This beautiful Gorilla lives at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Gorillas are always amazing to me, mainly because they seem so much like us. Their expressions, mannerisms, interactions etc. all seem so similar to us. It was a snowy cold day, so very few people were there. I sat with her for around a half an hour. She seemed to be in very deep thought about something. She’d look down and fiddle with some grass a little, then occasionally glance quietly up at me. My guess was that she was missing Rafiki, the great silverback that passed away last September. I believe that certain species can feel loss as much as we do, and in this instance it just felt like she was missing something. Whatever it was, for the brief amount of time I was there, the looks she gave me made me feel like she was glad I was there. Perhaps I was anthropomorphizing, or maybe I was just recognizing pieces of us in her. Either way for that brief moment, I felt like she was glad I was there.
