Before the article begins, let's look at an interesting question: when people are angry and angry, their faces will become red, but at this time, the blood flow to the muscles will help us to enter the battle and get a greater chance of winning, and the flow to the face does not have any practical effect.
I think this is probably just to tell others that "I'm angry" and that I'm not ready to fight, so please walk away automatically, just like two people on the street are making a noise, getting louder and louder, and the distance is getting farther and farther away. And this also applies to mountain gorillas patting their chests.
Mountain gorillas, the archetype of King Kong, are large vegetarian primates that live in Africa and, in stark contrast to their intimidating appearance, are their gentle hearts and intelligent brains.
The gorilla was first formally described in the 1850s, and it wasn't until the 1960s that scientists went deep into central and eastern Africa to observe them up close and "participatory", and that scientist was Dian Fossey.
Fossey studied mountain gorillas living in the Virunga Mountains for 18 years before being killed by poachers and buried next to the gorillas after their deaths.
Fossey's story is not the focus of this article, but in her records we can understand that breast patting is limited to male mountain gorillas, and in about 3,000 hours of observation, The mountain gorillas that Fossey has seen fights are extremely rare, and the fight process has never exceeded 5 minutes.
Breast patting is limited to males and may be related to the family tissue structure of mountain gorillas. The gorilla population is "one male and many females", and each group has a strong male as the leader, which is often referred to as the "silverback gorilla" (the silverback is actually the gray-white hair that grows on the back of the male gorilla after aging).
A silverback gorilla usually has 1 to 6 mates, and the males in their offspring will leave the group to live a "wandering" life when they reach adulthood, and these wanderers will try to challenge the "silverback" in order to obtain a mate and reproduce, but as Fossey puts it, it is rare to actually fight.
In fact, after Fossey, there are many scientists who specialize in gorillas, and they often spend a long time following and observing.
From 2014 to 2016, primatologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany were in Rwanda to record the chest patting behavior of mountain gorillas, and 25 male mountain gorillas slapped their chests more than 500 times in 3 years, but the number of actual fights was very small. At the same time, male gorillas pat their breasts often occur during female estrus, so in order to protect the females in the group, it is not wise for gorillas to fight.
That is to say, male gorillas are not aggressive guys, they prefer to solve problems peacefully, to be precise, they hope to show their physical condition, fully display their height, weight, muscle strength, etc., so that the opponent can retreat from the difficulty and avoid consuming the physical strength of both sides in the fight.
In addition to giving the opponent a visual "warning", the sound of male gorillas patting their chests is also quite shocking, this sound can spread far in the mountain forest, coupled with echo, is to make the opponent give up irrational provocations as soon as possible.
According to scientists' records, there is not much difference between larger male mountain gorillas and smaller individuals in the number, interval, and duration of chest patting, but the former has a lower frequency of chest patting than the latter.
Therefore, it is speculated that the frequency of chest slapping may best indicate the combat effectiveness of male gorillas, which also explains why a gorilla stands up when patting his chest, and slightly bends his palm in a hollow shape, rather than sitting and grasping his hand into a solid fist, because the palm hollow is conducive to amplifying the sound emitted when clapping, and standing helps to spread the sound farther.
When things are not impulsive, try not to make a lose-lose situation, it may be the wisdom of the gorilla, a primate relative, who teaches humans.