Lowland Gorillas

All morning you have been moving, following your tracker who carefully traces the steps of gorillas who have been there not long before. Carefully traversing this wild terrain, relatively untouched and surprisingly open, after a few hours you find them. It's been a hard trek, but suddenly you forget that as you encounter these wild, but habituated, creatures playing, grooming and eating in their natural environment

A lowland gorilla safari doesn’t stop there, there are also opportunities to enjoy pirogue rides, net hunt with the local Ba’Aka people, track mangabey monkeys and watch for shy forest elephants in the bais.

Our lowland gorilla safaris are intrepid, wild and pioneering, located right in the heart of Africa.

The smallest of the gorilla subspecies, the male western lowland gorilla weighs up to 160 kilos, reaches a height, when standing, of 5ft 6 inches, with the females about half the size. These gorillas can be distinguished by their nose which has a continuous heart shaped ridge around its nostrils, shorter hair, and wider skull.

Like most gorillas, the western lowland gorilla sleeps at night on the ground in nests constructed from branches and leaves. Recent research has shown they have the capacity to use tools and they have been observed testing the depth of a river before deciding whether to cross. They are notoriously more challenging to track and habituate due to their large home range and constant movement.

Compared to mountain gorillas, their group sizes are small (usually about 5 individuals), but they are not territorial and groups usually overlap home ranges.

Lowland gorillas are found in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola.