The Proboscis-Monkey
Next we come to a group of animals called dog-shaped monkeys, and the most curious of them all is the proboscis-monkey. This is the only monkey which really possesses a nose. Some monkeys have nostrils only, and some have muzzles, but the proboscis-monkey has not merely a nose, but a very long nose, so long, in fact, that when one of these monkeys is leaping about in the trees it is said always to keep its nose carefully covered with one hand, so that it may not be injured by a knock against a bough.
Strange to say, it is only the male animal that has this very long nose, and even he does not get it until he is grown up. Indeed, you can tell pretty well how old a male proboscis-monkey is just by glancing at his nose. When he is young it is quite small. As he gets older it grows bigger. And by the time that he reaches his full size it is three or four inches long. Naturally this long nose gives him a very strange appearance, and his great bushy whiskers, which meet under his chin, make him look more curious still.
We do not know much about the habits of the proboscis-monkey. In Borneo, its native country, it lives in the thick forests, and is said to be almost as active among the branches of the trees as the gibbons themselves. The Dyaks do not believe that it is a monkey at all, but say that it is really a very hairy man, who insists on living in the forests in order to escape paying taxes.
The Hanuman
The hanuman, another of the dog-shaped monkeys, lives in India, where it is treated with almost as much reverence as the Arabian baboon was in Egypt in days of old.
The natives do not exactly worship these monkeys, but they think that they are sacred to the god Hanuman, from whom they take their name. Besides that, they believe that these animals are not really monkeys at all, but that their bodies are inhabited by the souls of great and holy men, who lived and died long ago, but have now come back to earth again in a different form. So no Hindu will ever kill a hanuman monkey or injure it in any way, no matter how much mischief it may do. The consequence is that these animals are terrible thieves. They know perfectly well that no one will try to kill them, or even to trap them, so they come into the villages, visit the bazaars, and help themselves to anything to which they may take a fancy. Yet all that the fruit-sellers will do is to place thorn-bushes on the roofs of their shops to prevent the monkeys from sitting there.
European sportsmen, however, often find the hanuman very useful. For its greatest enemy is the tiger, and when one of these animals is being hunted a number of hanumans will follow it wherever it goes, and point it out to the beaters by their excited chattering.
Next to the tiger, the hanuman dislikes snakes more than any living creature, and when it finds one of these reptiles asleep it will creep cautiously up to it, seize it by the neck, and then rub its head backward and forward upon a branch till its jaws have been completely ground away.
The hanuman belongs to a group of monkeys which are called langurs. They may be known by their long and almost lanky bodies, by the great length of their tails, and by the fact that they do not possess the cheek-pouches which many other monkeys find so useful. And it is very curious that while the arms of the apes are longer than their legs, the legs of the langurs—which are almost as active in the trees—are longer than their arms.