Gorillas could be beneficial

Western Lowland Gorilla

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Family: Hominidae

Genus: Gorilla

Species: Gorilla gorilla

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/classification/path/Gorilla.html#Gorilla

3 Major Adaptations

1. Sight in color. Gorilla’s have the ability to see in color. This adaptation is very useful because it allows Gorillas to detect contrast between the forests around them. In case of a predator or poacher, they are able to spot movement against the leaves.

2. Opposable thumb. Although this is nothing new to humans, for most animals an opposable thumb is only a dream. Since the Gorilla has this adaptation, they are able to easily grasp objects and even use crude tools.

3. Intelligence in communication. Some Gorillas have been successfully taught how to use sign language to communicate with humans. The Gorilla’s with the brain capacity for deeper communication, could have meaningful communication with humans or possibly other gorillas by sign language.

Adaptation of interest.

I believe that exploiting the Gorilla’s ability to communicate with sign language could be very beneficial to our company. There has been evidence that this ability to learn sign language in Gorillas is not a specie wide ability. Only certain Gorillas have the brain capacity necessary and if we were able to pin point what kind of genes are responsible we could gather these gorillas for testing. Once this is figured out, we could mate Gorillas that are highly capable for sign language with other primates in the same group. Not only does this increase the number of gorillas with this possibility but it will also strengthen the offspring’s ability to understand sign language. I think this could be a huge commercial profit for our company not only because it allows an animal to communicate with us but the entertainment value we could use with “talking” Gorillas and the public.

My plan is to find what gene or genes encode for this higher brain capacity. I will first hire a team of researchers. I will ask some of the facilities that already train Gorillas to allow us to borrow them for MRI’s and CATscan’s. I hope to find a significant difference in brain heat and radiation between sign language Gorillas and normal Gorillas. Once the difference is determined it will be our check sheet to see if the Gorillas we find in the wild are capable of sign language. After mating these selected Gorillas, we will also be able to test the offspring to understand if these genes are passed down equally or not.

There is a possibility of eventually creating a new species by doing this. If another mutation was involved in these already highly intelligent Gorillas, a new brain wave capacity could occur in the offspring of these Gorillas. Even though the development of speech would take many more mutations of vocal cords and things of that nature, the ability to become self away and think in abstract terms could one day be possible.

I think that his plans will be very successful; I think it would be excited to see what could come of gorillas communicating in a human way. This will not only be beneficial to our company but it could very much be beneficial to the survival of the Gorilla.

http://seaworld.org/animal-info/info-books/gorilla/adaptations.htm