Meet Mother Frala & Baby Fikiri, they reside in Taronga Zoo. This moment resides as one of my fondest and deepest connections while I was shooting my subjects. There are moments in time you wish to stay with forever and you will always remember, this moment when Mother Frala was glaring through my lens piercing my eyes with the light from her eyes, almost with a smirk of sorts letting me know who is dominant and would do anything to protect her own, while little Fikiri was safely asleep arms latched around her mother knowing that he is safest while with his mother.
Female gorillas give birth to one infant after a pregnancy of nearly nine months. Unlike their powerful parents, newborns are tiny—weighing about four pounds—and are capable of doing no more than clinging to their mothers' fur. These infants ride on their mothers’ backs from the age of four months through the first two or three years of their lives. Young gorillas, from three to six years old, spend much of their day at play, climbing trees, chasing one another, and swinging from branches.
The Western Lowland Gorillas face many threats in the wild these include farming, grazing, and expanding human settlements are shrinking their homes. Almost 80 percent of the Western Lowland Gorilla population live in unprotected areas that are vulnerable to poaching.
