A Hand-book to the Primates, Volume 2 (of 2)Forbes, Henry O. (Henry Ogg)
Science
A Hand-book to the Primates, Volume 2 (of 2)
Forbes, Henry O. (Henry Ogg)
Primates
The hair on the arm and fore-arm converges
towards the elbow, as in the Gorilla and Orang. The thumb is short in
comparison with the same digit in Man, and, as in the human hand, the
middle finger is the longest; the outer four fingers being united by a web
reaching up to the first joint. The palm of the hand can be applied flat to
the ground; but though the Chimpanzees can stand or run erect on the flat
sole of the foot, they prefer to advance leaning forward, supporting
themselves on the knuckles of the hand. They have no callosities on the
ischiatic bones, on which they sit.
The female Chimpanzees are slightly smaller than the males, but the
disparity between them is much less than between the two sexes of the
Gorilla. The nose and teeth are less prominent, and the belly is more
tun-shaped. The young males also exhibit fewer differences from the adult
than among the Gorillas, though differing in many points of their soft
anatomy and osteology. The nose lengthens, and its extremity widens, while
the face becomes more prognathous with increasing years. In the young the
frontal bone is low and flat. The skull in the Chimpanzee is elongated, and
small in proportion to the body; the forehead is smaller, the crown more
rounded than {190}in the Gorilla, and the back of the head convex.[2] The
central (sagittal) crest, so strongly developed in the Gorilla and the
Orang, is here wanting; the supra-orbital ridges which extend across the
face, and the occipital prominences for the back-muscles, though large, are
also less marked. The orbits have a circular rim, and are less prominent
than in the Gibbons. The nasal bones are but slightly arched, and the
openings for the nostrils round and small. The jaws, which are smaller,
proportionately to the cranium, in this genus, than in any other of the
_Simiidæ_, protrude far forward, but the symphysis of the lower jaw is
smaller than in the Gorilla, and its two halves low and wide. The bones of
the skull are much hollowed out into cavities (sinuses) in the forehead,
nose, and jaws, all of which communicate with each other. The plane of the
_foramen magnum_ (for the passage of the spinal cord) is oblique to the
plane of the base of the skull.
The volume of the cranium is from twenty-six to twenty-seven cubic inches,
or about one-half of the lowest capacity of a normal human cranium. A
styloid process is more or less distinctly visible in the Chimpanzees.
The canine teeth are long and conical, but less than in the Gorilla; and
the diastema, or gap, between them and their neighbouring teeth is smaller
than in the other Apes. The molar teeth are four-cusped, and have the
oblique ridge already described extending from the front inner to the hind
outer cusp; and the middle lower molar has five cusps, both these dental
characters being similar to those in Man. The anterior lower pre-molar,
however, is pointed, and has a long sharp anterior edge, as in the
_Cercopithecidæ_.
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