Gorillas & ChimpanzeesGarner, R. L. (Richard Lynch)
Science
Gorillas & Chimpanzees
Garner, R. L. (Richard Lynch)
Chimpanzees; Gabon -- Description and travel; Garner, R. L. (Richard Lynch), 1848-1920 -- Travel; Gorilla
In view of the fact that I have made careful and methodic efforts to
determine the exact boundary of the habitat and the real habits of
these two apes, I feel at liberty to speak with an air of authority.
I have acquired my knowledge on the subject by going to their own
country and living in their own jungle, and I have thus obtained their
secrets from first hands. With due respect to those who write books
and speak freely upon subjects of which they know but little, I beg
leave to suggest that if the authors had gone into the jungle and
lived among those animals instead of consulting others who know less
than themselves about it, many of them would have written in a very
different strain. I do not mean this as a rebuke to any one, but seeing
the same old stories repeated year after year, and knowing that there
is no truth in them, I feel it incumbent as a duty to challenge them.
I believe that in the future it will be shown that there are two types
of gorilla as distinct from each other as the two chimpanzees now
known. This second variety of gorilla will be found between the third
and fifth parallels south and east of the delta district, but west
of the Congo. I believe it was represented in the ape "Mafuka." My
researches among the apes have been confined chiefly to the two kinds
heretofore described, but I have seen and studied in a superficial
way the orang and the gibbon. I am not prepared as yet to discuss the
habits of those two apes, but as they form a part of the group of
anthropoids we cannot dismiss them without honourable mention.
The orang-outan, as he is called in his own country, is known to
zoology by the first of these terms alone. He is a native of Borneo and
Sumatra, and opinions differ as to whether there are two species or
only one.
The general plan of the skeleton of the orang is very much the same as
in the other apes. The chief points of difference are that it has one
bone more in the wrist and one joint less in the spinal column than is
found in man. He has thirteen pairs of ribs, which appear to be more
constant in their number than in man. His arms are longer and his legs
shorter in proportion to his body than the other two apes. The type of
the skull is peculiar, and combines to a certain extent more human-like
form in one part with a more beast-like form in another. The usual
height of an adult male is about fifty-one inches.
I have never had an opportunity of studying this ape in a wild state,
and have only had access to four of them in captivity, all of which
were young and most of them inferior specimens. He is the most obtuse
or stupid of the four great apes. And were it not for his skeleton
alone he would be assigned a place below the gibbon, for in point of
speech and mental calibre he is far inferior. The best authorities
perhaps upon the habits of this ape in a wild state are Messrs. W. T.
Horniday and R. A. Wallace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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