KING KONG may have beaten his chest, but real male gorillas in western Africa
reach the top by out-splashing their rivals.
Males intimidate rivals with extravagant displays of water splashing. They
jump into pools or spray huge plumes of water with their hands, says Richard
Parnell of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, who observed western
lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in swampy forests in the
Republic of Congo.
One male they named Mad Max was spectacularly successful, building a group
from scratch by terrifying rivals. “Max was crazy for a while, but it seemed to
pay off,” says…
