These were the golden rules that a hapless tourist might have forgotten when he encountered the biggest and strongest primate on Earth on its home territory in Rwanda.
One moment he was standing with a video camera as the magnificent creature quietly held court before a group of sightseeers. The next, he was being dragged backwards through the undergrowth to a terrifyingly uncertain fate.
Quite what provoked the normally placid silverback into stamping his authority so forcefully is uncertain.
He has long been the undisputed leader of a family of gorillas in the 39-strong Susa group that inhabits the Virunga mountain forests on the northern border of Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo, and is well used to dealing with troublemakers.
He is even quite chummy with humans, whose money and patronage helps support the planet's desperately dwindling gorilla population.
There are currently fewer than 650 individuals scattered across several hundred square miles of this region and, without help, they could vanish.
So it's clearly a jungle out there – and sometimes homo sapiens can suffer the consequences for taking liberties with our most intelligent mammalian cousins.
The clue probably came when the male started to parade intimidatingly close to the group of tourists, led by local rangers – beating his breast like a drum.
Suddenly, he charged at the crowd. Then he snatched a blue-anoraked man by one ankle and dragged him towards the trees.
Maybe the thrill of seeing gorillas in the wild had caused the tourist to forget the advice the rangers would have given before everyone set off on the trek – no flashguns... no noise... don't point... look away if they make eye contact... and melt into the ground if they charge.
It worked a treat for Sir David Attenborough – but whispering subservience patently wasn't adequate this time. One likely explanation is that the tourist – an American – got between the male gorilla and the true object of its attentions, a young female on the far side of the group.
Or perhaps the gorilla was simply being playful (not that it would have seemed like that to someone being kidnapped by a chest-thumping male like this one, of course).
"Playful" could have involved tossing the man against a tree, or cuffing him jovially around the face. Precisely what happened between man and beast in the few seconds the pair disappeared is difficult to establish.
Rangers stepped in to separate them by whacking the gorilla with sticks and waving bright clothing.
The tourist emerged unscathed, although somewhat shocked, according to onlookers. The gorilla went back to its lunch – and never gave any clue to what happened.
Thus, the encounter remains one of the many fascinations these beautiful and awesomely powerful creatures hold for Man.
World News
I never thought that gorillas can do that to anyone. But I do feel sorry for the man that was dragged away since he couldn't do anything to defend himself from the gorilla.
"Oh look Marge at the cute monkey" He is lucky his arms didn't get torn off!