When the Koolo-Kamba walks, it does so like the Gorilla, by leaning on
the backs of its fingers, and hence it has callous pads on the back
of their second bones. All the peculiar construction of the hands and
wrist bears a relation to the vast muscular development of the muscles
of the back of the chest and shoulders in the process of climbing;
and it is to be observed, as it was in the instance of the Gorilla,
that these muscles have more to do with such actions than those of
the chest, which go to the arm, and which are so much used in man for
that purpose. The muscles of the chest are not large and strong in the
Apes, for, as has already been mentioned, they climb with the back of
the hand towards the face, and do not attempt, like man, to lift the
body with the palm and nails turned towards him. This last proceeding
necessitates large chest muscles, and the former large ones at the back
of the shoulders.
There is something remarkable about the haunch-bones, or those parts of
them which support the body when sitting. In man they are well in front
of the end of the back-bone, which tapers off and turns in a little,
and forms a rudiment of a tail. These tuberosities of the haunch-bone
(as they are called, because they are swollen out and flattened for
the especial purpose in man) are placed, in the Koolo-Kamba, behind
the end of the spine or the true rudiment of the tail, and this throws
all the under parts backwards, giving the animal a thorough Baboon and
animal character. Oddly enough, the rudiment of the tail in this Ape is
smaller than in man.
A study of the foot shows that it is of immense use in holding on and
in climbing, and of none in walking. It looks more like a small hand,
furnished with a great thumb, than a foot with a toe-thumb.
It differs from human feet in the length of the toes, and this is
rather an interesting artistic point, for there is some diversity in
the opinions regarding which should be the longest toes in man.
The Greek statues--those grand models of the highest types of
mankind--very constantly have the second toe the longest, and reaching
more to the front, when the foot is on the ground, than the great
toe and the third. Nowadays, after men have had their feet pinched,
cabined, and confined in all sorts of boots and shoes, generation after
generation it is wonderful that their toes should be of any shape at
all; and, therefore, it must be anticipated that the Grecian type will
not always prevail. Nevertheless, although the great toe is often
the longest, the third toe never is, except there is some decided
deformity, like double toes. It is, however, the third toe which is the
longest in the Ape, just as the third finger of the hand is the longest
in man; and hence the Ape’s foot, with its great thumb, is in this
hand-like. But as has been mentioned before, bone for bone, and almost
muscle for muscle, the human and Ape’s foot agree, and the hinder
extremity of this last is really a foot with a toe-thumb.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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