In playing, young chimps, orangs or monkeys seize each other and wrestle, fall, and roll over and over, indefinitely. They make great pretenses of biting each other, but it is all make-believe. My favorite orang-utan pet in Borneo loved to play at biting me, but whenever the pressure became too strong I would say chidingly, "Ah! Ah!" and his jaws would instantly relax. He loved to butt me in the chest with his head, make wry faces, and make funny noises with his lips. I tried to teach him "cat's cradle" but it was too much for him. His clumsy fingers could not manage it.
One of our brightest chimpanzees, named Baldy, was much given to hectoring his female cage-mate, for sport. What he regarded as his best joke was destroying her bed. Many times over, after she had laboriously carried straw up to the balcony, carefully made up a nice, soft, circular bed for herself, and settled down upon it for a well-earned rest, Baldy would silently climb up to her level, suddenly fling himself upon her as she lay, and with all four of his arms and legs violently working, the nest would be torn to pieces and scattered and the lady orang rudely pulled about. Then Baldy would joyously swing down to the lower level, settle himself demurely at the front of the cage, and with a placid face and innocent, far-away expression in his eyes gaze at the crowd. There was nothing lacking but a mischievous wink of one eye.
Whenever his cage-mate selected a particularly long and perfect straw and placed it crosswise in her mouth, Baldy would steal up behind her and gleefully snatch it away.
Baldy was a born comedian. He loved to amuse a crowd and make people laugh. He would go through a great trapeze performance of clownish and absurd gymnastics, and often end it with three or four loud smacks of his big black feet against the wall. This was accomplished by violent kicking backwards. His dancing and up-and- down jumping always made visitors laugh, after which he would joyously give his piercing "Wah-hoo" shout of triumph. A Sioux Indian squaw dances by jumping up and down, but her performance is lifeless in comparison.
No vaudeville burlesque dancer ever cut a funnier monkey shine than the up-and-down high-jump dance and floor-slapping act of our Boma chimpanzee (1921). Boma offers this whenever he becomes especially desirous of entertaining a party of distinguished visitors. In stiff dancing posture, he leaps high in the air, precisely like a great black jumping-jack straight from Dante's Inferno. Orangs love to turn somersaults, and some individuals are so persistent about it as to wear the hair off their backs, disfigure their beauty, and disgust their keepers.
In the chapter on "Mental Traits of the Gorilla" a descriptionis given of the play of Major Penny's wonderful John Gorilla.
When many captive monkeys are kept together in one large cage containing gymnastic properties, many species develop humor, and indulge in play of many kinds. They remind me of a group of well- fed and boisterous small boys who must skylark or "bust." From morning until night they pull each other's tails, wrestle and roll, steal each other's playthings, and wildly chase each other to and fro. There is no end of chattering, and screeching, and funny facial grimaces. A writer in Life once said that the sexes of monkeys can be distinguished by the fact that "the females chatter twice as fast as the males," but I am sure that many ladies will dispute that statement.
In a company of mixed monkeys, or a mixed company of monkeys, a timid and fearsome individual is often made the butt of practical jokes by other monkeys who recognize its weakness. And who has not seen the same trait revealed in crowds of boys?
But we can linger no longer with the Primates.
Who has not seen squirrels at play? Once seen, such an incident is not soon forgotten. I have seen gray, fox and red squirrels engage in highly interesting performances. The gray squirrel is stately and beautiful in its play, but the red squirrel is amazing in its elaborateness of method. I have seen a pair of those mischief- makers perform low down on the trunk of a huge old virgin white oak tree, where the holding was good, and work out a program almost beyond belief. They raced and chased to and fro, up, down and across, in circles, triangles, parabolas and rectangles, until it was fairly bewildering. Really, they seemed to move just as freely and certainly on the tree-trunk as if they were on the ground, with no such thing in sight as the law of gravitation.