THE GENTLE GIANTS: The Gorilla Story

by Geoffrey H. & Maury Cohen Bourne ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 31, 1975

One of those hodgepodge treaments of the subject, gathered, one would assume, from a perusal of everything listed under ""gorilla"" in the library's card file. Among the entries: a rundown on popular concepts of the nature of the beast via movies (there's even some detail about how King Kong was photographed and a list of movies in which gorilla monsters were featured); tales from great white hunters; and famous pets, including Toto who played second banana to Gargantua at Ringling Bros. There are sketchy but interesting roundups of the research of George B. Schaller and Dian Fossey who did pioneer field work in observing the generally gentle, vegetarian beasts in their natural habitat, a section on anatomy, and a peculiar wandering set of observations and speculations concerning gorilla sexual performance. There are also brief mentions of experiments in teaching primates to ""talk"" via sign language and symbols, but there is little material about gorillas per se since most of the work has been done with chimps. A concluding chapter lumbers back to monsters, this time of the Big Foot variety. A lengthy bibliography indicates not only sources, but also points to some more reliable and responsible reading matter than this.

Pub Date: Oct. 31, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION