In Brightest Africa

by Carl Ethan Akeley

I noticed that the nearest gorilla was holding a very small one in her arms. I shot and wounded her and she came toward me still holding the young one. I shot again and she dropped. The rest, by this time, were just disappearing, and having shot two good specimens I did not try to follow them.

I approached the female gorilla and found her lying stomach down resting on her elbows and still clasping the young one. She was evidently nearly dead and I took a photo of her in this position. I then waited for her to die which she did within a few minutes, so I went up to her and took away the baby gorilla which was quite uninjured and apparently was not more than 24 hours old.... The baby gorilla (a female) is now two months old and in the best of health and weighs nine pounds. She has cut six teeth and the only ailment she has had was a cold which she evidently caught from me and which she recovered from very quickly. She does not show any signs of walking yet and up till now I have fed her entirely on cow's and goat's milk and occasionally, when fresh milk was unobtainable, on canned milk.

P. S. Since writing the above, which has been unavoidably delayed in mailing, the young one which I mentioned has died; at the time of her death she was just over three months old.

One of the most interesting facts in this account of Foster's is the fact that the baby gorilla caught cold from him. Animals usually do not catch man's diseases. Seemingly the gorilla is near enough man to contract at least some of them. Probably he is not immunized against any contagious diseases. This free-of-disease state, if it exists, will make him a unique pathological study. And certainly the gorilla differs from other animals in his freedom from parasitical disease. I did not have an opportunity to study him with a microscope, but he is the only wild animal in Africa that I have ever skinned and cut up for scientific purposes that had no visible signs of parasites on him or in him.

Reichenow also has made some deductions about the family life of gorillas in the Mikeno region which are interesting. "The sleeping plans of the members of a gorilla company," he says, "do not lie irregularly near each other but we find them joined in groups of two, three, or four, which lets us clearly recognize that within the herd there exists a division according to families. The nests of a family lie close to each other and are from eight to fifteen meters away from the neighbouring group, so that the various groups seemed closed off from each other by the thick riot of plants, like various dwellings. From the size of the nests we see that always only two of them belong to adult animals; if there are more nests present, these are always smaller and therefore belong to the half-grown young. From this observation we get the noteworthy fact that the gorilla lives in monogamy."

I cannot say that my observations corroborate this deduction. In one of the bands I saw there were three adult males. They might under his theory have been heads of three families. But in the other band there was but one male and several females. The extra females may have been spinster aunts of the family, but on the other hand, it might just as well have been a case of polygamy. The truth is that people know little about the habits of the gorilla. Really to know about an animal requires long and intimate study. Comparatively few people have even shot gorillas. Gorilla skeletons, even, have not been common for study like those of other animals. The avidity with which the doctors of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York seized upon the body of John Daniel shows both how rare and how important the opportunity to study the gorilla is to the science of medicine as well as to that of comparative anatomy. And even less of study has been given the gorilla's living habits than has been devoted to his dead body and bones. Most of the information which man can get of and from this nearest relative in the animal kingdom is still to be had. But unless some measures are quickly taken to get this information, the opportunity will be lost. The gorilla is on his way to extinction. He is not particularly numerous. He is neither wary nor dangerous. He is an easy and highly prized prey to the "sporting" instinct.

As I travelled down from Mikeno toward the White Friars' Mission the fascinating possibilities of the study of the gorilla and its immense scientific importance filled my mind along with the fear that his extinction would come before adequate study was made. These considerations materially led my mind to the idea of a gorilla sanctuary; and I realized that a better place than the one I had just left could hardly be hoped for. The three mountains, Mikeno, Karisimbi, and Visoke stand up in a triangle by themselves. Their peaks are about four miles apart. On the slopes of these mountains, in the bamboos and in the dense forest, there are several bands of gorillas. I judge that there are between fifty and one hundred animals altogether. In all probability the animals in this region stay on these three mountains. Such is the belief of the natives, and it is a reasonable belief because if they left these peaks they would have to travel very considerable distances to find similar security and food supplies elsewhere. This being true the three peaks can become a gorilla sanctuary by the simple expedient of preventing hunters from invading them.

It has been proved over and over again that animals very quickly learn to remain in places where they are safe from hunting. Likewise in those places animals soon learn to accept man without fear just as they do other animals. The case of the bears in the Yellowstone Park is known to everyone. At Banff, in the Canadian Rockies, protection has led even so shy an animal as the mountain sheep to accept man enough to be photographed at short distances. Were the gorillas on the three peaks protected I am certain that in a very short time they would become so accustomed to man that they could be studied in their native surroundings in a way that would rapidly produce most interesting and important scientific results.

This sanctuary would not interfere with any other activity in the country. The gorilla range is not fit for agriculture. The natives use it now as a source for firewood and a grazing ground for their cattle. It could continue to be put to these uses as far as the gorillas would be concerned. Elephants, buffaloes, and other animals might flock into the sanctuary so as to become something of a problem, but their numbers could be kept down without disturbing the gorillas' sense of security.

To create this sanctuary would be comparatively easy and inexpensive. I think it would require first of all that the sanctuary be bounded by a road. I do not think it would be necessary to fence the sanctuary for I believe the gorillas would stay inside its limits. The road would be chiefly for police purposes to make it easier to be sure that hunters stayed outside. The policing of the road could be done by the natives. As the pay of such a policeman is about five cents a day, the maintenance of the force is not a great matter.

Besides the road and the police the sanctuary would need a few trails and a station to consist of a residence for a white director of the sanctuary, living quarters for the scientists, enough servants to keep the station going, and a simple field laboratory. Neither the building nor maintenance for such an institution would be expensive in Central Africa. I know of no other effort of so moderate a size likely to lead to such immediate and valuable scientific results. Moreover, if the study of the gorilla is not made in some such way as this now, it is not likely that it will ever be made at all. If three more gentlemen like the Prince of Sweden go into the Mikeno region there will be no gorillas left there. Gorillas were originally discovered on the west coast and they have been reported at various places across Central Africa from the west coast to the Mikeno region, but in no region are they numerous; and if they should succeed the lion and the elephant as the "correct" thing to shoot, their extinction would be but a matter of a very few years.

On the other hand, a very few years of study by a succession of scientific men from the best institutions would unquestionably produce far-reaching results.