[kellyhound]

Kiyomasa, a 13-year-old western lowland gorilla residing at the Higashiyama Zoo and Botanical Gardens in Nagoya, Japan is famously known as the son of Shabani, the world-renowned handsome gorilla.

Zoo officials reported that Kiyomasa engaged in a brief, heated domestic dispute with a female companion in his troop.

Following the argument, the female gorilla chased him and effectively pushed him out of their main enclosure den.

Left out in the cold, Kiyomasa walked over to a flight of concrete stairs, sat down in absolute solitude, folded his arm across his body and rested his chin in his hand.

He remained in this exact, eerily human pose for an extended period, staring blankly into the distance with a look of existential dread.

While humans love to project our own feelings onto him, wildlife biologists note that temporary separation, pensive posturing, and giving each other space are completely normal social dynamics used by gorillas to de-escalate tension and maintain group hierarchy before they eventually reconcile through grooming.


In another video a different male gorilla slowly and awkwardly reaches out his hand to touch a female gorilla sitting next to him. Every time his fingers get close, she turns her head sharply or shifts away aggressively.

Because female gorillas can be fiercely selective and quick to snap if they want space, the male immediately jerks his arm completely back in a very human-like Oops, never mind gesture.

Netizens compared it to a human being trying to put their arm around a date who is mad at them.

Male gorillas, even massive silverbacks, frequently check for consent before initiating grooming or closeness.

If a female gives a warning look or a sharp nudge, the male will swiftly withdraw his hand to prevent a full-blown physical altercation.

Humans share approximately 98.3% of their DNA with gorillas while chimpanzees remain our closest evolutionary relatives at roughly 98.8% similarity.

Humans and gorillas both have roughly 21,000 genes and when you look purely at the functional genes that keep our bodies alive (like digesting food, breathing or cellular energy), we share 99.2% to 99.4% of the exact same genes with gorillas.

In the past, scientists only compared small, simple snippets of DNA to get that 98.3% number. Today, complex full-genome mapping has revealed that the differences are more structural.

Gorillas have massive chunks of DNA that have been duplicated or completely deleted compared to humans. If you factor in these massive structural shifts rather than just counting the individual letter changes, some new studies calculate that the total genomic difference is actually much wider.

When scientists fully mapped the gorilla genome at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, they found a fascinating twist as about 15% of the human genome is actually a closer match to gorillas than to chimpanzees.

F.e, humans and gorillas share highly optimized genes for hearing that evolved independently of chimpanzees.

Humans disabled or modified specific, highly functional genes. This process, known as evolution by gene loss, allowed our ancestors to sacrifice raw physical strength in exchange for massive brain growth.

The most famous genetic changes that fueled this brain explosion involve jaw power and brain cell multiplication are; around 2.4 million years ago, a gene called MYH16 suffered a major mutation in human ancestors. This gene is responsible for producing the heavy myosin proteins found in primate jaw muscles.

The mutation completely deactivated the gene in humans, causing our jaw muscles to shrink significantly and without massive jaw muscles squeezing the skull, the evolutionary pressure holding the skull tightly closed was removed. This freed up the skull, allowing it to remain flexible during childhood and expand to accommodate a brain 3 times larger than gorillas.

While some genes were turned off, others were accidentally duplicated and modified. The NOTCH2NL gene family is completely unique to humans. It does not function the same way in gorillas or chimpanzees.

This gene delays the differentiation of cortical stem cells into neurons so by forcing stem cells to keep dividing and making more copies of themselves before turning into brain cells, it creates a massive bank of future neurons.

This single genetic tweak is a primary reason humans develop a much larger and more densely packed cerebral cortex, which is the area responsible for language, reasoning and abstract thought.

Humans also lost the function of the CMAH gene, which alters the types of sugar molecules (sialic acids) found on the surfaces of our cells.

Gorillas and other primates have a specific sugar called Neu5Gc on their cell surfaces. Because of the deactivated CMAH gene, humans cannot produce this sugar and instead have an abundance of a precursor sugar called Neu5Ac.

This change heavily impacted brain tissue and immune system interactions. Scientists believe this specific molecular shift made the human brain far more receptive to complex rewiring and enhanced synaptic plasticity.

These genetic changes also forced humans to change their diet, since a larger brain requires significantly more daily calories than a gorilla.

Humans lost brute muscle power through an evolutionary trade-off because a massive brain requires immense energy, so humans sacrificed brawn to fuel our intelligence.

The human brain is an energy hog. While it accounts for only 2% of our total body weight, it consumes 20% to 25% of our baseline daily calories.

Muscle tissue is also highly metabolically expensive to maintain. A large primate like a gorilla must spend up to eight hours every single day foraging and eating raw vegetation just to power its massive muscles and smaller brain.

If humans kept gorilla-sized muscles alongside our large brains, there simply would not be enough hours in the day to gather and digest the required calories.

To bypass this barrier, our ancestors adopted 2 evolutionary shifts:

A. Around 1.8 million years ago, human ancestors began cooking food. Cooking breaks down fibers and predigests proteins, allowing our shorter guts to absorb massive amounts of calories quickly. This caloric surplus directly fueled brain growth.

According to metabolic research featured in National Geographic, human skeletal muscle underwent rapid evolutionary changes that effectively weakened our baseline power compared to other primates, rerouting those vital metabolic resources directly to our expanding prefrontal cortex.

B. Ape muscles and human muscles are built out of different materials. Primates possess a much higher percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which generate explosive, blinding force for climbing, tearing and lifting.

Humans traded these out for slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are built for extreme endurance and efficiency. This adaptation allowed early humans to become persistence hunters, chasing prey across hot savannahs for hours until the animal collapsed from exhaustion.

Fast-twitch fibers would have burned through energy too quickly, causing our ancestors to overheat and fatigue.

A gorilla's central nervous system is wired to pull a massive trigger. One motor neuron can activate a huge percentage of a muscle all at once, resulting in instant, terrifying brute force.

Human motor neurons are split into smaller, highly complex networks. This prevents us from using 100% of our muscle power at once, protecting our more fragile skeletons from snapping under stress.

In exchange, this finer neurological control gives us the precise motor skills and dexterity required to thread a needle, paint, write, and accurately throw a spear.