THE GORILLA LIBELLED.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5243, 24 February 1928, Page 4

THE GORILLA LIBELLED.

DEFENCE OF MAN-APE. EXPLORER'S CHAMPIONSHIP. I have been much amused on coming back from gorilla-land to find the world agog with the crimes of a "gorilla” man, and the churches wild with indignation at the suggestion that we are descended from, monkeys (writes Lieutenant-Colonel Fenn in the Sunday News).

The Candaian “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 living less degenerate than the gorilla. I have been in places where I was able to stand unseen and watch, these giant apes in their home life-, to say nothing of fighting one at only a few yards’ range, and I can claim to know a good deal about their habits and character.

The popular belief is that thfe huge brute is the most blood-thirsty animal after the lion and tiger ; that it seeks out its prey for food, and will even take the offensive when not hungry much ini the same way that a good terrier will kill rats just for the sport of the thing. This is quite wrong, for, as every hunter knows, the gorilla, is .a strict vegetarian and lives on bamboo shoots, vines, and a certain species of white flower. In fact, it grazes 'more or less like an ordinary cow.

Gorrillas’ method, of attack is not by strangling, and, inld'eed, they do no t without great provocation, go after ;a man-- or any other living thing, So that to liken the trail of murdered boardinghouse keepers by Earle Nelson to the work of a gorilla is “miles away” from the truth. One might as well, say besause some idiot murdered had a sheepish expression, that he behaved with a sheep-like brutality.

With biceps half a dozen inches or ko larger than Demptey’s, full-grown gorillas can crush a man as easily aS ■a bear can do, but they prefer to rend their victims limb to limb, and disembowel, leaving him .aside as a child might with 1 a crab. The gorilla inhabits a district entirely uninhabited by man, and it is hidden in the forest at an altitude of. some 8000 ft to 10.,000ft., almost impenetrable, With, thick vegetation which has to be cut through with axes;

My expedition, from which I have just returned, was made in the Congo, and by special permission of the King of the Belgians I was able to bring back a specimen alive. It has been bought by Lord Rothschild. We had' to employ pygmies—the finest runners in the world —to guide us. A white 'man, unaided, would not have- had a chance, tor the gorillas are really very shy, .and it is hard to pick up their train.

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 huge scale leading to some central clearing. Here the mothers live peaceably grazing with their young, while the males keep guard to- protect >them. Other animals have fai- too great a respect for the gorilla ever to seek him out. I would back a gorilla against a lion any day, for the ape’s teeth are quite a match for theirs, while as to claws, remember the gorilla grip can both scratch and rdnd.

Even in the very jaws of his antagonist'he would dislocate the Ijqn’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 be 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; probably nothing but an idle superstition, for the gorillas never come down to the plains.

The “Ju. Ju,” whicl# inhabitants nearest the hills set up outside their primitive villages, are not, as many Europeans have actually supposed, to defend l 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 favourably with, the negro. I 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 demandfe some sort of qualification.

Attacked, intruded upon, or challenged, the gorilla will, of' course, defend itself. But to insinuate, by the phrase “gorilla man,” that the finest and the most human of all animals iK in the same category as those beasts .which wage incessant “murder” out ■of sheer bloodlust or “degeneracy” is utter absurdity.