THE MAN APE

Evening Star, Issue 19785, 8 February 1928, Page 8

THE MAN APE

A REAL GORILLA RETURNED EXPLORER'S DEFENCE Readers will remember the stir created throughout the world by the doings of tho “gorilla man” in Canada. Lieutenant-colonel H. F. Fcnn, D. 5.0., the famous African explorer, who has just returned to London from the Congo, where ho secured for Lord Rothschild one of the finest gorillas yet obtained, writes in the London ‘ Sunday Times ’ in defence of the gorilla. 1 have been much amused on coming back from gorillaland to find tbo world agog with the crimes of a, “gorilla man” and the churches wild with indignation at the suggestions that we are descended from monkeys.

The Canadian “gorilla man’s” crimes, we are told, “always bore the mark of degeneracy,” and yet, as a matter of fact, there is hardly an animal Jiving less degenerate than the gorilla. I have boon in places where 1 was able to stand unseen and watch these giant apes in their homo life, to say nothing of fighting one at only a few' yards’ range, and 1 can claim to know' a great deal about their habits and character. Tho popular belief is that this huge brute is the most bloodthirsty animal after the lion and the tiger; that it seeks out its prey for food, and will oven take the offensive when not hungry, much in the same way that a good terrier will kill rats tor tho sport of the thing. A STRICT VEGETARIAN.

Tins is quite wrong, for as every hunter knows the gorilla is a strict vegetarian, ami lives on bamboo shoots, vines, and a, certain species of while flower. In tact, it grazes more or less like an ordinary cow.

Gorillas’ method of attack is not by strangling, and, indeed,_ they do nob without great provocation go after man or any other living thing, so that to liken the trail of murdered boarding house keepers by Earle Nelson to the work of a gorilla is “miles away” from flio truth.

With biceps half a dozen inches or so larger than Dempsey’s, full-grown gorillas can crush a man as easily as a, bear can do, but they prefer to rend their victims limb from limb, leaving hint aside as a child might a crab. The gorilla, inhabits a district entirely uninhabited by man, and it is hidden in the forests at an altitude of some B,oooft to 10,000 ft almost impenetrable with thick vegetation, which has to be cut through with axes.

My expedition, from which J have just'returned, was made in the Congo, and by special permission of the King of the Belgians 1 was able to bring hack a specimen alive. _ It lias b eell bought by Lord Rothschild. Wo had to employ pigmies—the finest runners in the world—to guide us. A white man, unaided, would not have had a chance, for the gorillas are really very shy, and it is hard to pick up their trail. Their “homes” are generally in the heart of a dense bamboo forest, in which they make a series of tunnels like rabbit runs on a largo scale, leading to some centrai clearing. Hero the mothers live, peaceably grazing with their young, while the males keep guard to protect, them. COULD BEAT A LION.

Other animals have far too great a respect for the gorilla ever to seek him out. 1 would hack a gorilla against a lion any day, for the ape’s teetli are quite a' match for theirs, while as to claws, remember the gorilla grip can both scratch and rend.

Even in the very jaws of his antagonist lie would dislocate the lion’s bones at a single wrench. At the approach of an intruder the gorilla utters a huge roar—and that is generally enough to make further measures of defence unnecessary.

There seems to he a popular delusion —shared, strange to say, by the “plain” natives—that gorillas swoop down and carry off women; but I have never been able to find any actual instance. Indeed, originating from the lowland negroes, it is nothing but an idle superstition, for the gorillas never come down to the plains. The “Ju Jn,” which inhabitants nearest the hills set up outside their primitive villages, are not, as many Europeans have actual!,y_ supposed, to defend themselves or their women, but to protect their crops. You might as well say that the barbed wire around a farm was to prevent cows from eating a farmer’s own family.

The gorilla compares very favorably with the negro. I sometimes think that Nature took a step backward if she really evolved man from the ape. The gorilla, I admit, is an ugly brute, but when one speaks of it as an immoral brute science demands some sort of qualification. Attacked, intruded upon, or challenged, the gorilla will, of course, defend itself; but to insinuate, by the

Ph rase “ gorilla man,” that the finest and the most human of all animals is in the same category as those beasts which wage incessant “ murder ” out of sheer blood-lust as “degeneracy” is utter absurdity. Certainly the vegetarian recluse of the primeval forest would have an action for libel if he condescended to take any notice.