Large, powerful primates native to Africa that walk on all fours and live in family groups.
From Carthaginian periplus possibly meaning 'wild hairy people,' which entered English via Greek and Latin. The word may derive from African languages, though the exact origin remains debated by etymologists.
Gorillas were completely unknown to Europeans until the 1840s, so the word is actually pretty new in English—and the first gorillas scientists captured were so different from what people expected that they caused a real crisis in how people understood animal intelligence.
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