In the new issue of Smithsonian, author Richard Conniff has a funny and informative article about why business metaphors involving animals and animal behavior (like “800-pound gorillas” and ostriches burying their heads in the sand) are, from a zoological perspective, wrong. From the article:
You don’t want to be an 800-pound gorilla. No such animal has ever existed. The average big daddy silverback tops out at about half that weight. And gorillas are not predators, but vegans, with an almost unlimited appetite for fruit and bamboo shoots. I once worked on a TV documentary about lowland gorillas; on an average day the dramatic episodes consisted of the alpha male passing gas, picking his nose and yawning. Then he did the same things, the other way around. Over and over. This is probably not the image a hard-charging executive wants to present to the public.
Nor do you want to be lionized. Once, in Botswana, I saw a male lion rouse himself to court a female, with lots of growling and nipping. Finally, grudgingly, she assumed the sphinx position and he mounted her. One of my companions, a National Geographic photographer, began whirring and clicking (with his camera, I mean). The big moment of leonine love lasted all of ten seconds. “Definitely a motor-drive picture,” the photographer muttered. Think about this the next time the preening CEOs at an awards banquet liken one another to lions.