Aidan Nunan, age 10, of Allentown, Pennsylvania, for his question:

Why do gorillas stay in the brush?

When we get interested in ecology, we soon learn that nature is a supreme housekeeper. Naturally we know a few good housekeeping rules ourselves. One of them says    a place for everything and everything in its place. Nature is quite strict about this rule. Each plant and animal has a place, a home of its own in the world. The gorilla lives where he does because this is the place where he feels at home.

Scientists have special names for green growing places. In the woodlands, the trees have plenty of room to spread their branches and many of them shed their leaves in winter. In the brushland there are shrubs and bushes and a few low trees. In the jungle, the tall tall forest trees are crowded together. Flowering vines often tangle around their lower branches and the ground is packed with dense shrubbery. The gorilla is at home in the thick, leafy jungles of Africa. If he wished, he could travel for miles and miles, and hardly anyone would notice him, moving quietly through his dense, dim forest.

But the gorilla does not care to travel this far. He enjoys life with a group of 20 or 30 friends and relatives and the group stays fairly close together. There are other gorillas in the jungle and each group keeps to its own area. The home territory covers ten to 15 square miles and the group stays within its,boundaries. Each day they wander around it together. Each night they settle down to sleep in a different place.

The gorilla is a fearsome looking fellow. You might think that he is always ready and eager to start a riot. But looks can fool you. The mighty fellow is rather shy and he prefers to live in peace with the whole world. But    he is no sissy. If someone .attacks him or threatens his family, he is ready to fight with all his might. He stands upright on his stubby legs, drums on his huge chest with his angry fists and lets out a blood curdling roar. Usually this show of strength scares his enemy away. But if it doesn't, the gorilla attacks with fangs and fists and all the might of his powerful arms.

This does not happen very often because the leopards and other animals that share his territory have enough sense to leave him and his family alone. The gorillas spend the morning peacefully gathering buds and tender leaves, fruit and bits of bark..

There is plenty of this gorilla food growing right there in the jungle. In the afternoon, the grown ups take a nap in the trees while the children play rough and¬tumble games. Soon the group wanders on again to find supper. At sunset, each grown up finds boughs and big leaves to shape a flat bed, high in a tree. The children under three years of age cuddle up to sleep in mother's bed. Most of the jungle animals wake up in time to greet the rising sun. But the comfortable gorillas stay snoozing in their beds another hour. Then they reach out for food to eat for breakfast. A gorilla's life is easy, peaceful and very pleasant    so no wonder he would rather stay home in his leafy jungle.

A newborn gorilla weighs only four or five pounds and the baby is quite helpless. But mother is always there to tend him. She feeds him on her milk and holds him in her arms wherever she goes. Soon he learns to ride piggyback    but he stays very close to mother until his third birthday. When he is 10, he will be six feet tall and maybe weigh almost a quarter of a ton.