Born on September 24
World Gorilla Day
Our quiet cousins in the mountains.
Next: September 24, 2027
Where it comes from
World Gorilla Day was launched on 24 September 2017 by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Karisoke Research Center that Fossey founded in Rwanda's Virunga mountains in 1967. It celebrates gorillas and the rangers and communities who protect them.
How it's celebrated
Zoos and conservation groups hold events and fundraisers; Rwanda's annual Kwita Izina ceremony, in which baby mountain gorillas are given names, falls nearby in the calendar. People are asked to recycle old phones, whose coltan is mined in gorilla habitat.
Did you know
Mountain gorillas are the rare conservation success: numbers have risen from about 250 in the 1980s to over 1,000 today.
Read the full story of World Gorilla Day
Star sign
Libra · September 23 – October 22 · Air sign
Fair-minded and charming, forever weighing both sides.