The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal ObservationsHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Science
The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Animal behavior
Baldy was a born comedian. He loved to amuse a crowd and make
people laugh. He would go through a great trapeze performance of
clownish and absurd gymnastics, and often end it with three or
four loud smacks of his big black feet against the wall. This was
accomplished by violent kicking backwards. His dancing and up-and-
down jumping always made visitors laugh, after which he would
joyously give his piercing "_Wah-hoo_" shout of triumph. A
Sioux Indian squaw dances by jumping up and down, but her
performance is lifeless in comparison.
No vaudeville burlesque dancer ever cut a funnier monkey shine
than the up-and-down high-jump dance and floor-slapping act of our
Boma chimpanzee (1921). Boma offers this whenever he becomes
especially desirous of entertaining a party of distinguished
visitors. In stiff dancing posture, he leaps high in the air,
precisely like a great black jumping-jack straight from Dante's
Inferno. Orangs love to turn somersaults, and some individuals
are so persistent about it as to wear the hair off their backs,
disfigure their beauty, and disgust their keepers.
In the chapter on "Mental Traits of the Gorilla" a descriptionis
given of the play of Major Penny's wonderful John Gorilla.
When many captive monkeys are kept together in one large cage
containing gymnastic properties, many species develop humor, and
indulge in play of many kinds. They remind me of a group of well-
fed and boisterous small boys who must skylark or "bust." From
morning until night they pull each other's tails, wrestle and
roll, steal each other's playthings, and wildly chase each other
to and fro. There is no end of chattering, and screeching, and
funny facial grimaces. A writer in _Life_ once said that the
sexes of monkeys can be distinguished by the fact that "the
females chatter twice as fast as the males," but I am sure that
many ladies will dispute that statement.
In a company of mixed monkeys, or a mixed company of monkeys, a
timid and fearsome individual is often made the butt of practical
jokes by other monkeys who recognize its weakness. And who has not
seen the same trait revealed in crowds of boys?
But we can linger no longer with the Primates.
Who has not seen squirrels at play? Once seen, such an incident is
not soon forgotten. I have seen gray, fox and red squirrels engage
in highly interesting performances. The gray squirrel is stately
and beautiful in its play, but the red squirrel is amazing in its
elaborateness of method. I have seen a pair of those mischief-
makers perform low down on the trunk of a huge old virgin white
oak tree, where the holding was good, and work out a program
almost beyond belief. They raced and chased to and fro, up, down
and across, in circles, triangles, parabolas and rectangles, until
it was fairly bewildering. Really, they seemed to move just as
freely and certainly on the tree-trunk as if they were on the
ground, with no such thing in sight as the law of gravitation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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