CHAPTER III
MAN’S COUSINS THE APES
The Man-like Apes and their mode of Life—Their “Courtships”—Musical Chimpanzees—How the Orang-utan improves his voice—His likeness to Caliban—The truculent visage of the Gorilla—“Ornament” in the lower Apes—The Concerts of the Howler Monkeys.
We are none of us given to boasting of our poor relations, and most of us indignantly repudiate our kinship with the Apes. But facts are stubborn things: the relationship is there, whether we admit it or not: and those who love truth for truth’s sake will not shirk the comparison between themselves and their remote cousins. Unhappily, from our present point of view, this cannot be carried very far, for the “Love idylls” of the Apes have yet to be written. Such facts, however, as have been gleaned are interesting. Of the higher, man-like, or “Anthropoid” species only the most meagre information is to be obtained; but this nevertheless is interesting. For the most part we have to be satisfied with inferences drawn from a study of the external differences between the sexes—from the “Secondary Sexual Characters,” in short, and from the records of travellers who have encountered these creatures in their native wilds.
The species which throw most light on this theme are the Gorilla, the Chimpanzee and the Orang-utan. Of these the Chimpanzee has most in common with the human race. But it may satisfy the qualms of many to know that between the Ape and the Man there is a great gulf fixed. The brain of the largest Ape is less than half the size of that even of the lowest of mankind. Man is a reasoning, and for the most part a reasonable, creature; he is a tool-making animal. This is more than can be said of any of the apes, even the most intelligent. Their teeth and immensely powerful arms must serve their every need. No ape ever fashioned for himself either a knife, a vessel to carry water, or any means of transport; and herein we have a measure of his brain capacity. The huge jaws and great canine teeth are no less conspicuous “marks of the beast.”
These, however, man himself has but recently lost, as was proved by the sensational discovery of the skull of an ape-like man at Piltdown, in Sussex, during 1912. Herein the jaw was essentially that of an ape, while the base of the skull was as markedly human. The cheek teeth, or molars, were of the human type; but the canine was ape-like, though much inferior in point of size. That the men of this remote age—which was possibly that of Pliocene times and certainly not later than early Pleistocene—had begun to use rudely-fashioned tools, is proved by the roughly-chipped flints found with the remains. With the invention of tools the decline in the size of his “eye” teeth began.
In all the large apes these “eye” teeth are of great size. Their purpose, it would seem, is primarily to serve as weapons in conflicts between rivals. Such conflicts are apparently unintentionally, and unavoidably, provoked by the loud cries uttered by the males in their endeavours to discover the whereabouts of females desiring mates. Of necessity roaming far in search of food, the unmated have no means of making their whereabouts known, save by thus giving tongue to desire. Evidently the normal methods of voice production do not suffice for their urgent needs, for the carrying power of the voice is immensely fortified by means of great air sacs, or chambers, formed in part by an enlargement of the body of the hyoid, or the bone which supports the tongue, and in part by dilatations of the inner walls of the larynx. The females, it is to be noted, are by no means so well equipped in this matter. It is not necessary that they should be. All that those desiring mates have to do is to follow up the cries of avid males, a by no means difficult task, especially when under the spell of the emotions which possess them. But the mechanism which serves the Chimpanzee and the Gorilla by no means fulfils the needs of the Orang-utan. In this uncouth creature the system of resonating chambers is immensely increased by great, thin-walled, membranous pouches extending round the neck and under the armpits, so that when inflated these areas have a most extraordinarily swollen appearance. When the Orang chooses to lift his voice even the deaf must hear.
Where fighting instead of fondling is the sequel to these impassioned cries the conflict is probably not of long duration, for it is certainly severe. This is attested by the fact that captured specimens, if adult, are commonly found to be minus one or more fingers, which have been bitten or torn off in these love affairs.
Plate 2.