Yes, people have survived confrontations with bears but usually after being severely injured.

I’m gonna take a guess and say there are probably not any Gorilla experts on this site.

@anniereborn Do we need Jane Goodall? OR Gorrilapaws from fluther?

According to one expert, the strength one silver back Gorilla equals that of 10 men. I don’t know if he said what shape the men have to be in.

The Gorilla would be forced to let go of the child in order to deal with the mob? Just a guess.

My GF, Holly Holm, has been teaching me a lot, so I could probably take any human pro fighter. ;-)

I’m sure if I got into it with zoo goers, I’d be murdered ASAP by those enforcing my unjust imprisonment.

A silverback often uses tools to posture or intimidate, and if approached by an aggressive mob, could easily defend himself. They are capable of picking up logs and swinging them.

Gorillas are exceptionally strong, they have an amazingly strong grip as well. Pretty sure one could crush a human like a wad of tissue paper. They can also weigh up to 400+ pounds.

I wouldn’t expect mobs of typical zoo goers to generally have any ability to defeat a gorilla, or even to put up a fight, assuming they have no particular skills.

The “professional fighter” would depend on their abilities and what they try. A professional would probably realize he has zero chance in direct unarmed combat, an either avoid combat, or improvise weapons or other tricks to do something useful. If you mean trying to use hands and fists and no tricks in a “stand-up fight”, I think there are very few humans who could hope to defeat an angry gorilla. You’d need to at least do something to get the gorilla to back off, like surprise it somehow, poke it in the eyes, or manage to evade it long enough to get it in some sort of pin. Very very hard when it’s so much stronger than a human.

Most people who survive attacks from animals with that type of power do so because the animal did not intend to kill the person. Unless the bear is trying to eat u its usually protecting it’s territory or offspring. In those instances severely injured people ,or those playing dead are deemed to be no longer a threat. That’s why they survive if there was no intervention like outside help or a gun. If an animal with that type of power wants to ultimately kill a person there is little chance the person can not die without some sort of equalizer.
Ironically, I was asked how many clones of myself I thought it would take to kill a gorilla just last night. I am a bouncer. I’m currently 6ft 5 inches tall and weigh 315 lbs. I’m also pretty capable in hand to hand combat (which is why the question was asked to me by my friend. )
My 1st reply was 20 of me. But after more careful thought ( and a couple more shots) I decided it was ‘plausible’ that 5 of me could, but we would have to focus on the eyes 1st and most likely several or all of me would be killed or receive terrible injuries…
Zoo keepers would hopefully have the ability to sedate the animal with tranquilizers in dart form or possibly subdue it in some other way. So they have a good chance depending on their collective training and teamwork.
One person though, even a very strong and highly trained one would be quickly defeated IMO.
My main concern is how to hurt or injure it. It’s head is the size of most men’s torso. It’s strength is exponentially greater than that of even the strongest of men. I wouldn’t want to step into an enclosure with a gorilla with anything smaller than a .50 caliber pistol. Even then if it charges me the bullets may not kill or disable it in time to stop it from gravely wounding or killing me…

Humans have a mutation to the myostatin gene which makes our muscles much weaker than they could be. It’s thought that this evolved as a way of conserving energy for our ridiculously overpowered brain (which uses up about ⅓rd of all the body’s calories as it is). In fact, a small handful of people are born with the myostatin gene mutation undone, which leads to a condition known as hypermuscularity where young children end up with a bodybuilder’s physique of rippling muscles and a toned six-pack. Animals like gorillas do not have this mutation, which is why they are immensely stronger than humans.

Ourang-outans can rip a human limb from limb with relatively little effort; the massive silverback gorillas are much, much stronger. Even the strongest human weightlifter is no match for a gorilla, muscle against muscle. Of course, we gave up those muscles for brains and it was a very good bargain, since even the smallest, weakest human with a gun can take down a gorilla with ease.

(Quick edit: I just confirmed with a Google search that gorillas can lift more than ten times their own weight with ease – that is, the weight of more than thirty humans – and they may be able to lift even more; no one is quite sure, since there’s no way of knowing whether a gorilla is exerting themselves to the maximum when they lift something heavy.)

Take it from me, gorillas will fuck you up.

What if you had a group of people, working in shifts, that just kept close to the gorilla? I would think that a person could outrun a gorilla to avoid contact. At some point the gorilla is going to need to sleep or else be very tired. At that point it should be possible to attack it.

@LostInParadise A gorilla can move through trees pretty quickly, faster than you can run. And if you can run to safety, it means the gorilla can escape. Otherwise it will catch you when you reach the limits of its habitat.

And I would not want to be the person who messes with a sleeping gorilla.

They also have huge incisor fangs, they may be mostly vegetarian but those 2 inch fangs certainly would be used to bite with too. Gorillas fight by punching, throwing, slamming and biting. At 5’3 I’d be dead in about 2 minutes. haha

I did a quick Web search to see how fast a gorilla can run. 25 mph is pretty fast. That works out to doing 100 yards in just above 8 seconds. The people would have to avoid any attempt at attacking the gorilla until it got tired. Humans are better at long distance running than most other species. That is an ability that hunter-gatherers use in catching prey. I still think that people could eventually wear down the gorilla, but it would take a bit of time.

I would expect that many people in the mob would be severely injured, others would be killed – all to save the life of one kid and avoid shooting the gorilla. Not a good overall outcome.

….But look at Google search result
https://www.google.ca/#q=the+strength+of+silverback+gorilla+equals
Amazing