MICHAEL CRICHTON

Amy agreed to lead them into the jungle where she said the gorillas lived. Byten o’clock that morning, they were moving up the hillsides north of the cityarmed with machine guns. It was not long before they found gorilla spoor—quantities of dung, and nests on the ground and in the trees. Munro wasdisturbed by what he saw; some trees held twenty or thirty nests, suggesting alarge population of animals.Ten minutes later, they came upon a group of ten gray gorillas feeding onsucculent vines: four males and three females, a juvenile, and two scamperinginfants. The adults were lazy, basking in the sun, eating in desultory fashion.Several other animals slept on their backs, snoring loudly. They all seemedremarkably unguarded.Munro gave a hand signal; the safeties clicked off the guns. He prepared to fireinto the group when Amy tugged at his trouser leg. He looked off and “had theshock of my bloody life. Up the slope was another group, perhaps ten or twelveanimals—and then I saw another group—and another—and another still. Theremust have been three hundred or more. The hillside was crawling with graygorillas.”The largest gorilla group ever sighted in the wild had been thirty-oneindividuals, in Kabara in 1971, and even that sighting was disputed. Mostresearchers thought it was actually two groups seen briefly together, since theusual group size was ten to fifteen individuals. Elliot found three hundred animals“an awesome sight.” But he was even more impressed by the behavior of theanimals. As they browsed and fed in the sunlight, they behaved very much likeordinary gorillas in the wild, but there were important differences.“From the first sighting, I never had any doubt that they had language. Theirwheezing vocalizations were striking and clearly constituted a form of language.In addition they used sign language, although nothing like what we knew. Theirhand gestures were delivered with outstretched arms in a graceful way, ratherlike Thai dancers. These hand movements seemed to complement or add to thesighing vocalizations. Obviously the gorillas had been taught, or had elaboratedon their own, a language system far more sophisticated than the pure signlanguage of laboratory apes in the twentieth century.”211