You can't really be friends with a gorilla, but it's still easier than beating one in a fight, even if you are the 100th person trying. They are all really tough whereas an alarming number of human males buy organic beard cream but one thing they share in common is that some are more social and some are less.

An analysis of 20 years of data including 164 wild mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda, which usually live in groups of about 12 with a single dominant male, found that, like in humans, costs and benefits of being in a group changed depending on the size of the groups, and differed for males and females. A female gorilla in small groups didn’t get ill very often but had fewer offspring while those in larges groups had higher birth rates but were also more prone to illness. Socially popular males got more illness but fewer injuries due to fights. 

So there are trade-offs in social bonds, even when it comes to disease risk. For males, social distancing works but not so females.


Credit: Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund

“In humans and other social mammals, the social environment is one of the strongest predictors of health and lifespan," says lead author Dr. Robin Morrison from the University of Zurich. “But our study shows this isn’t a straightforward case of more and stronger social ties always being better. In some situations social traits that we’ve previously thought of as maladaptive can have important benefits.”

Citation: R.E. Morrison,S. Ellis,V. Martignac,T.S. Stoinski,& W. Eckardt, Group traits moderate the relationship between individual social traits and fitness in gorillas, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 122 (20) e2421539122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2421539122 (2025).