User:Wxllcohen/sandbox

Save the North African Sand Gorilla

About: The North African Sand Gorilla is a gorilla residing in Saharan Africa in the countries of Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia. Recently the gorilla has become critically endangered due to climate change evaporating their oasis's, as well as conflict in Libya (the habitat where they are most commonly found) The armed conflict has resulted in extreme habitat loss, and currently their are only two oasis's dubbed oasis alpha; the larger, and oasis beta, the smaller. These oasis's have populations of 12 and 8 gorillas respectively.

Diet: The Sand Gorilla primarily eats grasses and palms found around the oasis's they live in and around, these apes are very intelligent and have been found to dig down in the sand and burry palms and grasses for later.

Social: The Sand Gorillas have advanced and complex social lives and include some of the building blocks of society such as social hierarchy and bullying, sadly this is becoming less and less common as the population shrinks as there are only 5 different genetic pools and the interfamilial relationships between all apes are very similar now adays.

Conservation: There is sadly little effort to save these apes however they have very few natural predators so most conservation focuses on breeding and artificially placing the populations in a protected oasis. This is so far only conceptual and hasn't been practiced or accomplished however there is an accredited charity out of Boston Massachusetts hoping to achieve this.

Life span: the Sand Gorilla lives for about 45 years, and typically reach sexual maturity by the age of 6 years old. They tend to live very sedative care free lives and behave in activities such as play from near birth until near death.

Poaching: The Sand Gorilla sadly is a sought after meet by poachers and is typically sold in Suadi Arabian bazaars, and Chinese meet markets for extreme prices. Poaching is a strong reason that they face such a strong risk of extinction.