Zoölogy: The Science of Animal Life / Popular Science Library, Volume XII (of 16), P. F. Collier & Son Company, 1922

by Ernest Ingersoll

GIBBON, CHIMPANZEE, GORILLA, ORANG-UTAN

This brings us to the anthropoid ("manlike") apes of the family Simiidæ, which differ from the inferior apes that have been described in fewer particulars than their size and appearance might suggest. Thoroughly arboreal for the most part, when these apes come to the ground they progress in a semi-erect fashion. Moreover when they put their hands upon the ground to aid in walking, they do not rest their weight, as do the lower apes, upon the flat of the hand, but upon the back of the fingers. None of the anthropoids has a tail.

The gibbons are an Indo-Malayan group of monkeylike anthropoids with small, long-nosed faces, and arms so long that when the gibbon stands erect the fingers touch the ground. By means of these long arms they swing themselves through the tree tops with astonishing speed, and are adept at climbing and leaping about the mountain slopes that are their favorite resorts. All the gibbons are noted for their far-carrying voices, and often a band will utter weird howls in chorus answered by another band, so that the forest is filled with indescribable noises. The largest is the jet black, Sumatran "siamang," three feet tall.

In the same region, precisely eastern Sumatra and Borneo, lives a larger relative, the orang-utan ("man of the woods"), or "mias," as it is known to the Dyaks. Like the gibbons it feeds on leaves, buds and soft fruits, especially the big, pulpy durian; and also like them is shy and mild in disposition.

GORILLAS AND GIBBONS

The five upper figures are young gorillas in various postures; the three lower are adult gibbons. (Lydekker.)

This Malayan ape is smaller and weaker than its African cousins, males standing not more than four feet six inches, and weighing 160 pounds, while the females are smaller. The body is bulky, the belly protuberant, and the legs very short, while the arms are so long that the fingers hang down to the ankle. The coat is a variable dark brick red and long, forming a beard in old males. The head is short and high, with the bony crest of the skull and the ridge over the eyes less prominent than in the gorilla; while the nose is insignificant, and the jaws are large and protrusive, with a long smooth upper lip. The eyes have a pleading expression, the ears are small and closely appressed, and many of the older males have the cheeks greatly and distinctively broadened by flat callosities. Lastly, although its brain is most like that of man, the orang-utan is inferior, in general, to both the gorilla and the chimpanzee.

The chimpanzee and gorilla belong together, not only because both are African, but because they are more closely related to one another than to the Malayan anthropoids. The chimpanzee is to be found in the equatorial forests north of the Congo, and also all along the upper valley of the Nile and about the Great Lakes; but the gorilla seems to be restricted to the rough coastal region between the Congo and Kamerun. Both are black-haired apes, growing nearly to the height of a man of medium size, but with short legs, very long arms, massive chests and shoulders, and huge strength. The face and palms of the chimpanzee are pale flesh color, those of the gorilla black. Both make their homes in trees, feeding on succulent leaves, sprouts and fruit, and like the orang-utans, making nightly platform like nests of branches on which to sleep; but the old male gorilla is said to sleep on the ground at the base of the tree in which its family reposes. Both spend much time on the ground hunting for food, and they invade the plantations of the Negroes, who are greatly afraid of them, and wreak much damage there. Dr. Garner, whose investigations of their habits, in his attempt to learn whether they and the monkeys of the region had anything that might be called rudiments of a language, resulted in adding much of importance in regard to them, reported that despite its superior strength, the gorilla was in constant fear of the more active chimpanzee, and fled whenever one approached. The best and most recent observations indicate that the gorilla is not quarrelsome and aggressive, but disposed to hide away from and avoid men whenever it can, rather than to attack them. Nevertheless all these great apes are debased, savage brutes of which nothing good may be said, despite the fact that when caught young chimpanzees, at least, prove docile and able to learn some simple imitations of human behavior; but in old age even they become sullen and dangerous toward trainers who have treated them with uniform kindness. They are base caricatures of men—side lines of development that have proved failures in nature's experiments toward making something out of simian material.

The successful line of human descent began far back of their earliest specific history, and has developed quite independent of these brutal offshoots from some parental stem of which we have no definite knowledge.