Off The Record
Man Encountered Gorillas In The Woods, And This Is What Happened
Caught in the Act showcases some of wildlife’s most remarkable moments. Each moment is explained by experts in the field, whilst eyewitnesses describe the remarkable events surrounding the footage.
The Gorilla encounter
Close friend Jonathan Rossouw and John King are nature lovers, but a trip to find wild gorillas in Uganda gets them a lot more love than they are comfortable with.
Tracking mountain gorillas in an utterly unique wildlife experience. They track mountain gorillas in a park that is very evocative called Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and that name perfectly sums up the terrain. It’s steep mountainous terrain dense undergrowth and you track those gorillas to wherever the gorillas happen to be feeding.
John King says: “They make you work for it. You wake up early and it’s quite a long hike. We were prepared to walk a long time. I must say we covered a lot of farmland and then into the bush.”
John and Jonathan spend two days in the forest. Finally hard work pays off with their first glimpse of wild gorillas.
“Wild parts of Uganda are so surprisingly beautiful.” John continues. “By the time you get to the gorillas you almost forgot that’s the main reason that you came.”
The buddies were thrilled just to find these jungle apes that they’ve worked so hard to see… only to find the gorillas have been looking for them too.
Jonathan says: “I woke up one morning and I opened the door to my cabin and there was a gorilla on the path, so I ran around to the entire group saying guys you will not believe it one of the most incredible things that’s happening..”
John continues: “I heard Jonathan’s voice and I instantly came alert and I knew as I had to move fast but just had time to grab my small video cam, dashed out I sat down right in the middle of their path. I wasn’t really thinking because if the gorillas have touched me they would have to walk right over me in order to get to where they were going to go.”
Gorillas are herbivores and usually no threat to people, but one way to get yourself attacked by an animal is to get too close to its babies, and this family is being protected by 180 kilogram dominant male silverback gorilla.
John knows and tries to disappear into the background, but one youngster is curious about this human ape despite the closeness of his minder.
The silverback turned around to see his son touching a strange object and there was this moment in which you can see the silverback thinking: do I react aggressively, do I allow this to happen?
The silverback reached down and tried to pull his kid away from the human and in typical two-year-old fashion this baby gorilla shifted around and said: NO! I want to have a look at what’s happening here.
You can see the silverback making hmmmm.. and he decided okay well I’ll just keep control over the situation and he sat down right behind John.
Take a look at this video by aleutiandream:
Take a look at the entire documentary bellow by Caught in the act:
