REMARKARLE PET

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 289, 10 November 1925, Page 3

REMARKARLE PET

YOUNG CHIMPANZEE

INSTINCT AND REASON.

Mr Cherry Kearton, in “My Friend Toto,"” recently produced, tells a simple story of the Young Chimpanzee lie brought to England from Central Africa.

ALMOST HUMAN

He was really a clever, as well as a charming, jfttjlo fellow, this Toto from til a. “Mountains of the Moon,” which lie to the west of Victoria Nyanza. Left with Mr Kearton by another traveller in the dark hinterlands of Africa, lie very quickly adapted himself to human standards of living. On his first night among men he observed the advantages of blankets over grass. Later, lie, shared the explorer’s bed. Everywhere he followed his master, and carried, with the very greatest care, any little article entrusted to him. Then lie learned to wash.' Water had no terrors for Toto:— He wanted to learn. . . . Now he saw me take first the soap and then the sponge; and then get out and stand beside the bath to dry myself. When I had finished he began, and so well had he leamt tho lesson that he did it perfectly—almost. He made a lather with the soap and began on Me /faclo, spluttering uncomfortably, and then, with a piece of originality, he reached for his brush and cleaned his teeth. He was very methodical, and he seemed to think it right that everything to do with the face should be settled in one operation. Then he washed his hands, and next his feet, boding the sponge so that the water trickled on to them, exactly as I had done.

And this chimp, could manage a cup and saucer, mimicked his master reading a newspaper, and learned to smoke his half-ounce of tobacco every week.

GOOD THINKING,

But tjiese things were initiative. Mr Kearton does not discriminate very finely between the imitative and the inventive in his pet; Toto’s every act is wonderful in this posthumous appreciation. Yet the brute did reason, as thus:—

More than anything else lie liked bananas, and however many I gave him lie always wanted more. Sometimes lie would help himself, and eventually I had to keep them in a locked box. But one day Toto watched me as I took the keys from my jocket, unlocked the case, tore off two bananas and gave them to him. A little later we were playing together by the fire when I felt a hand at my pocket. I went on with the game, pretending not to notice. Toto put his hand stealthily into my trouser pocket and drew out the keys. Wondering what he would do, I went outside the tent, and after waiting a minute to make him think I had gone away, I looked silently in at the doorway. Toto was sitting in front of the banana box, trying ono key after another in the lock until lie found the right one. Then he took out a banana and began to gobble it up as fast as he could. That was a sound piece of constructive thinking, and something like it happened again when Toto and his master came, to stay with friends at Nairobi.

A SEARCHING TEST,

Came Christmas Day, and Toto’s host prepared a test for him. Preserved cherries, he knew, were regarded as an especial luxury, and Mr Percival put one into an empty wine bottle. The cherry was too big to be shaken out, and Toto was faced with the problem of how to secure it. First, lie tried-pressing one of his long fingers into the neck of the bottle; but the fruit was- slippery, and he could not keep hold qf it. Then he set the bottle down on the table in front of him and considered it. He quickly made up his mind, and looked round tho room for what ho wanted. On the sideboard stood the remains of a cold fowl. Toto went to it at once, helped himself to a long, thin bone, and put this like a spoon into the bottle. Then he held the bottle upside down and slowly drew out the cherry, balanced on the end of the bone. >

A good piece of -work indeed, and yet not more remarkable than the work of a good sheep-dog. Granted that Toto had a mind—had he a soul? Mr Kearton' fell ill.

He would go to the medicine chest when I told him to do so, and bring the bottle of- quinine, and then lie would fetch a glass and water. When I wanted a book lie would go to the self and stand in front of the eight or ten books that lay on it. He would put his finger on the first and look at me.

And so on till the right book was chosen.

When I began to get about again, I felt the heat very much at midday, and would go up to my room and throw myself on the bed, too exhausted even to remove my boots. The first time that this happened I fell asleep at once. When J. awoke, 1 could hardly believe it when I fould that my boots had been taken off and put on the ground while I slept. It seemed impossible that Toto could have done this and done it so quietly that I did not wake. But the next day, directly 1 lay on the bed, I felt his fingers undoing the laces. THE ENGLISH WINTER. Toto went to England ultimately, but the English winter killed him, and Mr Kearton mourns a friend. He does not pause to consider Toto’s place in the evolutionary scheme. What that was the scientists may decide. Chimpanzees have performed just as remarkably, on the stage, but only after long training. Toto needed no training.