In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

It has been so commonly reported, however, that the Century Dictionary states that "gorillas make a sleeping place like a hammock connecting the thickly leafed part of a tree by means of the long, tough, slender stems of parasitic plants, and line it with the broad dried fronds of palms or with long grass. This hammock-like abode is constructed at different heights from ten to forty feet from the ground."

I cannot help believing that this report arises from a confusion with the chimpanzee habits. The chimpanzee is not strong enough to fight a leopard. Consequently, he has to sleep out of reach of this foe. The gorilla, on the other hand, has no foe but man. No flesh-eating animal in his territory is large enough to harm him. The gorilla is a vegetarian, so he kills no animals for food, and he has not progressed sufficiently along the paths of man to enjoy killing as a sport. He lives in amity with the elephants, buffalo, and all the wild creatures of his neighbourhood, and in the Mikeno region the natives drive their cattle into the gorilla's mountains in the dry season of the year without molestation.

Altogether, then, as the gorilla has no enemies, he has no need to fashion himself a bed out of harm's way. All the gorilla beds I saw were on the ground. They consisted of a pile of leaves, about what the long arms of a gorilla could pull together without moving. I saw no signs of their occupying these hastily constructed sleeping places more than once.

The gorilla makes no abode, has no clothes, uses no tools, unless grasping a stick may indicate the beginnings of such an idea. It is still before the dawn of intelligence with him. Yet scientists tell me that he has the palate and muscles that enable man to talk. In spite of Mr. Garner the gorilla cannot talk, but no one knows how near to it he is. Probably he is a very long way from speech. Of course, a parrot can be taught to talk, but a parrot has no brains to speak of, so that his talking is of no significance. But recent studies of the brain of John Daniel seem to place his brain about on a par with that of a two-year-old child. Now a two-year-old child can both talk and think. If the gorilla with his child's brain could learn to use his voice even like a parrot, we should have come very near to having a contemporaneous "missing link." This, of course, is very unlikely to happen and it is not necessary, for science can make deductions from the gorilla's brain, muscle, habits, etc., which will enable us to understand more of the gorilla's significance for evolution without such a spectacular event as his acquiring speech. I mention such a thing merely as an unscientific way of trying to dramatize the importance of the study of the gorilla.

Of course it does not follow that because the gorilla's palate and muscles are like man's that he will be able to talk or pass out of the barking or roaring phase. The gorilla has what might be called "roaring pouches" that extend down the side of his neck. It is an interesting fact that there is evidence of these same pouches in man, although they are nearly atrophied from long disuse. It seems, therefore, that even if the gorilla does not learn man's speech, man at one time used the gorilla's roar or one of his own.

Man differs from most animals in the amount of variation in the different members of the species. The skull measurements of half-a-dozen lions, for example, will be much more nearly uniform than the skulls of half-a-dozen men. In this particular the gorilla is like man. Their skulls show great variation. The gorilla skulls I brought back will exemplify this. The death masks of these gorillas show another interesting thing which I never noticed until I put the masks of the animals shot on Mt. Mikeno in one group and those shot on Mt. Karisimbi in another. The male and female of Mikeno resemble each other more nearly than either of them do any of the Karisimbi gorillas. Likewise the three Karisimbi gorillas have features more alike than any of them are like either of the Mikeno faces. Whether these are family resemblances or whether they arise from geography, which seems doubtful, as the mountains merge in a saddle at between 10,000 and 11,000 feet, or whether it is accidental I do not know. But the fact suggests a line of study.

I did not see a gorilla in infancy, but there are two interesting accounts of travellers in this region who have seen them. Reichenow says:

I was successful on the hunt to capture an animal only a few days old. It weighed only 2 kg., therefore considerably less than a newborn human child, while an old gorilla considerably exceeds an outgrown man in weight. The whole body of the little gorilla was sparsely covered with hair so that it almost appeared naked; only on the crown of its head there arose straight up a tuft of long brown hairs. This manner of hair growth gave the little ape a particularly human appearance.

When one saw the little being, which flourished beautifully at the breast of a Negro nurse, in its helplessness, one had to become convinced that the gorilla nursling needs the greatest care and attention on the part of its mother. On the soft high bed the mother can well cover with her body the tiny young one which is in great need of warmth, without its running a chance of being crushed by her heavy body.

Late in 1919 I received a letter from an English hunter, Mr. C. D. Foster, which contained the following paragraphs concerning a gorilla hunt on Mt. Mikeno: