Richard Garner - Gorillas & Chimpanzees

The present work is the natural product of some years devoted to a study of the speech and habits of monkeys. It has led up to the special study of the great apes. The matter contained herein is chiefly a record of the facts tabulated during recent years in that field of research.

The aim in view is to convey to the casual reader a more correct idea than now prevails concerning the physical, mental, and social habits of these apes.

The favourable conditions under which the writer has been placed, in the study of these animals in the freedom of their native jungle, have not hitherto been enjoyed by any other student of Nature.

A careful aim to avoid all technical terms and scientific phraseology has been adhered to, and the subject treated in a simple style. Tedious details are relieved by an ample supply of anecdotes taken from the writer's own observations, and most of them are the acts of his own pets or of apes in a wild state. The author has refrained from rash deductions and abstruse theories, but has sought to place the animals here treated in their true light, believing that to dignify the apes is not to degrade man, but to exalt him even more.

It is hoped that a more perfect knowledge of these animals may bring man into closer fellowship and deeper sympathy with Nature, and cause him to realise that all creatures think and feel in some degree, however small.

Monkeys have always been a subject of idle interest to old and young; but they have usually served to amuse the masses more than to instruct them, until within recent years.

Now that science has brought them within the field of careful research, and made them an object of serious study, it has invested them with a certain dignity in the esteem of mankind, and imparted to them a new aspect among animals.

There is no other creature that so charms and fascinates the beholder as do these little effigies of the human race. The simple and the wise are alike impressed with their human look and manner; children and patriarchs with equal delight watch them with surprise; but now that the search-light of science is being thrown into every nook and crevice of nature, human interest in them is multiplied many fold, while the savants of all civilised lands are struggling with the problem of their possible relationship to man.

Pursuant to the desire of learning as much as possible about their natural habits, faculties, and resources, they are being studied from every available point of view, and every characteristic compared in detail to the corresponding one in man. Hence, in order to appreciate more fully the value of the lessons to be drawn from the contents of this volume, we must know the relative planes in the scale of nature that man and monkeys occupy, wherefore we shall begin our task by comparing them in a general way; but as the scope of this work is restricted mainly to the great apes, the comparison will likewise be confined to that subject, except in so far as to define the relations of man and ape to monkeys.

Since monkeys differ among themselves so widely, it is evident that all of them cannot in the same degree resemble man. And as the degree of interest in them as a subject of comparative study is approximately measured by the degree of their likeness to man, it is apparent that all cannot be regarded as of equal interest. But since each forms an integral part of the scale of nature, they are of equal importance in tracing out the continuity of the order to which they belong.

The vast family of simians has perhaps the widest range of types of any single family of mammals. Beginning with the great apes, which so closely resemble man in size, form and structure, they descend by degrees along the scale till they end in the little marmosets, which are almost on the level of rodents. But the descent is so gradual that it is difficult to draw a sharp line of demarcation at any point between the two extremes. There is, however, now an effort being made to separate this family into smaller groups, but the lines between them must be dim and wavering, and the literature of the past has a tendency to retard the effort.

We shall not digress from the trend of our subject, however, at this time, to discuss the problems with which zoology may have to contend in the future, but will accept the current system and proceed.

All the varied types that belong to the simian family are, in the common order of speech, known as monkeys , but the term thus used is so broad in its meaning as to include all the forms of that vast group, wherefore it is vague and obscure, for some of these resemble man more than they resemble each other. The name should only be applied to those having tails and short faces, but there is a small group, which have no tails at all, that are properly known as apes . While they are all simians, they are not all monkeys. It is with this small group, without tails, that we propose chiefly to deal. We select them because of their likeness to man, and having noted the similitude, the result may be compared with other types of the same order. There are only four of these apes, but as a whole they resemble man in so many essential details that they are called "anthropoid," or "man-like apes." They differ from each other in certain respects, almost as much as any one of them differs from man. The four apes alluded to, are the chimpanzee, the gorilla, the orang and the gibbon.

As the skeleton is the framework of the physical structure, it will serve as the basis upon which to build up the comparison, and as the chimpanzee is the nearest approach to man, we select him as the highest type of the simian, and use him as the standard.

The skeleton of the chimpanzee may be said to be exactly the same as that of man, but the assertion must be qualified by a few facts which are of minor importance, but since they are facts we cannot ignore them.

The general plan, purpose and principle are the same in each. There is no part of the one that is not duplicated in the other, and there is no function discharged by any part of the one that is not discharged by the like part of the other. The chief point in which they differ is in the structure of one bone.

Near the base of the spinal column is a certain bone called the sacrum . It is a constituent part of the column, but in its singular form and structure somewhat differs from the corresponding bone in man. The general outline of this bone in the plane of the hips is that of an isosceles triangle. It fits in between the two large bones that spread out towards the hips, and articulate with the thighbones.

About half-way from the centre to the edge, along each side, is a row of four round holes. Across the surface of the bone is a dim transverse line between each pair of holes, from which it appears that five smaller sections of the column have anchylosed or grown into each other to form the sacrum , and the holes coincide with the open spaces between the lateral processes of the other bones of the column above.

In the chimpanzee, this bone has the same general form as in man, but instead of four holes in each row it has five, connected by transverse lines in the same way, indicating that six of the segments are united instead of five; but to compensate for this the ape has one vertebra less in the section of the column just above it, in that portion called the lumbar . In it man has five, while the ape has but four. But counting the whole number of bones in the spinal column, and regarding each segment of the sacrum as a distinct bone, which to all intents it is, the sum of the bones in each column is exactly the same.