influencing thought or action, is to be classed as vocal language.
Among the mammals below man, _speech_ is totally absent; but
parrots, macaws, cockatoos and crows have been taught to imitate
the sound of man's words, or certain simple kinds of music.
The primitive races of mankind first employed the sign language,
and spoken words. After that comes picture language, and lastly
the language of written words. Among the Indians and frontiersmen
of the western United States and Canada, the sign language has
reached what in all probability is its highest development, and
its vocabulary is really wonderful.
The higher wild animals express their thoughts and feelings
usually by sign language, and rarely by vocal sounds. Their power
of expression varies species by species, or tribe by tribe, quite
as it does among the races and tribes of men. It is our belief
that there are today several living races of men whose
vocabularies are limited to about 300 words.
Very many species of animals appear to be voiceless; but it is
hazardous to attempt to specify the species. Sometimes under
stress of new emergencies, or great pain, animals that have been
considered voiceless suddenly give tongue. That hundreds of
species of mammals and birds use their voices in promoting
movements for their safety, there is no room to doubt. The only
question is of the methods and the extent of voice used. Birds and
men give expression to their pleasure or joy by singing.
In the jungle and the heavily wooded wilderness, one hears really
little of vocal wild-animal language. Through countless
generations the noisiest animals have been the first ones to be
sought out and killed by their enemies, and only the more silent
species have survived. All the higher animals, as we call the
higher vertebrates, have the ability to exchange thoughts and
convey ideas; and that is language.
At the threshold of this subject we are met by two interesting
facts. Excepting the song-birds, the wild creatures of today have
learned through instinct and accumulated experience that silence
promotes peace and long life. The bull moose who bawls through a
mile of forest, and the bull elk who bugles not wisely but too
well, soon find their heads hanging in some sportsman's dining-
room, while the silent Virginia deer, like the brook, goes on
forever.
Association with man through countless generations has taught
domestic animals not only the fact of their safety when giving
voice, but also that very often there is great virtue in a
vigorous outcry. With an insistent staccato neigh, the hungry
horse jars the dull brain of its laggard master, and prompts him
to "feed and water the stock." But how different is the cry of a
lost horse, which calls for rescue. It cannot be imitated in
printed words; but every plainsman knows the shrill and prolonged
trumpet-call of distress that can be heard a mile or more,
understandingly.
And think of the vocabulary of the domestic chicken! Years of life
in fancied security have developed a highly useful vocabulary of
language calls and cries. The most important, and the best known,
are the following:
"Beware the hawk!"--"Coor! Coor!" "Murder! Help!"--"Kee-
_owk_! Kee-_owk_! Kee-_owk_!" "Come on"--"Cluck!
Cluck! Cluck!" "Food here! Food!"--"Cook-cook-cook-cook!"
Announcement, or alarm--"Cut-cut-cut-_dah_-cut!" But does
the wild jungle-fowl, the ancestor of our domestic chicken,
indulge in all those noisy expressions of thought and feeling? By
no means. I have lived for months in jungles where my hut was
surrounded by jungle-fowl, and shot many of them for my table; but
the only vocal sound I ever heard from their small throats was the
absurdly shrill bantam-like crow of the cock. And even that led to
several fatalities in the ranks of _Gallus stanleyi_.
Domestic cattle, swine and fowls have each a language of their
own, and as far as they go they are almost as clear-cut and
understandable as the talk of human beings. Just how much more is
behind the veil that limits our understanding we cannot say; but
no doubt there is a great deal.
But it is with the language of wild animals that we are most
concerned. As already pointed out, wild creatures, other than
song-birds, do not care to say much, because of the danger of
attracting enemies that will exterminate them. Herein lies the
extreme difficulty of ascertaining how wild beasts communicate.
In the Animallai Hills of southern India I hunted constantly for
many weeks through forests actually teeming with big game. There
were herds upon herds of elephants, gaur, axis deer, sambar deer,
monkeys by the hundred, and a good sprinkling of bears, wild hogs
and tigers.
We saw hundreds upon hundreds of animals; but with the exception
of the big black monkeys that used to swear at us, I can almost
count upon my fingers the whole number of times that we heard
animals raise their voices to communicate with each other.
Ape Voices. Naturally it is of interest to know something of the
voices of the animals that physically and mentally stand nearest
to man.
The wild gorilla has a voice almost equal to that of the
chimpanzee, but in captivity he rarely utters any vocal sound
other than a shriek, or scream.
The baby orang-utan either whines or shrieks like a human child.
The half-grown or adult orang when profoundly excited bellows or
roars, in a deep bass voice. Usually, however, it is a
persistently silent animal.
The chimpanzee has a voice, and vociferously expresses its
emotions.
First and most often is the plaintive, coaxing note, "Who'-oo!
who'-oo! who'-oo!"
Then comes the angry and threatening, "Wah', wah', wah-!
_Wah'_-hool _Wah'_-hool"
Lastly we hear the fearful, high-pitched yell or shriek, "Ah-h-h-
h!" or "E-e-e-e."
The shriek, or scream, can be heard half a mile, and at close
range it is literally ear-splitting. Usually it is accompanied by
violent stamping or pounding with the feet upon the floor. It may
signify rage, or nothing more than the joy of living, and of
having a place in which to yell. It is this cry that is uncannily
human-like in sound, and when heard for the first time it seems to
register anguish.
In its Bornean jungle home, the orang-utan is nearly as silent as
the grave. Never save once did I hear one utter a vocal sound.
That was a deep bass roar emitted by an old male that I disturbed
while he was sleeping on the comfortable nest of green branches
that he had built for himself.
Concerning the chimpanzee, the late Mr. Richard L. Garner
testified as follows:
"Not only does the chimpanzee often break the silence of the
forest when all other voices are hushed, but he frequently answers
the sounds of other animals, as if in mockery or defiance. ...
Although diurnal in habit, the chimpanzees often make the night
reverberate with the sounds of their terrific screaming, which I
have known them to continue at times for more than an hour, with
scarcely a moment's pause,--not one voice but many, and within
the area of a square mile or so I have distinguished as many as
seven alternating adult male voices.
"The gorilla is more silent and stoical than the chimpanzee, but
he is far from being mute. He appears to be devoid of all
risibility, but he is often very noisy. Although diurnal in habit,
he talks less frequently during the day than at night, but his
silence is a natural consequence of his stealth and cunning. There
are times, however, when he ignores all danger of betraying his
whereabouts or his movements, and gives vent to a deluge of
speech. At night his screams and shouts are terrific."
The gibbons (including the siamang) have tremendous voices, with
numerous variations, and they love to use them. My acquaintance
with them began in Borneo, in the dense and dark coastal forest
that there forms their home. I remember their cries as vividly as
if I had heard them again this morning. While feeding, or quietly
enjoying the morning sun, the gray gibbon (_Hylobates
concolor_) emits in leisurely succession a low staccato,
whistle-like cry, like "Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!" which one can easily
counterfeit by whistling. This is varied by another whistle cry of
three notes, thus: "Who-ee-hoo! Who-ee-hoo!" also to be duplicated
by whistling. In hunting for specimens of that gibbon, for
American museums, I could rarely locate a troop save by the tree-
top talk of its members.
But all this was only childish prattle in comparison with the
daily performances of the big white-handed, and the black hoolock
gibbons, now and for several years past residing in our Primate
House. Every morning, and perhaps a dozen times during the day,
those three gibbons go on a vocal rampage and utter prolonged and
ear-splitting cries and shrieks that make the welkin ring. The
shrieking chorus is usually prolonged until it becomes tiresome to
the monkeys. In all our ape and monkey experience we never have
known its equal save in the vocal performances of Boma, our big
adult male chimpanzee, the husband of Suzette.
A baboon emits occasionally, and without any warning, a fearful
explosive bark, or roar, that to visitors is as startling as the
report of a gun. The commonest expressions are "Wah!" and
"_Wah'_-hoo!", and the visitor who can hear it close at hand
without jumping has good nerves.
The big and solemn long-nosed monkey of Borneo (_Nasalis
larvatus_) utters in his native tree-top (overhanging water), a
cry like the resonant "honk" of a saxophone. He says plainly, "Kee
honk," and all that I could make of its meaning was that it is
used as the equivalent of "All's well."
Of all the monkeys that I have ever known, either wild or in
captivity, the red howlers of the Orinoco, in Venezuela, have the
most remarkable voices, and make the most remarkable use of them.
The hyoid cartilage is expanded,--for Nature's own particular
reasons,--into a wonderful sound-box, as big as an English walnut,
which gives to the adult voice a depth of pitch and a booming
resonance that is impossible to describe. The note produced is a
prolonged bass roar, in alternately rising and falling cadence,
and in reality comprising about three notes. It is the habit of
troops of red howlers to indulge in nocturnal concerts, wherein
four, five or six old males will pipe up and begin to howl in
unison. The great volume of uncanny sound thus produced goes
rolling through the still forest, far and wide; and to the white
explorer who lies in his grass hammock in pitchy darkness,
fighting off the mosquitoes and loneliness, and wondering from
whence tomorrow's meals will come, the moral effect is gruesome
and depressing.
In captivity the youthful howler habitually growls and grumbles in
a way that is highly amusing, and the absurd pitch of the deep
bass voice issuing from so small an animal is cause for wonder.
It is natural that we should look closely to the apes and monkeys
for language, both by voice and sign. In 1891 there was a flood of
talk on "the speech of monkeys," and it was not until about 1904
that the torrent stopped. At first the knowledge that monkeys can
and do communicate to a limited extent by vocal sounds was hailed
as a "discovery"; but unfortunately for science, nothing has been
proved beyond the long-known fact that primates of a given species
understand the meaning of the few sounds and cries to which their
kind give utterance.
Thus far I have never succeeded in teaching a chimpanzee or
orangutan to say even as much as "Oh" or "Ah." Nothing seems to be
further from the mind of an orang than the idea of a new vocal
utterance as a means to an end.
Our Polly was the most affectionate and demonstrative chimpanzee
that I have ever seen, and her reaction to my voice was the best
that I have found in our many apes. She knew me well, and when I
greeted her in her own language, usually she answered me promptly
and vociferously. Often when she had been busy with her physical-
culture exercises and Delsartean movements on the horizontal bars
or the trapeze in the centre of her big cage, I tested her by
quietly joining the crowd of visitors in the centre of the room
before her cage, and saying to her: "Polly! Wah! Wah! Wah!"
Nearly every time she would stop short, give instant attention and
joyously respond "Wah! Wah! Wah!", repeating the cry a dozen times
while she clambered down to the lower front bars to reach me with
her hands. When particularly excited she would cry "_Who_-oo!
_Who_-oo! _Who_-oo!" with great clearness and vehemence,
the two syllables pitched four notes apart. This cry was uttered
as a joyous greeting, and also at feeding-time, in expectation of
food; but, simple as the task seems to be, I really do not know
how to translate its meaning into English. In one case it appears
to mean "How do you do?" and in the other it seems to stand for
"Hurry up!"
Polly screamed when angry or grieved, just like a naughty child;
and her face assumed the extreme of screaming-child expression.
She whined plaintively when coaxing, or when only slightly
grieved. With these four manifestations her vocal powers seemed to
stop short. Many times I opened her mouth widely with my fingers,
and tried to surprise her into saying "Ah," but with no result. It
seems almost impossible to stamp the vocal-sound idea upon the
mind of an orang-utan or chimpanzee. Polly uttered two distinct
and clearly cut syllables, and it really seemed as if her vocal
organs could have done more if called upon.
The cries of the monkeys, baboons and lemurs are practically
nothing more than squeals, shrieks or roars. The baboons (several
species, at least) bark or roar most explosively, using the
syllable "Wah!" It is only by the most liberal interpretation of
terms that such cries can be called language. The majority express
only two emotions--dissatisfaction and expectation. Every primate
calls for help in the same way that human beings do, by shrill
screaming; but none of them ever cry "Oh" or "Ah."
The only members of the monkey tribe who ever spoke to me in their
native forests were the big black langurs of the Animallai Hills
in Southern India. They used to glare down at us, and curse us
horribly whenever we met. Had we been big pythons instead of men
they could not have said "Confound you!" any more plainly or more
vehemently than they did.
In those museum-making days our motto was "All's fish that cometh
to net"; and we killed monkeys for their skins and skeletons the
same as other animals. My brown-skinned Mulcer hunters said that
the bandarlog hated me because of my white skin. At all events, as
we stalked silently through those forests, half a dozen times a
day we would hear an awful explosion overhead, startling to men
who were still-hunting big game, and from the middle zone of the
tree-tops black and angry faces would peer down at us. They said:
"Wah! Wah! Wah! Ah-^oo-oo-Aoo-oo-^oo-oo!" and it was nothing else
than cursing and blackguarding. How those monkeys did hate us! I
never have encountered elsewhere anything like it in monkey-land.
la 1902 there was a startling exhibition of monkey language at
our Primate House. That was before the completion of the Lion House.
We had to find temporary outdoor quarters for the big jaguar,
"Senor Lopez"; and there being nothing else available, we decided
to place him, for a few days only, in the big circular cage at the
north end of the range of outside cages. It was May, and the
baboons, red-faced monkeys, rhesus, green and many other of the
monkeys were in their outside quarters.
I was not present when Lopez was turned into the big: cage; but I
heard it. Down through the woods to the polar bears' den, a good
quarter of a mile, came a most awful uproar, made by many voices.
The bulk of it was a medley of raucous yells and screeches, above
which it was easy to distinguish the fierce, dog-like barks and
roars of the baboons.
We knew at once that Lopez had arrived. Hurrying up to the Primate
House, we found the wire fronts of the outside cages literally
plastered with monkeys and baboons, all in the wildest excitement.
The jaguar was in full view of them, and although not one out of
the whole lot, except the sapajous, ever had an ancestor who had
seen a jaguar, one and all recognized a hostile genus, and a
hereditary enemy.
And how they cursed him, reviled him, and made hideous faces at
him! The long-armed yellow baboons barked and roared until they
were heard half a mile away. The ugly-tempered macaques and
rhesus monkeys nearly burst with hatred and indignation. The row
was kept up for a long time, and the monkey language that was lost
to science on that occasion was, both in quantity and quality,
beyond compare.
Bear Language. In their native haunts bears are as little given
to loud talk as other animals; but in roomy and comfortable
captivity, where many are yarded together, they rapidly develop
vocal powers. Our bears are such cheerful citizens, and they do so
many droll things, that the average visitor works overtime in
watching them. I have learned the language of our bears
sufficiently that whenever I hear one of them give tongue I know
what he says. For example:
In warning or threatening an enemy, the sloth bear says: "Ach!
Ach! Ach!" and the grizzly says: "Woof! Woof!" A fighting bear
says: "Aw-aw-aw!" A baby's call for its mother is "Row! Row!" A
bear's distress call is: "Err-_wow_-oo-oo-oof!"
But even in a zoological park it is not possible for everyone to
recognize and interpret the different cries of bears, although the
ability to do so is sometimes of value to the party of the second
part. For example:
One day in February I was sitting in my old office in the Service
Building, engrossed in I know not what important and solemn
matter. The park was quiet; for the snow lay nine inches deep over
all. There were no visitors, and the maintenance men were
silently shovelling. Over the hill from the bear dens came the
voice of a bear. It said, as plainly as print: "Err-wow!" I said
to myself: "That sounds like a distress call," and listened to
hear it repeated.
Again it came: "Err-wow!"
I caught up my hat and hastened over the hill toward the bear
dens. On the broad concrete walk, about a hundred feet from the
dens, four men were industriously shovelling snow, unaware that
anything was wrong anywhere except on the pay-roll, opposite their
names.
Guided by the cries that came from "The Nursery" den, where six
yearling cubs were kept, I quickly caught sight of the trouble.
One of our park-born brown bear cubs was hanging fast by one
forefoot from the top of the barred partition. He had climbed to
the top of the ironwork, thrust one front paw through between two
of the bars (for bears are the greatest busybodies on earth), and
when he sought to withdraw it, the sharp point of a bar in the
overhang of the tree-guard had buried itself in the back of his
paw, and held him fast. It seemed as if his leg was broken, and
also dislocated at the shoulder. No wonder the poor little chap
squalled for help. His mother, on the other side of the partition,
was almost frantic with baffled sympathy, for she could do nothing
to help him.
It did not take more than a quarter of a minute to have several
men running for crowbars and other things, and within five minutes
from the discovery we were in the den ready for action. The little
chap gave two or three cries to let us know how badly it hurt his
leg to hang there, then bent his small mind upon rendering us
assistance.
First we lifted him up bodily, and held him, to remove the strain.
Then, by good luck, we had at hand a stout iron bar with a U-
shaped end; and with that under the injured wrist, and a crowbar
to spring the treacherous overhang, we lifted the foot clear, and
lowered little Brownie to the floor. From first to last he helped
us all he could, and seemed to realize that it was clearly "no
fair" to bite or scratch. Fortunately the leg was neither broken
nor dislocated, and although Brownie limped for ten days, he soon
was all right again.
After the incident had been closed, I gave the men a brief lecture
on the language of bears, and the necessity of being able to
recognize the distress call.
You can chase bison, elephants and deer all day without hearing a
single vocal utterance. They know through long experience the
value of silence.
The night after I shot my second elephant we noted an exception.
The herd had been divided by our onslaught. Part of it had gone
north, part of it south, and our camp for the night (beside the
dead tusker) lay midway between the two. About bedtime the
elephants began signalling to each other by trumpeting, and what
they sounded was "The assembly." They called and answered
repeatedly; and finally it became clear to my native followers
that the two herds were advancing to unite, and were likely to
meet in our vicinity. That particular trumpet call was different
from any other I have ever heard. It was a regular "Hello" signal-
call, entirely different from the "Tal-_loo_-e" blast which
once came from a feeding herd and guided us to it.
But it is only on rare occasions that elephants communicate with
each other by sound. I once knew a general alarm to be
communicated throughout a large herd by the sign language, and a
retreat organized and carried out in absolute silence. Their
danger signals to each other must have been made with their trunks
and their ears; but we saw none of them, because all the animals
were concealed from our view except when the two scouts of the
herd were hunting for us.
In captivity an elephant trumpets in protest, or through fear, or
through rage; but I am obliged to confess that as yet I cannot
positively distinguish one from the other.
Once in the Zoological Park I heard our troublesome Indian
elephant, Alice, roaring continuously as if in pain. It continued
at such a rate that I hurried over to the Elephant House to
investigate. And there I saw a droll spectacle. Keeper Richards
had taken Alice out into her yard for exercise and had ordered
her to follow him. And there he was disgustedly marching around
the yard while Alice marched after him at an interval of ten
paces, quite free and untrammeled, but all the while lustily
trumpeting and roaring in indignant protest. The only point at
which she was hurt was in her feelings.
Two questions that came into public notice concerning the voices
of two important American animals have been permanently settled
by "the barnyard naturalists" of New York.
The Voice of the American Bison. In 1907 the statement of George
Catlin, to the effect that in the fall the bellowing of buffalo
bulls on the plains resembled the muttering of distant thunder,
was denied and severely criticized in a sportsman's magazine. On
October 4 of that year, while we were selecting the fifteen bison
to be presented to the Government, to found the Wichita National
Bison Herd, four of us heard our best bull _bellow_ five
times, while another did the same thing four times.
The sound uttered was a deep-voiced roar,--not a grunt,--rising
and falling in measured cadence, and prolonged about four or five
seconds. It was totally different from the ordinary grunt of
hunger, or the menace of an angry buffalo, which is short and
sharp. In discussing the quality of the bellow, we agreed that it
could properly be called a low roar. It is heard only in the
rutting season,--the period described by Catlin,--and there is
good reason to believe that Caitlin's description is perfectly
correct.
The Scream of the Puma. This is a subject that will not lie still.
I presume it will recur every five years as long as pumas endure.
Uncountable pages of controversial letters have been expended upon
the question: "Does the puma ever scream, like a woman in
distress?"
The true answer is easy, and uncontestable by people whose minds
are open to the rules of evidence.
Yes; the adult female puma DOES scream,-_in the mating
season_, whenever it comes. It is loud, piercing, prolonged,
and has the agonized voice qualities of a boy or a woman screaming
from the pain of a surgical operation. To one who does not know
the source or the cause, it is nerve-racking. When heard in a
remote wilderness it must be truly fearsome. It says "Ow-w-w-w!"
over and over. We have heard it a hundred times or more, and it
easily carries a quarter of a mile.