THE AMERICAN MONKEYS AND THE LEMURS
A great many very curious monkeys live in America; and in several ways
they are very different from those of Africa and Asia.
Most of the Old World monkeys, for example, possess large cheek-pouches,
in which, after eating a meal, they can carry away nearly enough food
for another. No doubt you have often seen a monkey with its cheeks
perfectly stuffed out with nuts. But in the American monkeys these
pouches are never found.
Then no American monkey has those bare patches on its hind quarters,
which are present in all the monkeys of the Old World, with the
exception of the great apes, and which are often so brightly colored.
And, more curious still, no American monkey has a proper thumb. The
fingers are generally very long and strong; but the thumb is either
wanting altogether, or else it is so small that it cannot be of the
slightest use.
[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS OF MONKEYS.
1. Young Orang-utan "Dohong." 2. Barbary Ape.
3. Japanese Red-faced Monkey. 4. White-faced Sapajou.
5. Siamang Gibbon. 6. Chimpanzee "Polly."
_All lived in the New York Zoölogical Park._]
SPIDER-MONKEYS
Perhaps the most curious of all the American monkeys are the
spider-monkeys, which look very much like big black spiders when one
sees them gamboling among the branches of the trees. The reason is that
their bodies are very slightly built, and their arms and legs are very
long and slender, while the tail is often longer than the head and body
together, and looks just like an extra limb. And indeed it is used as an
extra limb, for it is prehensile; that is, it can be coiled round any
small object so tightly as to obtain a very firm hold. A spider-monkey
never likes to take a single step without first twisting the tip of its
tail round a branch, so that this member really serves as a sort of
fifth hand. Sometimes, too, the animal will feed itself with its tail
instead of with its paws. And it can even hang from a bough for
some little time by means of its tail alone, in order to pluck fruit
which would otherwise be out of its reach.
Owing partly, no doubt, to constant use, the last few inches of this
wonderful tail are quite bare underneath--without any hair at all. It is
worth while to remember, just here, that while in many American monkeys
the tail has this prehensile grasp, no monkey of the Old World is
provided with this convenience.
When a spider-monkey finds itself upon level ground, where its tail, of
course, is of no use to it, it always seems very uncomfortable. But it
manages to keep its balance as it walks along by holding the tail over
its back, and just turning it first to one side and then to the other,
as the need of the moment may require. It uses it, in fact, very much as
an acrobat uses his pole when walking upon the tight rope.
It is rather curious to find that while other monkeys are very fond of
nibbling the tips of their own tails, often making them quite raw,
spider-monkeys never do so. They evidently know too well how useful
those members are to injure them by giving way to such a silly
habit--which is even worse than biting one's nails.
When a spider-monkey is shot as it sits in a tree, it always coils its
tail round a branch at once. And even after it dies, the body will often
hang for several days suspended by the tail alone.
These monkeys spend almost the whole of their lives in the trees,
feeding upon fruit and leaves, and only coming down to the ground when
they want to drink. As a general rule they are dreadfully lazy
creatures, and will sit on a bough for hours together without moving a
limb. But when they are playful, or excited, they swing themselves to
and fro and dart from branch to branch, almost as actively as the
gibbons.
HOWLERS
Very much like the spider-monkeys are the howlers, which are very common
in the great forests of Central America. They owe their name to
the horrible cries which they utter as they move about in the trees by
night. You remember how the gibbons hold a kind of concert in the
tree-tops every morning and every evening, as though to salute the
rising and the setting sun. Well, the howlers behave in just the same
way, except that their concert begins soon after dark and goes on all
through the night. They have very powerful voices, and travelers who are
not used to their noise say that it is quite impossible to sleep in the
forest if there is a troop of howlers anywhere within two miles. And it
is hard to believe that the outcry comes from the throats of monkeys at
all. "You would suppose," says a famous traveler, "that half the wild
beasts of the forest were collecting for the work of carnage. Now it is
the tremendous roar of the jaguar, as he springs upon his prey; now it
changes to his terrible and deep-toned growlings, as he is pressed on
all sides by superior force; and now you hear his last dying groan
beneath a mortal wound. One of them alone is capable of producing all
these sounds; and if you advance cautiously, and get under the high and
tufted trees where he is sitting, you may have a capital opportunity of
witnessing his wonderful powders of producing these dreadful and
discordant sounds."
If one monkey alone is capable of roaring as loudly as a jaguar, think
what the noise must be when fifty or sixty howlers are all howling at
the same time. No wonder travelers find it difficult to sleep in the
forest.
Perhaps the best known of these monkeys is the red howler. Its color is
reddish brown, with a broad band of golden yellow running along the
spine, while its face is surrounded by bushy whiskers and beard.
THE OUAKARI
Another very curious American monkey is the red-faced ouakari. If you
were to see it from a little distance you would most likely think that
it was suffering from a bad attack of scarlet fever; for the face and
upper part of the neck are bright red in color, as though they had been
smeared with vermilion paint. And as its whiskers and beard are
sandy yellow, it is a very odd-looking animal.
If a ouakari is unwell, strange to say, the bright color of its face
begins to fade at once, and very soon after death it disappears
altogether.
Ouakaris are generally caught in a very singular way. They are only
found in a very small district on the southern bank of the Amazon River,
and spend their whole lives in the topmost branches of the tallest
trees, where it is quite impossible to follow them. And if they were
shot with a gun, of course they would almost certainly be killed. So
they are shot with a blowpipe instead. A slender arrow is dipped into a
kind of poison called wourali, which has been diluted to about half its
usual strength, and is then discharged at the animal from below. Only a
very slight wound is caused, but the poison is still so strong that the
ouakari soon faints, and falls from its perch in the branches. But the
hunter, who is carefully watching, catches it in his arms as it falls,
and puts a little salt into its mouth. This overcomes the effect of the
poison, and very soon the little animal is as well as ever.
Ouakaris which are caught in this way, however, are generally very
bad-tempered, and the gentle and playful little animals sometimes seen
in zoos have been taken when very young. They are very delicate
creatures and nearly always die after a few weeks of confinement.
THE COUXIA
If you were to see a couxia, or black saki, as it is often called, the
first thing that you would say would most likely be, "What an
extraordinary beard!" And your next remark would be, "Why, it looks as
if it were wearing a wig!" For its projecting black beard is as big as
that of the most heavily bearded man you ever saw, while on its head is
a great mass of long black hair, neatly parted in the middle, and
hanging down on either side, so that it looks just like a wig which has
been rather clumsily made.
The couxia is extremely proud of its beard, and takes very great
pains to prevent it from getting either dirty or wet. Do you remember
how the diana monkey holds its beard with one hand while drinking, so as
to keep it from touching the water? Well, the couxia is more careful
still, for it will not put its lips to the water at all, but carries it
to its mouth, a very little at a time, in the palm of its hand. But the
odd thing is that it seems rather ashamed of thinking so much about its
"personal appearance," and, if it knows that anybody is looking at it,
will drink just like any other monkey, and pretend not to care at all
about wetting its beard.
Like most of the sakis, the couxia is not at all a good-tempered animal,
and is apt to give way to sudden fits of fury. So savagely will it bite
when enraged, that it has been known to drive its teeth deeply into a
thick board.
THE DOUROUCOULIS
Sometimes these odd little animals are called night-monkeys, because all
day long they are fast asleep in a hollow tree, and soon after sunset
they wake up, and all night long are prowling about the branches of the
trees, searching for roosting birds, and for the other small creatures
upon which they feed. They are very active, and will often strike at a
moth or a beetle as it flies by, and catch it in their deft little paws.
And their eyes are very much like those of cats, so that they can see as
well on a dark night as other monkeys can during the day.
The eyes, too, are very large. If you were to look at the skull of a
douroucouli, you would notice that the eye-sockets almost meet in the
middle, only a very narrow strip of bone dividing them. And the hair
that surrounds them is set in a circle, just like the feathers that
surround the eyes of an owl.
But perhaps the most curious fact about these animals is that sometimes
they roar like jaguars, and sometimes they bark like dogs, and sometimes
they mew like cats.
There are several different kinds of these little monkeys, the most
numerous, perhaps, being the three-banded douroucouli, which has three
upright black stripes on its forehead. They are all natives of Brazil
and other parts of tropical America.
MARMOSETS
One of the prettiest--perhaps the very prettiest--of all monkeys is the
marmoset, which is found in the same part of the world. It is quite a
small animal, being no bigger in body than a common squirrel, with a
tail about a foot long. This tail, which is very thick and bushy, is
white in color, encircled with a number of black rings, while the body
is blackish with gray markings, and the face is black with a white nose.
But what one notices more than anything else is the long tufts of
snow-white hair upon the ears, which make the little animal look
something like a white-haired negro.
Marmosets are very easily tamed, and they are so gentle in their ways,
and so engaging in their habits, that if only they were a little more
hardy we should most likely see them in this country as often as we see
pet cats. But they are delicate little creatures, and cannot bear cold.
What they like to eat most of all is the so-called black beetle of our
kitchens. If only we could keep pet marmosets, they would very soon
clear our houses of cockroaches, as these troublesome creatures are
correctly called. They will spend hours in hunting for the insects, and
whenever they catch one they pull off its legs and wings, and then
proceed to devour its body.
When a marmoset is suddenly alarmed, it utters an odd little whistling
cry. Owing to this habit it is sometimes known as the ouistiti, or
tee-tee.
LEMURS
Relatives of the monkeys, and yet in many respects very different from
them, are those very strange animals, the lemurs, which are sometimes
called half-apes. The reason why that name has been given to them is
this: Lemurs by the ancients were supposed to be ghosts which wandered
about by night. Now most of the lemurs are never seen abroad by day.
Their eyes cannot bear the bright sunlight; so all day long they sleep
in hollow trees. But when it is quite dark they come out,
prowling about the branches so silently and so stealthily that they
really seem more like specters than living animals.
When you see them close, they do not look very much like monkeys. Their
faces are much more like those of foxes, and they have enormous staring
eyes without any expression.
The true lemurs are only found in Madagascar, where they are so numerous
that two or three at least may be found in every little copse throughout
the island. More than thirty different kinds are known, of which,
however, we cannot mention more than two.
The first of these is the ring-tailed lemur, which may be recognized at
once by the fact that its tail is marked just like that of the marmoset.
The head and body are shaped like those of a very small fox, and the
color of the fur is ashy gray, rather darker on the back, and rather
lighter underneath. It lives in troops in Central Madagascar, and every
morning and every night each troop joins in a little concert, just like
the gibbons and the howlers.
But, oddly enough, this lemur is seldom seen in the trees. It lives on
the ground, in rough and rocky places, and its hands and feet are made
in such a way, as to enable it to cling firmly to the wet and slippery
boulders. In fact, they are not at all unlike the feet of a house-fly.
The body is clothed with long fur, and when a mother lemur carries her
little one about on her back it burrows down so deep into her thick coat
that one can scarcely see it at all.
The ruffed lemur is the largest of these curious animals, being about as
big as a good-sized cat. The oddest thing about it is that it varies so
very much in color. Sometimes it is white all over, sometimes it is
partly white and partly black, and sometimes it is reddish brown.
Generally, however, the shoulders and front legs, the middle of the
back, and the tail are black, or very dark brown, while the rest of the
body is white. And there is a great thick ruff of white hairs all round
the face.
The eyes of this lemur are very singular. You know, of course, how the
pupil of a cat's eye becomes narrower and narrower in a strong
light, until at last it looks merely like an upright slit in the
eyeball. Well, that of the lemur is made in very much the same way,
except that the pupil closes up from above and below instead of from the
sides, so that the slit runs across the eyeball, and not up and down.
The slender loris may be described as a lemur without a tail, It is
found in the forests of Southern India and Ceylon. It is quite small,
the head and body being only about eight inches long, and in general
appearance it gives one rather the idea of a bat without any wings. In
color it is dark gray, with a narrow white stripe between the eyes.
This animal has a very queer way of going to sleep. It sits on a bough
and rolls itself up into a ball with its head tucked away between its
thighs, while its hands are tightly folded round a branch springing up
from the one on which it is seated. In this attitude it spends the whole
of the day. At night it hunts for sleeping birds, moving so slowly and
silently among the branches as never to give the alarm, and always
plucking off their feathers before it proceeds to eat them. Strange to
say, while many monkeys have no thumbs, the slender loris has no
forefingers, while the great toes on its feet are very long, and are
directed backward instead of forward.
LEMUROIDS
There are two lemur-like animals which are so extraordinary that each of
them has been put into a family all by itself.
The first of these is the tarsier, which is found in several of the
larger islands in the Malay Archipelago. Imagine an animal about as big
as a small rat, with a long tail covered thickly with hair at the root
and the tip, the middle part being smooth and bare. The eyes are
perfectly round, and are so big that they seem to occupy almost the
whole of the face--great staring eyes with very small pupils. The ears
are very long and pointed, and stand almost straight up from the head.
Then the hind legs are so long that they remind one of those of a
kangaroo, while all the fingers and all the toes have large round pads
under the tips, which seem to be used as suckers, and to have a
wonderful power of grasp. Altogether, the tarsier scarcely looks like an
animal at all. It looks like a goblin.
This singular creature seldom seems to walk. It hops along the branches
instead, just as a kangaroo hops on the ground. And when it wants to
feed it sits upright on its hind quarters, and uses its fore paws just
as a squirrel does.
Even more curious still is the aye-aye, of Madagascar, which has puzzled
naturalists very much. For its incisor teeth--the sharp cutting teeth,
that is, in the middle of each jaw--are formed just like those of the
rat and the rabbit. They are made not for cutting but for gnawing; and
as fast as they are worn away from above they grow from beneath. All of
its fingers are long and slender; but the middle one is longer than all
the rest, and is so thin that it looks like nothing but skin and bone.
Most likely this finger, which has a sharp little claw at the tip, is
used in hooking out insects from their burrows in the bark of trees. But
the aye-aye does not feed only upon insects, for it often does some
damage in the sugar plantations, ripping up the canes with its sharp
front teeth in order to get at the sweet juices. It is said at times to
catch small birds, either for the purpose of eating them or else to
drink their blood. And it seems also to eat fruit, while in captivity it
thrives on boiled rice.
The aye-aye is about as big as a rather small cat, and its great bushy
tail is longer than its head and body put together. It is not a common
animal, even in Madagascar, and its name of aye-aye is said to have been
given to it on account of the exclamations of surprise uttered by the
natives when it was shown to them for the first time by a European
traveler. But it is more likely that the name comes from the cry of the
animal, which is a sort of sharp little bark twice repeated.
Strange to say, the natives of Madagascar are much afraid of the
aye-aye. Of course it cannot do much mischief with its teeth or claws;
but they seem to think that it possesses some magic power by means of
which it can injure those who try to catch it, or even cause them to
die. So that they cannot be bribed to capture it even by the offer of a
large reward. Sometimes, however, they catch it by mistake, finding an
aye-aye in a trap which has been set for lemurs. In that case
they smear it all over with fat, which they think will please it very
much, and then allow it to go free.
The aye-aye is seldom seen in captivity, and when in that state it
sleeps all day long.