COMMON BABOON.
The skull of this Baboon has a face occupying about half of it, and the brain case is much contracted behind and at the sides of the brows, and is flattened behind and above, so that the top of the head and eyes look pressed down. There is a ridge at the back of the skull extending from each ear-bone to a little knot at the back part of the occiput. All the back of the head is marked by the impression of the muscles of the back and neck, and the space for the jaw muscles is large on the side. Underneath, the skull is very long, there is the usual small space for the opening of the nostrils into the throat, and the palate is long and arched. In a specimen in the British Museum there is a little hook of bone on one of the small hones at the base of the skull (internal pterygoid bone), which is seen also in man, and it is for a tendon of a muscle to pass around, the use of the muscle being to render the soft palate tense. Why this should be so well grown in this Baboon, whose voice is no better than others, is certainly strange. The face is made broad near the eyes by the projecting cheek-bones, and the orbits are broad, not widely open, and they are separated, as in some of the other Baboons, by a part of the forehead bone (frontal), and the upper part of the nose bones (nasals). The nostril opening is very triangular, and on either side is the broad smaller surface of the upper jaw-bone. The front bone of the upper jaw is very projecting. One is struck with the huge chin of the lower jaw, and how slanting and comparatively small are the jowl ends of it. Evidently from the great breadth of the back of the lower jaw, and its roughness for muscular attachments, it is a very strong one, the narrow part in front which holds the teeth being well moved up and down, and side to side, in biting and masticating.
Their hands are rather short, the fingers are black, and the third and fourth are of the same length; they are strong and hold well, the thumb, however, being of no very great assistance.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DOG-SHAPED MONKEYS (concluded). THE BABOONS.
The Second Division of the Baboons—[THE MANDRILL]—Easily distinguished from the rest—Peculiar Appearance and Colour of the Face—The Cheek-ridges—Noticed by the Ancients—Brutality of its Disposition—“Jerry” at the Surrey Gardens—Their Wild State—Anatomical Peculiarities—The Back-bone and Liver—[THE DRILL]—Distinguished from the Mandrill—Probable Antiquity of these Baboons—Theories of their Relationship to other Animals—[THE BLACK BABOON]—Its Locality and Description—Probably a Forest Ape—General Summary of the Dog-shaped Quadrumana and Classification of the Group
THE MANDRILL.[67]
THIS large Baboon is the principal one with a very short stump of a tail, and may be distinguished from all others, with and without long tails, by the enormous swellings of its cheeks on each side of its nose, and their odd colouring. In general shape it resembles the rest of the genus, but perhaps its head and chest may be more bulky, and its limbs shorter and stouter than the others, when it has attained its full growth. A full-grown male measures five feet when standing upright, and the colour of the hair is a light olive-brown above and silvery-grey beneath, and the chin is decorated with a small pointed yellow beard. It has a “brutus” in the form of a great tuft of hair on the top of the head, Nature having brushed up the hair off the temples and forehead upwards, in a peak-shaped ridge on the crown, giving a triangular appearance to the whole. The ears are naked and pointed near their tips, and their colour is bluish-black. The muzzle and the lips are large, and as it were swollen and projecting, and the former is not only long, but is surrounded above with an elevated rim or border, and cut short or truncated like that of a Hog. But the most extraordinary features of this ugliest of faces are the projections on each side of the nose. These are formed by swellings of the cheek-bones along the base of the great canine teeth, and the skin covering them is ribbed, and has ridges which are alternately light blue, scarlet, and deep purple in colour, contrasting strangely with the other tints of the hair. To add to the strange look, the eyes are deeply sunken, and their colour, a deep hazel, contrasts with a streak of vermilion, which reaches down each side of the nose to the lip, and extends upwards in the neighbourhood of the brows, which are large and “beetled.” A forehead would clearly be out of place in such a brute, and therefore it recedes rapidly above the eyes, and is lost in the great tuft of hair.
The canine teeth are immense, and when the animal is enraged they and the others are shown, their beautiful white colour contrasting with the strange medley of tints around them. On the body the hair is very bristly, but the hands and feet are naked, and as if to add to the many peculiarities of the Mandrill, they are small in relation to the vigorous-looking limbs and short chest.
So curiously decorated a brute living just outside the civilisation of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, was sure to attract notice, especially as they were brought into Europe by the African merchants. Aristotle appears to have been struck with the hog-like look of the head, and he called it by the name of Hog-Ape (Chœropithecus), and all writers, from the earliest to the latest, have contributed opinions founded on very doubtful facts, to the detriment of its character. All the iniquities, abominations, and scandals that have been coupled with the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and Orang-utan, are linked on fourfold to the character of the ill-favoured Mandrill, and this is decided to be quite correct by the natives of the Gold Coast and the inland regions, where it lives a most dreaded and independent life.
There is no doubt that the Mandrill is extremely brutal in its adult age, and that the males are ferocious and disgusting, there being no particular choice as regards ugliness and oddity of decoration between their faces and sterns, whose callosities are vast. But the young are not so, and probably the quieter tints of the female are associated with a gentler disposition. Both the young and the females have shorter muzzles than the adult males, and they have neither the great cheek-swellings nor the colouring of the face; in fact, it is only when the great eye teeth are being cut by the males, as evidences of its age and powers, that the irregular decoration begins to be noticed.