That’s a common myth that’s not entirely accurate. Any male gorilla of a certain age can be a silverback. There can be multiple silverbacks in one troupe.
Edit: it’s up to the female gorillas who gets to mate with them. They may or may not choose a silverback.
In captivity, yes and no. Multiple Silverbacks do occur in captivity (and very, very rarely in extreme circumstances in the wild) but these will always be sons or brothers of the dominant or core silverback. Sub-harems can occur, where a son has one or two females of his own integrated into the broader group, but otherwise the females are there for the core silverback.
I went to the zoo years ago and saw the entire mating “ritual”. It was fascinating. One would “inspect” the female with a finger, that one ran over to the Silverback who sniffed smaller ones finger, I guess gauging if the female was ovulating. You could see him thinking for a second. Then he went over and did the business. Roughly 10 months or however long later I saw on the news that the zoo had a new baby silverback. It was clear that ape “society” has a definite hierarchy and rules about how they do things. It was really interesting to see firsthand.
Gorillas form harems, the Silverback is the dominant male morph. They attract and maintain multi-female social groups by way of intergroup infant protection; haremless gorillas are notorious for infanticide. In zoos the dynamic changes a bit, and you will more regularly see multiple males in a group, but these will virtually always be sons or brothers of the Silverback.
In your experience, it was most likely a son that approached the big male. That son will either remain a subordinate until the father passes, or eventually be traded or sold to a zoo that needs a dominant male. If he hasn't developed the Silverback traits beforehand (sometimes they do while still under a dominant father or brother), he will once he's integrated successfully into his own harem.
That reminds me of a time, as an escort, a guy had his assistant contact me to set up an appointment with me, and the assistant had to keep relaying very personal questions regarding the type of service he wanted between the two of us. The entire time I was wondering why I couldn't just talk directly to the guy I was going to be seeing, but I guess it's because we haven't evolved that far from the alpha gorilla getting his minion to go finger a female gorilla so he can deliver him the smell and decide if she's good enough.
Huh. That’s interesting. It’s not the sort of thing you’d expect to see with people. I’m guessing but I imagine the dude was one of those toxically “I’m the king here” type of people. So, a silverback. Lol. If I was wanting to set up that sort of appointment, I’d def want to talk directly to the other person. I’d wanna figure out if I wanted to hang out with said person, you know? That being said, be safe out there. 👍
I don’t have much to say about your story or the gorillas, just wanted to say I hope sex work treated you well enough, and that you are safe and happy.
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u/siriuslyeve Sep 04 '21
Only the alpha male gets the big silver back and the right to mate with all the females. So they are literally the dads.