril. We don’t know, but scientists estimate it to be about 10 times stronger than a full-grown man. And certainly some of the things I’ve seen here at the zoo, 10 times stronger is probably fairly correct. For example, when I’m moving things around inside their enclosure, there might be very large logs which I’m literally unable to move, so I might call a couple of other keepers over, and between the three of us, we will slowly manhandle it, perhaps a few inches across the enclosure. Bobby then will come in and then just with one hand will be able to swipe that same log a good few feet without any effort.
—Daniel Simmonds, Gorilla Keeper, ZSL London Zoo
