Why Gorillas, Why Not Chimpanzees?

Many peo­ple have asked me, why do you ask where goril­las get their pro­tein, when our bod­ies and our body chem­istry more close­ly resem­ble those of chim­panzees? My answer is that goril­las are much big­ger and more pow­er­ful than chim­panzees. Last night, I saw a muse­um exhib­it that com­pared a goril­la skull to a chim­panzee skull and a human skull. (They might have been mod­els. It was hard to tell.) The goril­la skull was huge! The chim­panzee skull was about the same size as a human skull.

The oth­er rea­son is that goril­las eat a much more strict­ly plant-based diet. Chim­panzees hunt once in a while, and they often eat their kill. Even so, they still eat a lot less meat than just about any human pop­u­la­tion. Nev­er­the­less, I was afraid that the fact they eat a lit­tle bit of meat now and then would mud­dy the waters.

My point is this. Most of the real­ly big and pow­er­ful land ani­mals got big and pow­er­ful by eat­ing plants. They don’t wor­ry about get­ting a pro­tein defi­cien­cy on a plant-based diet, and nei­ther should you.

 

(Image cour­tesy of Mahla­ti­ni Lux­u­ry Safari, https://www.mahlatini.com/gorilla-trekking-safaris/)