Chimpanzee Trekking Vs Gorilla Trekking
Chimpanzee Trekking Vs Gorilla Trekking: These two wildlife adventure experiences provide unique chances to see primates in their natural habitats, each with differences in permits, costs, behaviour, and physical demands. The interaction and duration of these activities also vary. It’s important to know that mountain gorillas are found only in Uganda, Rwanda, and DR Congo, while chimpanzees live in many countries across East, Central, and West Africa. The comparison between Chimpanzee tracking and Gorilla tracking in the country’s lush jungles such as Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Mgahinga National Park, Kibale National Park, Budongo Forest in Murchison Falls National Park, and Kyambura in Queen Elizabeth National Park, highlights the similarities and differences between these thrilling experiences, ensuring a clear understanding when planning activities.
Since all activities are conducted in the lush jungles of the country that are scattered across the country, it is important to critically understand what these two exciting experiences share in common and how they slightly differ to enable you have a clear over view when planning for any of the above activities. Below is the comparison between Chimpanzee tracking and Gorilla trekking experiences
Chimpanzee Trekking Vs Gorilla Trekking
Gorilla trekking tends to be more physically demanding than chimpanzee tracking due to the challenging terrain of forests and steep slopes.
Gorilla trekking experience tends to be more organised than chimpanzee trekking, where visitors are guaranteed over 98% chances of seeing mountain gorillas in their natural habitat than chimpanzee tracking.
Chimpanzees often times inhabit or live in relatively flatter terrain while mountain gorillas live in mountainous areas and slopes which can be stressful. This is because mountain gorillas typically live in high altitude areas with montane forests, hence making it hard for them to survive in classic flat plains.
Chimpanzees spend much of their time atop trees in tree canopies, playing, grunting, feeding and others, while mountain gorillas spend much of their time on the ground while playing, mating feeding, and nurturing their babies.
Chimpanzees are mobile in nature and always roaming requiring trackers to keep following them constantly and at high pace, on the other hand mountain gorillas tend to move and relax on the ground in a forest clearing, an experience that is actually exciting and adventurous for visitors and primate lovers.
Due to their lighter bodies, chimpanzees have continuous movements and a habit of swinging from one tree to another, as they climb up in the tree canopies, makes it hard to take memorable photos. On the other hand, mountain gorillas are heavier and rarely climb trees, since gorillas are vegetarian, they spend most of their time on the ground foliage.
Chimpanzees tend to be noisier and more playful during the tracking experience where as mountain gorillas usually play quietly while feeding on leaves, shoots, twigs and tree barks. Gorillas naturally are gentle with low vocalization compared to chimpanzees whose vocalization gets louder as they continue to make their grunting noise.
The search for chimpanzee communities doesn’t take much time as compared to the lengthy hours taken when locating mountain gorillas. Chimpanzee tracking may take about 2- 3 hours in the forest to locate chimpanzees while gorilla tracking may take between 2- 7 hours, which may be exhausting but rewarding.
Chimpanzee tracking experience takes place in two overlapping sessions such as in the morning, starting at 7:30 am and the afternoon session starting at 2:00pm, aiming at regulating the trekking number of visitors and also offering a trekking chance to clients not to miss out, tracking these intelligent chimps. On the other hand, unlike chimpanzee trekking which takes limited time, gorilla trekking experience is strictly arranged for one session in the morning due to its lengthy duration to allow these gentle giants have ample time to search for food sources.
Chimpanzees primarily live in large social communities that frequently breakup into smaller groups when searching for scarce food sources before converging again. Trackers often split up to follow these splinter groups which can lead to confusion if the chimps lead them back to the main group. On the other hand, mountain gorillas live in a relatively stable group with plenty of food.
There is a one-hour limit as away of controlling how much time visitors can spend observing a mountain gorilla family. However, in some countries and destinations, visitors can spend more time with a chimpanzee family depending on the place they choose to go tracking.
Gorilla trekking experience permits only 8 people per a gorilla family once a day while chimpanzee tracking allows only 6 people per a given chimpanzee family. This is done to avoid over crowding within their natural habitat and also to regulate and control direct contact of diseases to these primates since they are vulnerable to human diseases especially cold and flu, and others.
Gorilla trekking and Chimpanzee tracking both use tracking permits or permission to have access to these primates and indulge significantly in both trekking and habituation in activities. However, gorilla permits are more expensive than chimpanzee trekking permits for instance the cost of a gorilla permit in Uganda is 3 times and more the price of a gorilla permit, among others.
Chimpanzee Trekking Vs Gorilla Trekking, these two experiences have differing age limits for those visitors planning to do both gorilla trekking and chimpanzee trekking. The age limit for gorilla trekking experience is strictly 15 years and above 12 years for chimpanzee tracking. Therefore, as a requirement, any person below that particular age is restricted from conducting these two activities based on the rules and regulations concerning these primate species.
When planning to participate in these two experiences of gorilla trekking and chimpanzee tracking, you are advised to carry essential items like hiking shoes, long sleeved shirts, pair of trousers, gaiters, extra batteries, drinking water bottle, cotton socks, pair of binoculars, light backpacker, water proof jackets among others.
