Apes and Monkeys: Their Life and LanguageGarner, R. L. (Richard Lynch)
Science
Apes and Monkeys: Their Life and Language
Garner, R. L. (Richard Lynch)
Apes; Monkeys; Sound production by animals; Speech
I may here call attention to one fact concerning the arboreal habit.
There appears to be a rule to which this habit conforms. Among apes
and monkeys the habit is in keeping with the size of the animal. The
largest monkeys are found only among the lowest trees, and the small
monkeys among the taller trees. It is a rare thing to see a large
monkey in the top of a tall tree. He may venture there for food or
to make his escape, but it is not his proper element. The same rule
appears to hold good among the apes. The gibbon has the arboreal
habit in a more pronounced degree than any other true ape. The orang
appears to be next; the chimpanzee comes in for third place, and the
gorilla last. It must not be understood that all of these apes do not
frequently climb, even to the tops of the highest trees; but that is
not their normal mode of life, any more than the top of a mast is the
habitual place for a sailor on a ship.
The chimpanzee is nomadic in habit, and, like the gorilla, seldom or
never passes two nights in the same spot. As to his building huts or
nests in trees or elsewhere, I am not prepared to believe that he ever
does that. For months I hunted in vain and made diligent inquiry in
several tribes, but failed to find a specimen of any kind of shelter
built by an ape. I do not assert that it is absolutely untrue that he
does this, but I have never been able to obtain any evidence of it,
except the statement of the natives. On the contrary, certain facts
point to the opposite belief. If the ape built himself a permanent
home, the natives would soon discover it and there would be no
difficulty in having it pointed out. If he built a new one every night,
however rude and primitive it might be, there would be so many of them
in the forest that there would be no difficulty in finding them. The
nomadic habit plainly shows that he does not build the former kind, and
the utter absence of them shows that he does not build the latter kind.
The whole story appears to be without foundation.
In addition to these facts, one thing to be noticed is that few or none
of the mammals of the tropics ever build any kind of home. The animals
that in other climates have the habit of burrowing do not appear to
do so in the tropics, This is due, no doubt, to the warm climate, in
which they are not in need of shelter. Of course birds and other
oviparous animals build nests, as they do elsewhere. The period of
incubation makes this necessary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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