ORANG AT BAY.
FAMILY OF ORANG-UTANS.
Mr. Wallace, who described how it forms a nest when wounded, states “that it uses a similar one to sleep in almost every night. This is placed low down, however, on a small tree, not more than from twenty to fifty feet from the ground, probably because it is warmer and less exposed to wind than higher up. Each Mias is said to make a fresh one for himself every night; but I should think that is hardly probable, or their remains would be much more abundant; for though I saw several about the coal-mines, there must have been many Orangs about every day, and in a year their deserted nests would become very numerous. The Dyaks say that when it is very wet the Mias covers himself over with leaves of Pandanus, or large ferns, which has, perhaps, led to the story of his making a hut in the trees. The Orang does not leave his bed till the sun has well risen and has dried up the dew upon the leaves. He feeds all through the middle of the day, but seldom returns to the same tree two days running. They do not seem much alarmed at man, as they often stared down upon me for several minutes, and they only moved away slowly to an adjacent tree. After seeing one, I have often had to go half a mile or more to fetch my gun, and in nearly every case have found it on the same tree, or within a hundred yards, when I returned. I never saw two full-grown animals together, but both males and females are sometimes accompanied by half-grown young ones, while, at other times, three or four young ones were seen in company. Their food consists almost exclusively of fruit, with occasional leaves, buds, and young shoots. They seem to prefer unripe fruits, some of which were very sour, others intensely bitter, particularly the large red fleshy arillus, or rind of one, which seemed an especial favourite. In other cases they eat only the small seed of a large fruit, and they almost always waste and destroy more than they eat, so that there is a continual rain of rejected portions below the tree they are feeding on. The Durion is an especial favourite, and quantities of this delicious fruit are destroyed wherever it grows surrounded by forest, but they will not cross clearings to get at them. It seems wonderful how the animal can tear open this fruit, the outer covering of which is so thick and tough, and closely covered with strong conical spines. It probably bites off a few of these first, and then, making a small hole, tears open the fruit with its powerful fingers. The Mias rarely descends to the ground, except when, pressed by hunger, it seeks for succulent shoots by the river side; or, in very dry weather, has to search after water, of which it generally finds sufficient in the hollows of leaves. Once only I saw two half-grown Orangs on the ground, in a dry hollow at the foot of the Simunjou Hill. They were playing together, standing erect, and grasping each other by the arms. It may be safely stated, however, that the Orang never walks erect, unless when using its hands to support itself by branches overhead, or when attacked. Representations of its walking with a stick are entirely imaginary. The Dyaks all declare that the Mias is never attacked by any animal in the forest, with two rare exceptions; and the accounts I received of these are so curious, that I give them nearly in the words of my informants, old Dyak chiefs, who had lived all their lives in the places where the animal is most abundant. The first of whom I inquired said:—‘No animal is strong enough to hurt the Mias, and the only creature he ever fights with is the Crocodile. When there is no fruit in the jungle, he goes to seek food on the banks of the river, where there are plenty of young shoots that he likes, and fruits that grow close to the water. Then the Crocodile sometimes tries to seize him, but the Mias gets upon him, and beats him with his hands and feet, and tears him, and kills him.’ He added that he had once seen such a fight, and that he believes that the Mias is always the victor. My next informant was the Orang Kaya, or chief of the Balow Dyaks, on the Simunjou River. He said: ‘The Mias has no enemies; no animals dare attack it but the Crocodile and the Python. He always kills the Crocodile by main strength, standing upon it, pulling open its jaws, and ripping up its throat. If a Python attacks a Mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it, and soon kills it. The Mias is very strong; there is no animal in the jungle so strong as he.’”
It is very remarkable that an animal so large, so peculiar, and of such a high type of form as the Orang-utan, should be confined to so limited a district—to two islands, and those almost the last inhabited by the higher Mammalia; but in the Mid-Tertiary Period, and just before the formation of the Himalayan Mountains, Orangs lived on the continent of India, and their remains have been found fossilised. With what interest must every naturalist look forward to the time when the caves and Tertiary deposits of the tropics may be thoroughly examined, and the past history and earliest appearance of the great man-like Apes be at length made known!
The Orang-utans appear, from what has been written by all competent observers, to be of two kinds, the one larger, and the other smaller in stature; the first is called Simia satyrus, and the other Simia morio. Simia is translated in old Latin dictionaries as an Ape, or Jackanapes, and the term was used to designate the tribe or genus which should include all the species or kinds of man-shaped Apes. But after a while there was thought to be sufficient reasons for separating the Troglodytes from the genus Simia, and therefore this last-named one, instead of comprising the Gorilla, the Nschiego, the Koolo, the Soko, and the Chimpanzee, has but the Orang-utan.
Why this separation should have taken place is of course a very natural question, and the answer is that there are sufficient differences in the construction of the Orangs and the Chimpanzees and the others to warrant it. There is a greater structural difference between the Orang and the Chimpanzee than between this last and any of its congeners, that is to say, species included in the genus Troglodytes.
Moreover, on examining several skulls and skeletons of all these kinds, it seems as if, whilst the African Troglodytes may have descended from a common ancestor, probably a Baboon, the Orang-utan could not have come from the same stock.
There are some important distinctions in the anatomy of the Orang, some of which are evidently produced by adaptation to a particular habit or mode of life, and others in which the results of cause and effect cannot be traced.