THE GORILLA LIBELLED

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 120, 18 February 1928, Page 22

THE GORILLA LIBELLED

RETURNED EXPLORER’S DEFENCE OF MAN-APE

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 “Sundav News”). The Canadian “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 this 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 in 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. Gorillas’ method of attack is not by strangling, and, indeed, they do not without great provocation, go after a man or anv other living tiling, 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 because some idiot murderer had a sheepish expression, that he behaved with a sheep-like brutality. With biceps half a dozen inches or so larger than Dempsey’s, full-grown gorillas can crush a man as easily as a bear can do, but they prefer to rend their victims limb from limb and disembowel leaving him aside as a child might with a crab. The gorilla inhabits a district entirely uninhabited by man, and it is hidden in the forests at an altitude of some 8000 ft. to 10,000 ft., almost impenetrable with thick vegetation which lias to be eut through with axes.

My expedition, from which I have just returned, was made in the Congo, and bv 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 pvqmies—the finest runners in the world—to guide us. A white man, unaided, would not have

had a chance, for the gorillas are really very shy, and it is hard to pick up their trail.

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 far 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 rend. Even in the very jaws of his antagonist he would dislocate the lion’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 superstitution, for the gorillas never come down to the plains. The “Ju Ju,” which inhabitants nearest the lulls set up outside their primitive villages, are not, as many Europeans have actually supposed, to defend 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 sometimes 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 demands some sort of ’ qualification. Attacked, intruded uron. or challenged, the gorilla will, of course, defend itself, But to insinuate, bv the phrase “gorilla man,” that the finest and the most human of all animals is in the same category as those beasts which wage incessant “murder” out of sheer bloodlust or “degeneracy” is utter absurditv Certainlv the vegetarian recluse of the primaeval forest would have an action for libel, if he condescended to take any . notice.