Here is a case where the animal tried for himself a thing he had never seen done, not for anything to be gained, but simply to find out how to do it. He knew somehow the right from the wrong way, and when he had finished he had no further use for the brush. He had learned that lesson, solved that riddle, and was ready to try something else.
ANECDOTES OF THE APE
While men like to have the monkey for a pet, the monkey imitates them by having pets of its own. It has a fancy for this and likes to have something or some animal under its care. It may be a doll, a guinea pig, a white rat, or anything to which it takes a fancy. This was the case with a monkey we are told of, which was very fond of nursing.
His fancy in this way brought him to a sad end. Seeing a litter of young pigs, he grew eager to have one of these for a pet. Watching till the mother pig was at the other end of the pen he popped down and seized one of the little grunters. With his prize he leaped to the door of the pig-stye, but it gave way under his weight and he fell back into the jaws of the furious sow, who with one crunch put an end to the pet-lover's career.
Here is another story told by the same party: "A female baboon which I brought up in my family got hold of a kitten with the intention of making a pet of it and mothering it, but was scratched by the scared fondling. The monkey then made a close study of the kitten's paws, pressed the claws forward, looked at them from above, from beneath, and from the side, and then bit them off to save itself from further scratches."
This love of pets on one occasion led to a serious scene. It was in the case of a large baboon kept on a ship on which was a lady passenger with a baby. Not noticing that the baboon had its eye on the little one, the mother laid it down on a bench to look at something which the captain wanted to show her.
In a moment the big monkey had the child in its arms and was running for the rigging, hastened by the mother's scream on seeing the fate of her little one.
Clasping the baby with one arm, the nimble creature ran up to the mast head with the aid of the other, and when the sailors started after it ran to the head of the top mast. By this time the poor mother was being carried to the cabin in a dead faint.
What to do the captain did not know. He called the sailors down, fearing that if they chased the brute it might throw the child into the sea. But when it saw that they had given up the pursuit it set itself to quiet the screaming child, fondling and talking to it in a very motherly way.