Evidence for gorilla weight inflation in technical business speak

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Dur­ing the many con­ver­sa­tions of the last few days, I have heard men­tion of both 900– and 1000-​​pound goril­las, in the con­text of busi­ness plan­ning and mar­ket spaces. Given my famil­iar­ity with the more typ­i­cal 800-​​pound vari­ety, I noted the anec­do­tal accounts, and have now found time to fol­low up.

As a curi­ous sort, I’m drawn to won­der whether this rep­re­sents a dan­ger­ous gorilla obe­sity trend, or per­haps a selec­tive pres­sure by speak­ers of Man­age­ment for heftier com­peti­tors. To that end, I’ve com­piled a short sam­ple of data on the num­ber of Google hits for phrases of the form “*-pound gorilla”.
GHits by Gorilla Weight

Future stud­ies inves­ti­gat­ing selec­tive metaphoric gorilla-​​size pres­sure can per­haps draw on this data sam­ple as a start­ing point.

While it’s too early to say on the basis of such scant data, there may be some evi­dence here for gorilla weight quan­ti­za­tion of mul­ti­ples of 400 pounds, and an anom­alous lack of 700– and 1100– pound goril­las that would argue against ran­dom size drift.

Per­haps the sur­pris­ing lack of 700-​​pound goril­las can pro­vide a hint towards exper­i­ments study­ing metaphoric gorilla evo-​​devo? Hard to say at this early stage.

How big is your gorilla?

9 thoughts on “Evidence for gorilla weight inflation in technical business speak”

  2. May I sug­gest a semi-​​log plot, so we can com­pare the rarer spec­i­mens? Right now, the chart is, uh, dom­i­nated by the 800-​​pound gorilla.

  3. Bret, if you fol­low the link to Swivel, you’ll note that the ser­vice not only allows you to cre­ate addi­tional charts, but amend the data your­self. My thought is that per­haps we’ll col­lect a series of snap­shots of gorilla weight dis­tri­b­u­tions, and see what trends develop.

  4. I had to go to wikipedia to find out what non-​​metaphoric goril­las weigh:

    Adult males range in height from 165–175 cm (5 ft 5 in-​​5 ft 9 in), and in weight from 140–200 kg (310−440 lb). Adult females are often half the size of a sil­ver­back, aver­ag­ing about 140 cm (4 ft 7 in) tall and 100 kg (220 lb). Occa­sion­ally, a sil­ver­back of over 183 cm (6 feet) and 225 kg (500 lb) has been recorded in the wild. How­ever, obese goril­las in cap­tiv­ity have reached a weight of 270 kg (600 lb).

    This sug­gests that metaphoric goril­las, like their nat­ural name­sakes, grew in cap­tiv­ity, but at a much faster rate.

  6. I’m flat­tered. All we need is a more promi­nent inbound link here, and all my mar­ket­ing friends will be Swivel­ing all over the place ;)