Fascinating. How much of this is actually real and how much is people filling in a story that’s not necessarily reality but fits what we humans want to see? It feels very complex and I wonder how anyone can really know what’s happening with the social issues within these gorilla groups.
Also I wonder how much of Imfura’s aggression is due to his earlier trauma. From elsewhere on the same site, written in 2022:
> Imfura has a solid relationship with his father, dominant silverback Gicurasi, who himself had a close partnership with Imfura’s mother before her death. The bond between father and son has been strong since 2011, when then-2-year-old Imfura found himself trapped in a poacher’s snare. He was terrified, screaming in fear as the gorillas around him tried to free him. Our tracker Jean Bosco Ntrenganya was able to cut the rope loose, allowing Imfura to escape, but it took two days for Gicurasi to calm down enough a veterinary intervention to be done to remove the rope that was still attached to the young gorilla’s foot. Imfura survived the trauma and became closer to his father.
His father, who was the dominant male before the current dominant male, died last year. Perhaps it explains some of this?
It's hard to believe any of it as the true reality after reading how much this article differed from the new Netflix documentary A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough that I watched a couple of weeks ago. The story they told involving these specific gorillas was quite bit different than the one described here.
All this makes for an interesting read and viewing but I fear an awful lot of it is anthropomorphism and pseudo (social) science.
The aggression could be from trauma, but aggressionn is also just part of being a male gorilla. They need to drive off rival males and, if they dont have a troop, depose or at least survive an encounter with a full silverback. Aggression is a useful tool in such situations.