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
In 1919 our two fine eight-year old chimpanzees, Boma and Suzette,
were happily married. It was a genuine love match, and strictly
monogamous at that; for while big Fanny Chimp in the cage next
door to Boma loved Boma and openly courted him, he was
outrageously indifferent to her, and even scorned her. After
seven months of gestation, a very good baby was born to Suzette,
quite naturally and successfully. Boma's shouts of excitement and
delight carried half a mile throughout the Park. Everything looked
most auspicious for the rearing of a wonderful cage-bred and
cage-born chimpanzee, the second one ever born in captivity.
Instead of carrying her infant astride her hip, as do orang
mothers, and the coolie women of India, Suzette astonished us
beyond measure by tucking it _into her groin,_ between her
thigh and her abdomen, head outward. It was a fine place,--warm
and soft,--but not good when overdone! When Suzette walked, as she
freely did, she held up the leg responsible for the baby, to hold
it securely in place, and walked upon the other foot and her two
hands. About all this there was one very bad thing. The baby was
perfectly helpless! As long as the mother chose to keep it in her
groin prison, it could not get free.
Suzette was completely isolated, kept absolutely quiet, and every
chance was given her to go on with the functions of motherhood.
Her breasts contained plenty of milk, and the flow was due to
start on the second day after the infant's arrival.
Day and night the baby was jealously confined in that massive and
powerful groin,--and _under too much pressure!_ When the baby
cried, and kicked, and struggled to get free, Suzette would
nervously rearrange her straw bed, carefully pick from the tiny
fingers every straw that they had clutched, and settle down again.
If the struggle was soon renewed, Suzette would change the infant
over to the other groin, and close upon it as before.
Sleeping or waking, walking, sitting or lying down, she held it
there. If we attempted to touch the infant, the mother instantly
became savage and dangerous. Not one human finger was permitted to
touch it. For hours, and for days, we anxiously watched for
nursing to begin; but in vain. At last we became almost frantic
from the spectacle of the infant being slowly starved to death
because the mother did not realize that it needed her milk, and
that she alone could promote nursing. _Her mother instinct
utterly failed to supply the link that alone could connect infancy
to motherhood, and furnish life._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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