Gorillas beat their chests to size each other up, researchers say

[Judi Lynn]

Chest-beating behaviour in male gorillas allows them to signal their size and avoid fights with larger rivals

Nicola Davis
@NicolaKSDavis
Thu 8 Apr 2021 11.00 EDT

It is a trope used in films from King Kong to Tarzan – a male primate standing upright and beating its chest, sometimes with a yell and often with more than a dash of hubris.

But it seems the pounding action is less about misplaced bravado than Hollywood would suggest: researchers studying adult male mountain gorillas say that while chest-beating might be done to show off, it also provides honest information.

“We found it is definitely a real, reliable signal – males are conveying their true size,” said Edward Wright, co-author of the research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, Wright and colleagues report how they studied chest-beating in six adult male mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes national park in Rwanda.

. . .

“Quite often it is all about the chest beat and then they don’t fight,” he said , adding that could be because the males size each other up from the chest-beating and gauge which has the physical advantage.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/08/gorilla-beat-chest-signal-size-avoid-fight-with-rival-researchers-say

[TheBlackAdder]

1. If a smaller gorilla has a speaker to amplify his chest beats, would that intimidate the larger one?

.

Just to test the theory. Not that they'd be wired up in nature.

Or that a gorilla goes to an audio store and buys a karaoke system.

.

[BigmanPigman]

2. I just imagined member of Congress doing this on the floor

during debate. Or Mat Gaetz whipping out his laptop with nude photos proving his manhood. Of course unzipping and getting a ruler would also help to take Gaetz down a few notches.