WHEN five gorillas were given festive crackers this week at the Durrell wildlife park, the last thing they wanted to do was pull them with each other.

They sensed that there were goodies inside — not paper hats to make them look ridiculous, or silly jokes, but dried fruit which staff had concealed there.

No chance, then, of crossing arms with another gorilla and going ‘One, two, three, pull!’. They realised that all they had to do was open the end and pour the contents of the cracker right into their mouths.

Education assistant Sarah Nugent, who had carefully made the crackers with organic materials, had also smeared some honey inside the cracker tubes to reinforce the message. She threw three red and two gold crackers into the enclosure, and the red ones proved the most popular. In the rush that followed, silverback male Ya Kwanza took two for himself, and his favourite mate Kahilli, pictured, also grabbed two.

Another mate, Bahasha, managed to get a cracker, but Kishka and her daughter Sakina just had to watch as the others set to work opening them.