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
There were others whom he liked and made himself familiar with; there
were some he feared and others he hated; but his manner towards me
was that of deep affection. It was not alone in return for the food
he received, because my boy gave him food more frequently than I did,
and many others from time to time fed him. His attachment was like an
infatuation that had no apparent motive, was unselfish and supreme.
The chief purpose of my living among the animals being to study the
sounds they uttered, I gave strict attention to those made by Moses.
For a time it was difficult to detect more than two or three distinct
sounds, but as I grew more and more familiar with them I could detect a
variety of them, and by constantly watching his actions and associating
them with his sounds I learned to interpret certain ones to mean
certain things.
In the course of my sojourn with him I learned a certain sound that he
always uttered when he saw anything that he was familiar with, such as
a man or a dog, but he could not tell me which of the two it was. If he
saw anything strange to him he could tell me, but not so that I knew
whether it was a snake or a leopard or a monkey, yet I knew that it
was something of that kind. I learned a certain word for food, hunger,
eating, &c., but he could not go into any details about it, except that
a certain sound indicated good or satisfaction, and another meant the
opposite.
Among the sounds that I learned was one that is used by a chimpanzee
in calling another to come to it. Some of the natives assured me that
the mothers always used it in calling their young to them. When Moses
wandered away from the cage into the jungle, he would sometimes call
me with this sound. I cannot express it in letters of the alphabet,
nor describe it so as to give a very clear idea of its character. It
was a single sound or word of one syllable, and easily imitated by the
human voice. At any time that I wanted Moses to come to me I used this
word, and the fact that he always obeyed it by coming confirmed my
opinion as to its meaning. I do not think when he addressed it to me
that he expected me to come to him, but he perhaps wanted to locate me
in order to be guided back to the cage by the sound. As he grew more
familiar with the surrounding forest he used it less frequently, but he
always employed it in calling me or the boy. When he was called by it
he answered with the same sound; but one fact that we noticed was that
if he could see the one who called he never made any reply by sound. He
would obey it, but not answer it; he probably thought if he could see
the one who called that he could be seen by him, and it was therefore
useless to reply.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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