Apes and Monkeys: Their Life and Language

by R. L. Garner

It is true that these attacks were made upon an enemy in pursuit, but his mode of doing this appeared to be natural to him. He struck a severe blow and showed no sign of tearing or scratching his opponent. In these attacks he made no sound. I do not say that other gorillas never scream or tear their victims, but I take it that the habits of the young are much, if not quite, the same as those of their elders; and from a study of this specimen I am forced to modify many opinions imbibed from reading or from pictures and museum specimens which I have seen. Many of them represent the gorilla in absurd and sometimes impossible attitudes. They certainly do not represent him as I have seen him in his native wilds. I had a young female gorilla as a subject for study for a short time. Her mode of attack was about the same as that just described, but she was too large to risk very far in such experiments.

When the chimpanzee attacks,—so far as I have seen among my own specimens,—he approaches his enemy and strikes with both hands, one slightly in advance of the other. After striking a few blows he grasps his opponent and uses his teeth. Then, shoving him away, he again uses the hands. Usually, on beginning the attack, he accompanies the assault with a loud, piercing scream. Neither he nor the gorilla closes the hand to strike or uses any weapon except the hands and the teeth.

I have read and heard descriptions of the sounds made by gorillas, but nothing ever conveyed to my mind an adequate idea of their real nature until I heard them myself within about a hundred feet of my cage in the dead of night. By some it has been called roaring, and by others howling; but it is neither a roar nor a howl. They utter a peculiar combination of sounds, beginning in a low, smooth tone, which rapidly increases in pitch and frequency, until it becomes a terrific scream. The first sound of the series and each alternate sound are made by expiration; the intermediate ones appear to be by inspiration. How this is accomplished it is difficult to say. The sound as a whole resembles the braying of an ass, except that the notes are shorter, the climax is higher, and the sound is louder. A gorilla does not yell in this manner every night, but when he does so it is usually between two and five o’clock in the morning. I have never heard the sound during the day nor in the early part of the night. When screaming he repeats the series from ten to twenty times, at intervals of one or two minutes apart. I know of nothing in the way of vocal sounds that can inspire such terror as the voice of the gorilla. It can be heard over a distance of three or four miles. I can assign no definite meaning to it unless it is intended to alarm some intruder.

One morning, between three and four o’clock, I heard two of them screaming at the same time. I do not mean at the same instant, but at intervals during the same period of time. One of them was within about a third of a mile of me, and the other in another direction, perhaps a mile away. The points we respectively occupied formed a scalene triangle. The sounds made by the two apes did not appear to have any reference to each other. Sometimes they would alternate, and at other times they would interrupt each other. They were both made by giants of their kind, and every leaf in the forest vibrated with the sound. This was during the latter part of May. They scream in this way from time to time throughout the year, but it is most frequent and violent during February and March.

This wild screaming is sometimes accompanied by a peculiar beating sound. It has been vaguely and variously described by travelers, and currently believed to be made by the animal beating with his hands upon his breast; but that is not the fact. The sound cannot be made by that means. The quality of the sound shows that such cannot be the means employed. I have several times heard this beating and have paid marked attention to its character. At a great distance it would be difficult to determine its exact quality.

On one occasion, while passing the night in a native town, I was aroused from sleep by a gorilla screaming and beating within a few hundred yards of the village. I drew on my boots, took my rifle, and cautiously crossed the open ground between the village and the forest. This brought me within about two hundred yards of the animal. The moon was faintly shining, but I could not see the beast, and I had no desire to approach nearer at such a time. I distinctly heard every stroke. I believe the sound was made by beating upon a log or piece of dead wood. He was beating with both hands. The alternating strokes were made with great rapidity. The order of the strokes was not unlike that produced by the natives in beating their drums, except that in this instance each hand made the same number of strokes, and the strokes were in a constant series, rising and falling from very soft to very loud, and vice versa. A number of these runs followed one another during the time the voice continued. Between the first and second strokes the interval was slightly longer than that between the second and third, and so on through the scale. As the beating increased in loudness the interval shortened in an inverse degree, while in descending the scale the intervals lengthened as the beating softened, and the author of the sound was conscious of the fact.

I could trace no relation in time or harmony between the sound of the voice and the beating, except that they began at the same time and ended at the same time. The same series of vocal sounds was repeated each time, beginning on the low note and ending in each case with the note of the highest pitch, while the rise and fall of the series of the beaten sounds were not measured by the duration of the voice. The series each time began with a soft note, but ended at any part of the scale at which it happened to be at the time the voice ceased. The coinciding notes were not the same in every case.

No doubt the gorilla sometimes beats upon his breast. He has been seen to do this in captivity, but the sounds described above were not so made. Since the gorilla makes these sounds only at night, it is not probable that any man ever saw him in the act. It does not require a delicate sense of hearing to distinguish a sound made by beating the breast from that made by beating on dead wood or other similar substance.

I have attributed the above sound to the gorilla, because I have been assured by many white men and scores of natives that it was made by him; but since my return from Africa I have had time to consider and digest certain facts tabulated on my first voyage, and, as a result of these reflections, I doubt whether this sound is made by the gorilla. There are reasons to believe that it is made by the chimpanzee.

I observed that my own chimpanzees made a sound exactly the same as that I heard in the forest, except that it was less in volume. This was due to the age of the apes that made it. I could induce them at any time to make the sound, and frequently did so in order to study it. After my arrival in New York I found that Chico—the big chimpanzee belonging to Mr. Bailey—frequently made the same sound. This he always did at night. The cry was said to be so loud and piercing that it fairly shook the stately walls of Madison Square Garden. From reading the description given by the late Professor Romanes of the sound made by “Sally” in the London Gardens, it appears that she made the same sound. It is well known to the natives that chimpanzees beat on some sonorous body, which the natives call a drum. In 1890 I called attention to the beating practiced by the two chimpanzees in the Cincinnati Gardens. They frequently indulged in beating with their knuckles upon the floor of their cage. This was done chiefly by the male. The late E. J. Glave described to me the same thing as being done by the chimpanzees in the middle Congo basin.