In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

I don't blame Du Chaillu for feeling the way he did, for, under the circumstances in which he hunted the gorilla, most people would have had even much worse feelings than he had. Then, too, when Du Chaillu wrote, tales of African exploration were under an unwholesome pressure comparable to that to which African motion pictures are being subjected to-day. I have it on reliable authority that Du Chaillu was twice requested to revise his manuscript before his publishers considered it exciting enough to be of general interest. All I want to point out is that the gorilla should be judged by what he does, not by how the people that hunt him feel.

And it is of more importance to judge the gorilla correctly than any other animal for he is unquestionably the nearest akin to man. Most scientists agree that man and the gorilla had common or at any rate similar ancestors. Since that time man has passed through the dawn of intelligence and developed the power to reason and to speak. But how he developed these powers no one knows. The gorilla has not these powers, but he has so many other likenesses to man that there is no telling how near he is to the dawn of intelligence.

In the whole doctrine of evolution there is no one subject more interesting or likely to be more fruitful to study than the gorilla. He presents most important opportunities to the students of comparative anatomy, to the psychologists, to the many kinds of specialists in medicine, not to mention the students of natural history.

It is very commonly stated, in the Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, for example, that the gorilla "lives mostly in trees." Unquestionably this is true of the chimpanzee but I do not think it true of the gorilla. I believe that he has nearly passed out of the arboreal phase of life and is perhaps entering the upright phase and that he is the only animal except man that has achieved this distinction. To stand erect and balanced, an animal needs heels. The plaster cast of the gorilla's foot shown in the accompanying illustration is ocular evidence of what science has long known—that the gorilla has developed a heel. Moreover, the scientists who studied the body of John Daniel, the young captive gorilla that died in New York, discovered that, unlike any other animal, the gorilla has the same full complement of foot muscles which enables man to walk upright. The gorillas I saw in Africa always touched both their feet and hands to the ground in running but most of the weight was on their feet. Their legs are short, their arms long, and they carry the body at an angle of 45 degrees forward. They do not, however, put their hands down flat and rest their full weight on them. They seem to be evolving toward a two-legged animal. And if they spent most of their time in trees they would not have developed heels and leg muscles for walking upright on the ground.

Not only has the gorilla developed a heel, but his big toe is much nearer like man's than that of any other animal. This may seem a small matter, but a big toe that turns out from the foot as a thumb does from the hand can grasp branches and is useful in climbing. A big toe that is parallel with the other toes is useful for walking but not for climbing.

But the gorilla has not lost all his arboreal characteristics by any means. The length, size, and strength of his arms are evidence of the tree-climbing habits of his ancestors. I know that a gorilla can now climb with more ease than the average man. But I only once saw gorillas in trees and that was when I was taking the moving picture of a mother and two youngsters, and an active man could have walked up the inclined trees these gorillas were on about as easily as they did. Nor did I see any evidences of their having been in trees. The German, Eduard Reichenow, who observed gorillas in this same area, agrees that the gorilla is seldom in trees:

While travelling, both kinds of apes (the gorilla and the chimpanzee) move on the ground; yet the gorilla is much more a stranger to tree living than the chimpanzee.... If the gorilla climbs a tree in search of food, he again climbs down the same trunk. Also at the approach of danger he is not capable of swinging himself from tree to tree as the chimpanzee does.

The hand of the gorilla is as interesting to me as his foot. If you look at the illustration of the plaster cast you will see that it looks much like a man's, fingernails and all. You will see that the fingers are bent over. When running he puts his knuckles on the ground. It is a peculiarity of the gorilla that when his arms are extended his fingers are always bent over. He can't straighten them out except when his wrist is bent. I can take the hand of the mummified baby gorilla when its wrist is bent and put it over a stick and then straighten his wrist and his fingers will close over the stick so that I can lift him off the ground and hang him up in this fashion. I suppose that this peculiar characteristic is a legacy of his arboreal life which has not left him even in all the years he has been developing heels, muscles, and toes which are good for ground work only.

I am certain that these Central African gorillas have practically abandoned arboreal habits. Whether the gorillas of the lower country of the west coast have done so likewise I do not know from personal observation. Du Chaillu reported that they did not climb for food nor did they make their nests in trees in that region.