The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its ScopeCrampton, Henry Edward
Science
The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope
Crampton, Henry Edward
Evolution
The next division, called the Cercopithecidae, includes the baboons of the
Old World. These animals also run upon all fours, and their feet are
handlike as before, but the tail is much reduced. The general appearance
of the head is doglike, and the brain-case arches little more than it does
in the monkeys, but the face projects forward as a long muzzle, with
terminal nostrils close together. In some respects the baboons stand
somewhat away from the line leading from the lower to higher anthropoids;
in other characters they approach the latter, for in the teeth especially
they are identical with the apes and with the human species.
The Simiidae, or true apes, possess an overwhelming importance, far beyond
that of the baboons and monkeys. There are only four principal kinds now
existing, namely, the gibbon, orang-outang, chimpanzee, and the gorilla,
of which the first is much less familiar than the others. The known
species of gibbons occur in Indo-China and the Malay Peninsula. The
typical animal stands about three feet high; its overarching braincase,
enlarged in conformity with the much greater brain development, has pushed
the eyes and face still further around underneath, so that if the animal
walks upon all fours the eyes look almost straight into the ground.
Therefore it must bend back its head at an extremely uncomfortable angle
if it is to remain upon all four feet, but it prefers to raise itself up
into the human sitting posture, or, when it walks, it stands erect upon
its hind limbs. Hence we who are accustomed to think of ourselves as the
only erect animals must revise our opinion, for we find in the gibbon an
organism that is nearly, if not quite, as advanced in this respect as we
are. One peculiar difference may be pointed out,--the walking gibbon
stretches out its great long arms to the sides in order to preserve its
balance. The animal seems awkward to us, perhaps, but it is possible that
the human method of balancing the body by vigorously swinging the arms
might seem quite as awkward to a gibbon as its grotesque posture does to
us.
The orang-outang comes next in this series. It inhabits the islands of
Borneo and Sumatra, where we find two distinct species. It is a reddish
colored animal standing about four feet four inches high, with rather long
hair. It is bulky, slow and deliberate in action, and when it walks in a
semi-erect position it rests its knuckles upon the ground, swinging its
long arms as crutch-like supports. Like the gibbon, it does not walk upon
all four feet in the way that the monkeys and baboons do, and we find in
the still further development of the brain and the higher arch of the
cranium the reasons for its semi-erectness. It cannot remain with its
hands and feet upon the ground and bend back its head so as to direct its
vision forward.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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