Gorillas construct elaborate sleeping nests each night, a behavior that reflects their cognitive complexity and provides a welfare lens for understanding what these great apes need in captive and wild environments.
Gorilla nest construction each evening represents a behavioral need - security, comfort, and expression of cognitive capability - whose denial in inadequate captive environments is a significant welfare impairment. Wild gorillas in forest habitats have space to construct nests in preferred locations; captive gorillas in inadequate enclosures cannot express this natural complexity. Mountain gorilla welfare in national parks is threatened by proximity to high human population densities that transmit respiratory diseases. COVID-19 closures of gorilla trekking in 2020 demonstrated that conservation funding and human health can be in conflict.