BABOONS
How can we tell a baboon from an ape?
That is quite easy. Just glance at his face. You will notice at once
that he has a long, broad muzzle, like that of a dog, with the nostrils
at the very tip. For this reason the baboons are sometimes known as
dog-faced monkeys. Then look at his limbs. You will see directly that
his arms are no longer than his legs. That is because he does not live
in the trees, as the apes do. He lives in rough, rocky places on the
sides of mountains, where there are no trees at all, so that arms like
those of the gibbons or the orang-utan would be of no use to him. He
does not want to climb. He wants to be able to scamper over the rocks,
and to run swiftly up steep cliffs where there is only just room enough
to gain a footing. So his limbs are made in such a way that he can go on
all fours like a dog, and gallop along so fast among the stones and
boulders that it is hard to overtake him.
THE CHACMA
Perhaps the best known of the baboons is the chacma, which is found in
South Africa. The animal is so big and strong, and so very savage, that
if he is put into a large cage in company with other monkeys, he always
has to be secured in a corner by a stout chain. A chacma that lived for
some years in the Crystal Palace was fastened up in this way, and the
smaller monkeys, who knew exactly how far his chain would allow him to
go, would sit about two inches out of his reach and eat their nuts in
front of him. This used to make the chacma furious, and after chattering
and scolding away for some time, as if telling his tormentors what
dreadful things he would do to them if ever he got the chance, he
would snatch up an armful of straw from the bottom of his cage and fling
it at them with both hands.
"If I fed the smaller monkeys with nuts, instead of giving them to him,"
says a visitor, "he would fling the straw at me."
Chacmas live in large bands among the South African mountains, and are
very difficult to watch, as they always post two or three of their
number as sentinels. As soon as any sign of danger appears one of the
watchers gives a short, sharp bark. All the rest of the band understand
the signal, and scamper away as fast as they can.
Sometimes, however, the animals will hold their ground. A hunter was
once riding over a mountain ridge when he came upon a band of chacmas
sitting upon a rock. Thinking that they would at once run away, he rode
at them, but they did not move, and when he came a little closer they
looked so threatening that he thought it wiser to turn back again.
An angry chacma is a very formidable foe, for it is nearly as big as a
mastiff, and ever so much stronger, while its great tusk-like teeth cut
like razors. When one of these animals is hunted with dogs it will often
gallop along until one of its pursuers has outstripped the rest, and
will then suddenly turn and spring upon him, plunge its teeth into his
neck, and, while its jaws are still clenched, thrust the body of its
victim away. The result is that the throat of the poor dog is torn
completely open, and a moment later its body is lying bleeding on the
ground, while the chacma is galloping on as before.
These baboons are very mischievous creatures, for they come down from
their mountain retreats by night in order to plunder the orchards. And
so cautiously is the theft carried out, that even the dogs on guard know
nothing of what is going on, and the animals nearly always succeed in
getting away.
When it cannot obtain fruit, the chacma feeds chiefly upon the bulb of a
kind of iris, which it digs out of the ground with its paw, and then
carefully peels. But it is also fond of insects, and may often be seen
turning over stones, and catching the beetles which were lying hidden
beneath them. It will even eat scorpions, but is careful to pull off
their stings before doing so.
THE MANDRILL
Another interesting baboon is the mandrill, which one does not often see
in captivity. It comes from Western Africa. While it is young there is
little that is remarkable about it. But the full-grown male is a
strange-looking animal, for on each of its cheeks there is a swelling as
big as a large sausage, which runs upward from just above the nostrils
to just below the eyes. These swellings are light blue, and have a
number of grooves running down them, which are colored a rich purple,
while the line between them, as well as the tip of the nose, is bright
scarlet. The face is very large in proportion to the size of the body,
and the forehead is topped by a pointed crest of upright black hair,
while under the chin is a beard of orange yellow. On the hind quarters
are two large bare patches of the same brilliant scarlet as the nose. So
you see that altogether a grown-up male mandrill is a very odd-looking
creature.
The female mandrill has much smaller swellings on her face. They are
dull blue in color, without any lines of either purple or scarlet.
Almost all monkeys are subject at times to terrible fits of passion, but
the mandrill seems to be the worst tempered of all. Fancy an animal
dying simply from rage! It sounds impossible, yet the mandrill has been
known to do so. And the natives of the countries in which it lives are
quite as much afraid of it as they are of a lion.
Yet it has once or twice been tamed. In the Natural History Museum, at
South Kensington, London, is the skin of a mandrill which lived for some
years in that city in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. His
name was "Jerry," and he was so quiet and contented that he was
generally known as "Happy Jerry." He learned to smoke a pipe. He was
very fond of a glass of beer. He even used to sit at table for his
meals, and to eat from a plate by means of a knife and fork. And he
became so famous that he was actually taken down to Windsor to appear
before King George the Fourth!
There is another baboon called the drill, which is not unlike the
mandrill in many respects, but the swellings on its face are not nearly
as large, and they remain black all through its life. It is a much
smaller animal, too, and looks, on the whole, very much like a mandrill
while it is quite young.
THE GELADA
Almost as odd-looking as the mandrill, though in quite a different way,
is the gelada, which is found in Abyssinia. Perhaps we may compare it to
a black poodle with a very long and thick mane upon its neck and
shoulders. When the animal sits upright this mane entirely covers the
upper part of its shoulders, so that a gelada looks very much as if it
were wearing a coachman's mantle of long fur.
In some parts of Abyssinia geladas are very numerous, living among the
mountains in bands of two or three hundred. Like the chacmas in South
Africa, they are very mischievous in the orchards and plantations,
always making their raids by night. It is said that on one occasion they
actually stopped no less a personage than a Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,
and prevented him from proceeding on his journey for several hours.
The story is, that as the Duke was traveling in Abyssinia his road lay
through a narrow pass, overhung with rocky cliffs; that one of his
attendants, catching sight of a number of geladas upon the rocks above,
fired at them; that the angry baboons at once began to roll down great
stones upon the path below, and that before they could be driven off
they succeeded in completely blocking the road, so that the Duke's
carriage could not be moved until the stones had been cleared away.
Whether this story is altogether true or not, we cannot say. But there
can be no doubt that geladas are very warlike animals. Not only will
they attack human beings who interfere with them, they also attack other
baboons. When they are raiding an orchard, for instance, they sometimes
meet with a band of Arabian baboons, which have come there for the same
purpose as themselves. A fierce battle then takes place. First of all
the geladas try to roll down stones upon their rivals. Then they rush
down and attack them with the utmost fury, and very soon the
orchard is filled with maddened baboons, tumbling and rolling over one
another, biting and tearing and scratching each other, and shrieking
with furious rage.
The Arabian baboon itself is a very interesting creature, for it is one
of the animals which were venerated by the ancient Egyptians. They
considered it as sacred to their god Thoth, and treated it with the
greatest possible honor; and when it died they made its body into a
mummy, and buried it in the tombs of the kings. Sometimes, too, they
made use of the animal while it lived, for they would train it to climb
a fig-tree, pluck the ripe figs, and hand them down to the slaves
waiting below.
These baboons sometimes travel in great companies. The old males always
go first, and are closely followed by the females, those which have
little ones carrying them upon their backs. As they march along, perhaps
one of the younger animals finds a bush with fruit upon it, and stops to
eat a little. As soon as they see what he is doing, a number of others
rush to the spot, and begin fighting for a share. But generally one of
the old males hears the noise, boxes all their ears and drives them
away, and then sits down and eats the fruit himself.
THE PROBOSCIS-MONKEY
Next we come to a group of animals called dog-shaped monkeys, and the
most curious of them all is the proboscis-monkey. This is the only
monkey which really possesses a nose. Some monkeys have nostrils only,
and some have muzzles, but the proboscis-monkey has not merely a nose,
but a very long nose, so long, in fact, that when one of these monkeys
is leaping about in the trees it is said always to keep its nose
carefully covered with one hand, so that it may not be injured by a
knock against a bough.
Strange to say, it is only the male animal that has this very long nose,
and even he does not get it until he is grown up. Indeed, you can tell
pretty well how old a male proboscis-monkey is just by glancing at his
nose. When he is young it is quite small. As he gets older it grows
bigger. And by the time that he reaches his full size it is three
or four inches long. Naturally this long nose gives him a very strange
appearance, and his great bushy whiskers, which meet under his chin,
make him look more curious still.
We do not know much about the habits of the proboscis-monkey. In Borneo,
its native country, it lives in the thick forests, and is said to be
almost as active among the branches of the trees as the gibbons
themselves. The Dyaks do not believe that it is a monkey at all, but say
that it is really a very hairy man, who insists on living in the forests
in order to escape paying taxes.
THE HANUMAN
The hanuman, another of the dog-shaped monkeys, lives in India, where it
is treated with almost as much reverence as the Arabian baboon was in
Egypt in days of old.
The natives do not exactly worship these monkeys, but they think that
they are sacred to the god Hanuman, from whom they take their name.
Besides that, they believe that these animals are not really monkeys at
all, but that their bodies are inhabited by the souls of great and holy
men, who lived and died long ago, but have now come back to earth again
in a different form. So no Hindu will ever kill a hanuman monkey or
injure it in any way, no matter how much mischief it may do. The
consequence is that these animals are terrible thieves. They know
perfectly well that no one will try to kill them, or even to trap them,
so they come into the villages, visit the bazaars, and help themselves
to anything to which they may take a fancy. Yet all that the
fruit-sellers will do is to place thorn-bushes on the roofs of their
shops to prevent the monkeys from sitting there.
European sportsmen, however, often find the hanuman very useful. For its
greatest enemy is the tiger, and when one of these animals is being
hunted a number of hanumans will follow it wherever it goes, and point
it out to the beaters by their excited chattering.
Next to the tiger, the hanuman dislikes snakes more than any living
creature, and when it finds one of these reptiles asleep it will
creep cautiously up to it, seize it by the neck, and then rub its head
backward and forward upon a branch till its jaws have been completely
ground away.
The hanuman belongs to a group of monkeys which are called langurs. They
may be known by their long and almost lanky bodies, by the great length
of their tails, and by the fact that they do not possess the
cheek-pouches which many other monkeys find so useful. And it is very
curious that while the arms of the apes are longer than their legs, the
legs of the langurs--which are almost as active in the trees--are longer
than their arms.
If you ever happen to see a hanuman you may know it at once by its black
face and feet, and by its odd eyebrows, which are very bushy, and
project quite away in front of its face.
THE GUENONS
We now come to the guenons, of which there are a great many kinds. Let
us take two of these as examples of the rest. The first is the green
monkey, which comes from the great forests of Western Africa. You may
know it by sight, because it is the commonest monkey in every menagerie.
It is one of the monkeys, too, which organ-grinders so often carry about
on their organs. But they do not care to have it except when it is quite
young, for although it is very gentle and playful until it reaches its
full size, it afterward becomes fierce and sullen, and is apt at any
moment to break out into furious passion.
Like most of the guenons, green monkeys go about in droves, each under
the leadership of an old male, who wins and keeps his position by
fighting all his rivals. Strange to say, each of these droves seems to
have its own district allotted to it; and if by any chance it should
cross its boundary, the band into whose territory it has trespassed will
at once come and fight it, and do their utmost to drive it back.
Wouldn't it be interesting to know how the animals mark out their own
domains, and how they let one another know just how far they will be
permitted to go?
Our second example of the guenons is the diana monkey, which you
may at once recognize by its long, pointed, snow-white beard. It seems
to be very proud of this beard, and while drinking holds it carefully
back with one hand, in order to prevent it from getting wet.
Why is it called the "diana" monkey? Because of the curious white mark
upon its forehead, which is shaped like the crescent which the ancients
used to think was borne by the goddess Diana. It is a very handsome
animal, for its back is rich chestnut brown in color, and the lower part
of its body is orange yellow, while between the two is a band of pure
white. Its face and tail and hands and feet are black. It is a very
gentle animal, and is easily tamed.
THE MANGABEYS
These are very odd-looking monkeys, for they all have white eyelids,
which are very conspicuous in their sooty-black faces. Indeed, they
always give one a kind of idea that they must spend their whole lives in
sweeping chimneys.
They are among the most interesting of all monkeys to watch, for they
are not only so active and full of life that they scarcely seem able to
keep still, but they are always twisting their bodies about into all
sorts of strange attitudes. When in captivity they soon find out that
visitors are amused by their antics, and are always ready to go through
their performances in order to obtain a nut or a piece of cake.
Then they have an odd way, when they are walking about their cages, of
lifting their upper lips and showing their teeth, so that they look just
as if they were grinning at you. And instead of carrying their tails
behind them, as monkeys generally do, or holding them straight up in the
air, they throw them forward over the back, so that the tip comes just
above the head.
Only four kinds of mangabey are known, and they are all found in Western
Africa.
MACAQUES
There is one more family of monkeys found in the Old World which we must
mention, and that consists of the animals known as macaques. They
are natives of Asia, with one exception, and that is the famous magot,
the only monkey which lives wild in any part of Europe. It inhabits the
Rock of Gibraltar, and though it is not nearly as common as it used to
be, there is still a small band of these animals with which nobody is
allowed to interfere. They move about the Rock a good deal. When the
weather is warm and sunny, they prefer the side that faces the
Mediterranean, but as soon as a cold easterly wind springs up they all
travel round to the western side, which is much more sheltered. They
always keep to the steepest parts of the cliff, and it is not easy to
get near enough to watch them. Generally the only way to see them at all
is by means of a telescope.
The magot is sometimes known as the Barbary ape, although of course it
is not really an ape at all. But it is very common in Barbary, and two
or three times, when the little band of monkeys on the Rock seemed in
danger of dying out, a few specimens have been brought over from Africa
just to make up the number.
The only other member of this family that we can mention is the
crab-eating macaque, which is found in Siam and Burma. It owes its name
to its fondness for crabs, spending most of its time on the banks of
salt-water creeks in order to search for them. But perhaps the strangest
thing about it is that it is a splendid swimmer, and an equally good
diver, for it has been known to jump overboard and to swim more than
fifty yards under water, in its attempts to avoid recapture.