CHAPTER IX.THE DOG-SHAPED MONKEYS (concluded).THE BABOONS.
The Second Division of the Baboons—THEMANDRILL—Easily distinguished from the rest—Peculiar Appearance and Colour of the Face—The Cheek-ridges—Noticed by the Ancients—Brutality of its Disposition—“Jerry” at the Surrey Gardens—Their Wild State—Anatomical Peculiarities—The Back-bone and Liver—THEDRILL—Distinguished from the Mandrill—Probable Antiquity of these Baboons—Theories of their Relationship to other Animals—THEBLACKBABOON—Its Locality and Description—Probably a Forest Ape—General Summary of the Dog-shaped Quadrumana and Classification of the Group
The Second Division of the Baboons—THEMANDRILL—Easily distinguished from the rest—Peculiar Appearance and Colour of the Face—The Cheek-ridges—Noticed by the Ancients—Brutality of its Disposition—“Jerry” at the Surrey Gardens—Their Wild State—Anatomical Peculiarities—The Back-bone and Liver—THEDRILL—Distinguished from the Mandrill—Probable Antiquity of these Baboons—Theories of their Relationship to other Animals—THEBLACKBABOON—Its Locality and Description—Probably a Forest Ape—General Summary of the Dog-shaped Quadrumana and Classification of the Group
THISlarge Baboon is the principal one with a very short stump of a tail, and may be distinguished from all others, with and without long tails, by the enormous swellings of its cheeks on each side of its nose, and their odd colouring. In general shape it resembles the rest of the genus, but perhaps its head and chest may be more bulky, and its limbs shorter and stouter than the others, when it has attained its full growth. A full-grown male measures five feet when standing upright, and the colour of the hair is a light olive-brown above and silvery-grey beneath, and the chin is decorated with a small pointed yellow beard. It has a “brutus” in the form of a great tuft of hair on the top of the head, Nature having brushed up the hair off the temples and forehead upwards, in a peak-shaped ridge on the crown, giving a triangular appearance to the whole. The ears are naked and pointed near their tips, and their colour is bluish-black. The muzzle and the lips are large, and as it were swollen and projecting, and the former is not only long, but is surrounded above with an elevated rim or border, and cut short or truncated like that of a Hog. But the most extraordinary features of this ugliest of faces are the projections on each side of the nose. These are formed by swellings of the cheek-bones along the base of the great canine teeth, and the skin covering them is ribbed, and has ridges which are alternately light blue, scarlet, and deep purple in colour, contrasting strangely with the other tints of the hair. To add to the strange look, the eyes are deeply sunken, and their colour, a deep hazel, contrasts with a streak of vermilion, which reaches down each side of the nose to the lip, and extends upwards in the neighbourhood of the brows, which are large and “beetled.” A forehead would clearly be out of place in such a brute, and therefore it recedes rapidly above the eyes, and is lost in the great tuft of hair.
The canine teeth are immense, and when the animal is enraged they and the othersare shown, their beautiful white colour contrasting with the strange medley of tints around them. On the body the hair is very bristly, but the hands and feet are naked, and as if to add to the many peculiarities of the Mandrill, they are small in relation to the vigorous-looking limbs and short chest.
So curiously decorated a brute living just outside the civilisation of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, was sure to attract notice, especially as they were brought into Europe by the African merchants. Aristotle appears to have been struck with the hog-like look of the head, and he called it by the name of Hog-Ape (Chœropithecus), and all writers, from the earliest to the latest, have contributed opinions founded on very doubtful facts, to the detriment of its character. All the iniquities, abominations, and scandals that have been coupled with the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, and Orang-utan, are linked on fourfold to the character of the ill-favoured Mandrill, and this is decided to be quite correct by the natives of the Gold Coast and the inland regions, where it lives a most dreaded and independent life.
There is no doubt that the Mandrill is extremely brutal in its adult age, and that the males are ferocious and disgusting, there being no particular choice as regards ugliness and oddity of decoration between their faces and sterns, whose callosities are vast. But the young are not so, and probably the quieter tints of the female are associated with a gentler disposition. Both the young and the females have shorter muzzles than the adult males, and they have neither the great cheek-swellings nor the colouring of the face; in fact, it is only when the great eye teeth are being cut by the males, as evidences of its age and powers, that the irregular decoration begins to be noticed.
The question of the colouring and ornamentation of Monkeys will again be noticed in the summary at the close of the description of the Quadrumana, and it is therefore only now necessary to remark that the most grotesque-looking and ferocious Mandrill is especially beautiful in the eyes of his partner, who, with humble colours and softened looks, admires her fractious spouse. His colours glow with love and flame under the influence of passion, and probably no more curious-looking piece of living polychrome was ever seen than “Jerry,” at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, when he got in a rage after drinking gin and water. “Jerry” was old and had gained all his ornaments, but had lost his levity, fur, and amiability. Broderip writes of him: “He liked the good things of Mandrill life, but would not put up with its troubles. He was a glutton, and ferocious in the extreme. Most kindly he would receive your nuts, and at the same time, if possible, would scratch or pinch your fingers, and then snarl and grunt in senseless anger. He would sit in a little arm-chair, and would wrap himself up in a blanket, knowing what was coming, the bribe being either a cup of tea, which he took, as people used to say, ‘quite like any Christian,’ or, what was much nicer in his eyes, a glass of weak grog and a pipe. If he was disturbed in his enjoyment he was not pleasant, and if a shower of nuts came in upon his feast, especially if it occurred after the gin and water, he came out in his true colours. Cramming the nuts into his mouth, and stowing them away rapidly in his cheek-pouches, this giving an unusual size to his jaws, he would howl and march about, snarling and grunting. His little eyes glared, his nose and cheeks became swollen, and their colours most vivid. His hair stood out, and he walked as it were on the very tips of his fingers and toes, presenting every now and then vermilion behind, which a distinguished French anatomist has said was not without elegance.”
He was under the control of the keeper, who had, however, to take care that he was not bitten unawares, for “Jerry” was deceitful and treacherous in the extreme. It is said that he once dined in the presence of royalty, and that he was one of the many higher animals who were invited to dine George the Fourth at Windsor when his Majesty required novel amusements and unusual excitement. Doubtless he behaved himself, and contributed as much, and probably more, than any guest, to the royal enjoyment, and he appears to have enjoyed his hashed venison himself. There was no mistake about his enjoying his pipe, for he smoked as slowly and sedately as the gravest of his visitors at the Zoological Gardens.
Had “Jerry” been let alone, and had he remained in Africa at liberty, doubtless he would have in time headed his troops as patriarch and watchman, and would have led them in many an expedition against the fields of corn and the plantations of fruit-trees. For the Mandrills, in a state of nature, behave much like the other Baboons. They are, however, very fond of insects, large and small,inoffensive and venomous, and they lift up stone after stone in their search for them, enjoying Scorpions as much as anything else. Probably they can throw a stone, and this, coupled with their aspect, their assembling in troops to defy the farmers and watchers, and their attacking Dogs without mercy, has given them the bad character in the eyes of the negro race which they appear to have had from time immemorial. It is said that they annoy the Elephants so much that they will not remain in the same district; but it is doubtful whether the great proboscidean could flourish where the Mandrill cares most to live, for he is neither a forest nor a plain Ape, but, like the rest of the Baboons, travels far and wide from his rocky home. They associate in bands like the other Cynocephali, and behave as they do when plundering; but it appears to be true that the Mandrills are often found in small numbers, and that then they devote themselves to hunting for insects rather than to predatory excursions. Very little is known about their habits in the wild state in Africa, and it is evident that they are avoided rather than watched by the Blacks.
MANDRILL.
MANDRILL.
Although, from the scantiness of reliable information regarding their habits when living at liberty, the Mandrill is of no great interest to the ordinary naturalist, still, the comparative anatomist, having had the advantage of dissecting both tame and wild specimens, considers this Monkey, which is ordinarily placed last in the scheme of the classification of the Old World kinds, of very great interest. For, placed low down in the Monkey scale, and remote from the man-like Apes, it approaches the flesh-eating animals, or Carnivora, in many points of its construction, and, if not exactly, still approximately, and in their general character.
YOUNG MANDRILL. (From a Sketch at the Zoological Gardens.)
YOUNG MANDRILL. (From a Sketch at the Zoological Gardens.)
The back-bone, for instance, although its curves recall those of man, is eminently that of the brute, that is to say, it greatly resembles that of many kinds of quadrupeds. The pieces, or vertebræ of the back (dorsal) have, of course, spines, but they do not slope backwards; on the contrary, those of the last three are directed forward; and the loin, or lumbar vertebræ, are six or seven in number,and there is an arrangement by which their general strength is increased, by a forking of the joint-bearing processes which unite them together by the formation of a bony structure. These peculiarities connect the Mandrill, whose common position is on all-fours, with the inferior quadrupeds, for they exist in them. Then there is no true sacrum bone, but two or three back pieces (sacral vertebræ), form a short conical sacrum—one attached separately to the hip-bone on either side. This is like the arrangement in the Carnivora. The hip-bones are long, narrow, and deeply excavated behind, or rather externally; the front of the bony girdle of the loins (the pelvis) is long; and the bones (the ischial) on which the Mandrill sits are very broad and semicircular. Now, these three apparently simple matters of anatomical detail are not only of interest to those who recognise the analogies of the same parts in different animals, for they relate to means, to ends, and commend themselves to the consideration of ordinary observers. The shape of the hip-bone on each side, so unlike that of man and the man-like Apes, perhaps the Gibbons excepted, depends upon the relation of the muscles which move the hind-quarters and their bones, and the hollow in the hip is well filled up by those which pass backwards to the thigh. The position of those muscles assists the motion of running on all-fours and of springing. The length of the girdle (the front of the pelvis or pubic bones) relates to the dimensions of the digestive and reproductive organs. The large size of the haunch-bones, or rather of their ends, is due to their being covered by the great pad-like hard parts, or callosities, on which the creature sits very constantly. Instead of having the soft muscles so familiar to the human anatomist well and largely developed there, it has this mass of fat cellular tissue and coloured skin attached to a curved bone, the whole being a most comfortable seat, and very frequently used by this restless Monkey. The bones of the tail are few in number, for it is short, but the muscles which wag the organ in Monkeys, in which it is of some size, are still present at its root. There is a capacious chest in the Mandrill, but its bones, or rather the ribs which partly form it are, as it were, pressed in at the sides, so that it is not round like that of the higher Apes, but rather long and flat at the sides, and thus resembles thechest of the Semnopitheci on the one hand, and that of the lower four-footed animals on the other. It has good lungs and a strong heart, and the intestines, stomach, and liver do not occupy as much space relatively as in the genera of Monkeys already described.
There is a singular approach in the conformation of the fore hand to the paw of the Carnivora, and a great departure, so far as resemblance is concerned, from that of man in the Mandrill. It is produced by the relative length of the bones which unite those of the wrist to those of the fingers; for these so-called metacarpal bones, four in number, leaving out that of the thumb, are of the same length, and not unequal, as in the higher Apes and in man. Therefore, the middle finger of the Mandrill is not longer than the others, and hence the peculiarity of the hand as a whole. This is noticed in some Macaques to a certain extent.
There is one anatomical peculiarity of the body which may also be noticed, as it relates to the movements of the animals, and their trotting and galloping on all-fours. The pieces of the back-bone in the neck have processes which project outwards (transverse processes), and in the Mandrill they have a triangular shape, and a ridge exists upon them, which is the representative of a very distinct piece of bone in most of the other Mammalia. Now, this structure appears to have to do with the attachment of a muscle which is also present in the Macaques, and which reaches from these transverse processes to the spine of the blade-bone (scapula), and its duty is probably to draw this bone forward, and to assist the fore limb in progression.[68]
SKULL OF THE MANDRILL.
SKULL OF THE MANDRILL.
Most of the peculiar muscular arrangements of the Cynomorpha previously described are repeated in the Mandrill; but it has some which are of much interest. Thus, the great chest muscle (pectoralis major), which reaches in the higher Apes from the front of the chest to the upper arm-bone, is very large in the Mandrill, and is divided into three portions, and the great air sac of the neck projects between them. There are also muscular fibres connected with the back, which assist the animal in pulling back its upper arm, and they give force not only to blows, scratchings, and tearings, but also velocity to the movements of the whole limb in moving along the ground. Strangely enough, there is a curious resemblance between the muscles of the thumb of the Mandrill and of the Orang-utan, two of them being united together, so as to give the thumb seven instead of eight; the tendons of these muscles (the long adductor and the short extensor) remain, however, separate. This is a part of the anatomy which recalls the corresponding structures in the Carnivora, and indicates the restricted amount of movement in the thumb of the lower Apes and Monkeys.
Having a good digestion, the Mandrill has a tolerably large liver, but it is separated into several lobes, or pieces, which are more in number than those of the other genera; but as it is partly insectivorous in its diet, there is no necessity for a very full-sized large intestine, and this is not furnished with the appendix noticed in the man-shaped Apes.
Finally, as regards the skull, it may be said, that that of a large adult Mandrill is the strongest created; so huge are the jaws, face, teeth, and crest-ridges, that one wonders where its brain can be put in life. The true brain-case is indeed small, and is encroached upon inside by the back of the orbits, whence the eye looks out under the “beetle-brows.”
The forehead bone is triangular-looking, and there is no ascending of the forehead, the bone being, as it were, crushed flat, so as to make a triangular space with the brows in front. Ridges exist on the sides of this space, and pass backwards to the occiput, where they meet side crests from the ear-bones. The occiput is stuck up in a singular manner, and the surface of the bone is strongly marked by the muscles which draw the head backwards. Of course the singular part of the skull is the huge ribbed prominence of the upper jaw-bone on the side of the nose, and the great upper canine teeth.
Very little is known about the habits of another Baboon which is found on the coast of Guinea, and which is called the Drill. But it has been described, drawn, and stuffed frequently, and has been called Wood Baboon, the Cinereous Baboon, and the Yellow Baboon. The natives evidently confound it with the young Mandrill; and as it is good-tempered when young they capture specimens for European menageries, where they are commonly to be seen. It appears to be a modified Mandrill, like it in temper, and in its disagreeable adult qualities; it has not, however, the grand coloration of the face, although the prominences of the cheek-bones are present.
The Drill is smaller than the Mandrill, and has a short stumpy tail, occasionally two inches in length, covered with bristly hair, and ending in a brush. The colour of the hair is greener than that of the Mandrill, and underneath it is whiter and more silvery, whilst there is much light-brown hair on the upper parts of the limbs. It has whiskers, which are brushed back, and a small orange-coloured beard; moreover, the general tint of the skin beneath the hair is dark-blue, and the dinginess is relieved by scarlet callosities.
The Baboons of Africa certainly lead very exceptional lives for Monkeys. They are the Apes of the rock and plain, and they would be out of place, on account of their method of moving and their general habits, in the dense tropical forests and swampy jungle. Their structure and general conformation are especially suited for their mode of life, and their courage, numbers, and instincts avail them against their common enemies—enemies which the contented dwellers in the woods, such as the Troglodytes, have not. Probably the Baboons are of vast antiquity, for the age of the African hills is great, even geologically speaking. The tree disappears and the woods die away sooner or later, whilst the rock merely crumbles. Certainly the life of the Gorilla and other great Apes is intimately associated and connected with the life of the great trees and the duration of the vast woods of Equatorial Africa. Destroy them, and the days of the Troglodytes would be at an end. But the rocks and hills are not so transient as the woods, and the Baboon will exist long after the higher Apes are extinct. Did he exist before them, and is he the link between them and a still less monkey-like animal? These are questions whose import has not escaped the active mind of one of the most eminent of anatomists, for Gratiolet believes in the descent of the Gorilla from the Baboon, and of course that the last preceded the first in time.
The possibility of the descent of the Cynocephali from a flesh-eater only rests upon the resemblance of some of the structures of the Mandrill, for instance, to those of some of the Carnivora. The dog-like appearance of the Baboon of course depends upon its long snout and jaws, but these are very different in their anatomy and construction from those of the Dog. The Cynocephali (Baboons) are the lowest of the Old World Monkeys, but their next-of-kin in the downward classification are not now existing. They are more remote from the Lemurs, which come next below as Quadrumana, than they are from the great Apes.
Hence the Baboon stands very much by himself. He may have possibly very distant relationship with some long-lost forms—creatures which lived geological ages since, and in which the ferocity of the Carnivora was combined with some of the structures of the Monkey; or—and this is the more probable—he may have once lived as a denizen of the forest, and the symbol of Thoth may really have merited the name of Hamadryas. The forest may have succumbed to changes in the physical geography, and the survivors of the slow extinction of the trees had to lead different lives and assume other habits. The Cercopitheci (the Guenons) may have been the old forest Monkeys, and the Macaques, those half Baboons, may be their modified descendants in a line which led to the true Baboon. If this be true, the dog-like characters of the Cynocephali were given by nature during their progressive alterations from the condition of Tree Monkeys.
There is a small Baboon which is very interesting to the student of the distribution of animals over the surface of the globe and to geologists. It is jet-black in colour, there being hardly a trace of dark-brown in its long hair, and hence it has been called the Black Baboon, orCynocephalus niger.
These animals are found in considerable numbers in the great island of Celebes, situated in the sea between Australia and the mainland of Asia, and they have been introduced by man into the Philippine Islands and Batchian. They are, therefore, extra-African, but they are true short-tailed Baboons, nevertheless.
The Black Baboon, when full grown, is about two feet in length, and the tail measures about an inch. Its face and neck are not covered, but all the rest of the body, the head, and the limbs, have a long black fur, and the hair of the top of the head runs up into a tall long half-curl. The face is long and very melancholy-looking, and the cheeks are smaller, but coloured black on either side of the nose. But the nose does not extend, like that of a Dog, quite to the end of the muzzle, for the creature has a decided upper lip, and the division or septum of the nostrils is long and rather broad, so that these openings look downwards and outwards. The seat has a scarlet tint, and the tail is a mere knob.
DRILL.
DRILL.
Nothing is known about the wild habits of the Black Baboon, but it appears to be a wood Ape, and it certainly has not the impudence or the bold aggravating courage of the African Baboon in confinement. They are frequently brought over to Europe, and may be watched in most zoological gardens. They are capital climbers, but they like to remain a great deal on the ground, sitting upright on their haunches in a very sedate manner. Associating very well with other Monkeys, they appear rather affectionate in disposition than otherwise, and may be seen looking very quiet and stately whilst some more agile companion rubs his face and lips against theirs, apparently to their gratification. The distinction between the Black Baboon and the African kinds is slight, and they all belong to the same genus,[71]and therefore must have had a common parent in remote times. But the black one lives far away in the Asiatic islands, surrounded by animals different from those which live in Africa, many of which, nevertheless, have a curious African look about them. Now, the geologist asserts that there are proofs of the former connection by land of the mainland of Asia, Hindostan, andAfrica. The facts upon which this assertion is made will be stated in several consecutive chapters of this work, and indeed particular allusions to them from time to time will be inevitable. It is only necessary to mention here that the separation of the two great masses of land occurred about the time of the elevation of the Himalayas as a mountain chain, and they are about as old as the Alps of Europe. Hence the Baboons, found as they are in the separated districts, existed as a united genus before those vast changes. If the Black Baboon is a forest dweller—and there appears to be good reason to believe that this is the case—there is something more than simple conjecture in the suggestion that the whole of the Baboons once lived in forest lands.
BLACK BABOON.
BLACK BABOON.
The Cynomorpha, or Dog-shaped Quadrumana, include the genera Semnopithecus, Colobos, Macacus, and Cynocephalus, and their distinctions and some of their anatomical peculiarities have been noticed, and they may be summarised as follows:—As a group, the Cynomorpha are more fitted for running on all-fours than for any other method of progression, and their construction relates to that of such running animals as the Cats as well as to that of the Monkeys. Thus the arm-bone (humerus) is unlike that of the man-shaped Apes; it is bent so as to be slightly convex forwards, and the top where the round joint is—the head of the bone—look upwards and backwards, and not upwards and inwards as it does in the Gorilla. The forearm bones, longer than the arm-bone, are modified, and the most movable of them (the radius) is so much jointed to the arm-bone that the power of moving the lower part of the forearm upwards and downwards (of pronation and supination) is much diminished. There is the extra bone in the wrist, making nine, and one of the bones sticks out behind (pisiform), so as to form a kind of heel to the hand. The thumb is complete except in the Colobi, but it is short in proportion to the other fingers; and in some the third and fourth fingers are equal in length, thus departing from the Ape, whose third finger is always longest, resembling rather that of beasts of prey. The blade-bone differs much from that of the Anthropomorpha, being longer and narrower, and the portion above its spine, instead of being large, as it is in such ponderous climbers, is small. All these arrangements relate to the running on all-fours, the palms of the hands being applied to the ground. Moreover, in order that the hand should thus resemble a foot in its duties, some of its muscles simulate those of the foot and fore-leg. Thus a muscle which extends the metacarpal bone of the thumb (the bone between the wrist and the thumb under “the ball”), and keeps the thumb flat on the ground in running, and tends to pull it up, has a slip which is attached to the bone of the wrist, called trapezium, and which is at the wrist end of the metacarpal bone. It extends the wrist as well as the thumb. Now this is an arrangement seen in the foot, where a muscle extends the great toe’s metacarpal bone and the ankle bones also. In order to carry out this extension of the fingers, so as to prevent downward bending (or flexing), they have a complete double set of extensor muscles.
SKELETON OF THE MANDRILL. (From theCyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology.)
SKELETON OF THE MANDRILL. (From theCyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology.)
All the Cynomorpha have the lifting muscle of the blade-bone; and the muscle which pulls the elbow back and assists in climbing, both in the Gorilla and its fellows, is present (the slip from the back to the elbow,Dorso-epitrochlearis).
The nature of the spine and back-bone processes has been noticed in the Mandrill, but it is necessary to state that the hip-and haunch-bones are not closed in behind by a distinct sacrum, as is the case in the Anthropomorpha. The arrangement in the Cynomorpha closely resembles that of the great beasts of prey, but the haunch-bones are turned out slightly so as to form a seat. There is considerable variation in the number of the bones in the back and tail. With regard to the hinderlimbs, the thigh-bone has a round ligament at its joint with the pelvis, and the shaft bends forwards, and when the animal is at rest on all-fours the thigh projects forwards and downwards, thus indicating the almost permanent position of this great bone in most runners on all-fours, the Elephant being a remarkable exception. The heel-bone is flat from side to side, and the toe-thumb, which reaches about half way up the first joint of the next toe, has considerable powers of motion, and can be struck out from the foot or be pulled in. The climbing muscle exists (page 106), as does also the peculiar stretching muscle of the little toe (abductor of the metacarpal bone). A transversus pedis, already noticed, exists. As the fore-limb assists greatly in locomotion, and much climbing is done by it, the “calf” is not much required for the hind limbs; and one of the muscles of it (the soleus) has a comparatively small surface of origin—from the fibula alone. The great muscle of the back of the thigh, which assists in the perfect erect posture and in the running also in man, is incomplete in the Cynomorpha. Its fibres reach from the haunch-bone to the small bone of the fore-leg in these last, but in man they arise also all down the back of the thigh, and enable the knee joint to be kept straight. All these Monkeys have a muscle on the sole of the foot called the plantaris, but it is not seen in animals lower in the scale than the Quadrumana; moreover, all the other muscles of the sole are more isolated than in man, and consequently they produce more distinct and separate movements of the toes, and especially in the toe-thumb. The tail, so variable in its development, consists of numerous bones, which are modified “back-bones,” or vertebræ, and in some there are little bones which are under these, and arranged in a rude V-shape, their office being to protect the blood-vessels which are enclosed by them. The muscles and nerves of this tail are special, and contribute to its different movements. The huge canine teeth and the cutting first pre-molars have been noticed, and it only remains to observe that the Cynomorpha have a first set of teeth (milk teeth) which fall out gradually, and are replaced by the permanent ones. The milk teeth consist of four incisors above and below, two pre-molars above and below, and four true molars above and below, making twenty teeth in all. All these animals, except the first two genera, have simple stomachs, but the liver has several fissures in it in the Baboons (as it has in the Gorilla), and but few in the Asiatic species (as in the Orangs)—facts of no small significance, for it is very probable that the Gorilla is one of the Baboon line, as the Orang is one of the genealogical tree of a Semnopithecus. The brain exhibits all the convolutions seen in the Anthropomorpha, but the very monkeyish external perpendicular one is well marked. The little brain is not uncovered by the brain proper, which is shortest in the Sacred Apes and longest in the Baboons.
The description of the Cynocephali ends that of the Monkeys of the Old World—The Catarrhini—and the whole of the group may be classified as follows:—