Orangutan

“ Another peculiarity of the males is the presence of a huge throat-sac or pouch on the front of the throat and chest, which may extend even to the arm-pits; although present in females, it does not reach nearly the same dimensions in that sex. More than half-a-dozen separate races of orangutan are recognized in Borneo, where, however, they do not appear to be restricted to separate localities. ”

“ The legs are short, but the arms are so long as to reach the ankles when the animal is erect, and, in walking the knuckles are placed on the ground. Orangutans, however, are awkward on the ground and prefer the trees,, where they can travel five or six miles an hour, without special effort, by swinging along on the branches, which they grasp mainly with their hands. ”

“ These gibbons are gentle creatures, with not too much brain, but wonderfully elegant and agile, which is more than can be said for the intelligent252 Orangutan158 or Mias which wanders in the same forest. He has shorter arms, only reaching to the ankle, and he climbs half upright from tree-top to tree-top, grasping the boughs and swaying slowly onwards, or holds on by his toe-thumbs while he stretches up to the more slender branches to gather the fruit and young buds. ”

“ But the orang seldom comes down to the ground, for it is far more at its ease among the branches of the trees. And although it never seems to be in a hurry, it will swing itself along from bough to bough, and from tree to tree, quite as fast as a man can run below. Like the gorilla and the chimpanzee, it makes rough nests of twisted boughs, in which the female animal and the little ones sleep. ”

“ The Orang never stands on its hind legs, and all the pictures, representing it as so doing, are as false as the assertion that it defends itself with sticks, and the like. The long arms are of especial use, not only in climbing, but in the gathering of food from boughs to which the animal could not trust his weight. Figs, blossoms, and young leaves of various kinds, constitute the chief nutriment of the Orang; but strips of bamboo two or three feet long were found in the stomach of a male. They are not known to eat living animals. ”

“ After all, the Orang-utan is a poor creature, with but an outer resemblance to the human species. In intelligence he is not only far below the lowest savage, but even inferior to the horse or the dog. No amount of teaching will make the Orang-utan or any other ape practically useful to man. Do all we can for them in a state of confinement, they are simply big helpless monkeys to the last!
The avifauna of the island is very rich. ”

“ The orang-utans of the New York Zoological Park certainly have been as cheerful in disposition, as fond of exercise and as fertile in droll performances as our chimpanzees. Even though the mind of the chimpanzee does act more quickly than that of its rival, and even though its movements are usually more rapid and more precise, the mind of the orang carries that animal precisely as far. Moreover, in its native jungles the orang habitually builds for itself a very comfortable nest on which to rest and sleep, which the chimpanzee ordinarily does not do. ”

“ We first saw the orangerie, of about two hundred trees, that to Frenchmen who have never left Paris look well, but to me far from it, being martyrized by the hand of man, who has clipped them into stiff ovals. One is 407 years old. They produce no golden fruit, as their boxes are far too small to supply sufficient nourishment, and their fragrant blossoms are plucked to make orange-flower water. ”

“ The next curious animal which we shall consider, is, The Orang-Outang.—This animal is sometimes called the satyr, great ape, or man of the woods. It is a native of the warmer parts of Africa and India, as well as of some of the Indian islands, where it resides principally in woods, and is supposed to feed, like most others of this genus, on fruits. The orang-outang appears to admit of considerable variety in point of colour, size, and proportions ”

“ Surrounded for generations and generations by gorgeous orchids and trumpet-creepers, from which they sucked the stored-up nectar, by gleaming purple or golden fruits, by burnished beetles, metallic butterflies, bronze-scaled lizards, and coral snakes, their prey or their enemies, exercising their eyes perpetually in the search for food among the exquisite objects of their environment, and safe from almost all foes except those of their own class, tropical birds have naturally developed the most gorgeous and the most perfect forms and colors in the whole animal creation. ”

“ When the orang-utan takes to the ground he shambles clumsily along, generally putting down the outer edge of the feet and the bent knuckles of the hands. The orang and gorilla have the curious habit of resting on their bent fists, so as to draw their bodies forward between their long arms, like a cripple between his crutches. ”

“ Orang-Outan (Simia satyrus) .—The orang-outan is found in the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. It attains to a height of four and a half feet. The face and the inside of its hands are hairless, and are of a bluish-grey tint; but the other parts of its body are covered more or less thickly with hair, generally of a rusty-brown color. Its hands reach almost to the ground.
When at liberty it feeds on plants only, and especially on tree-fruits. Hard shelled-fruit, as big as a human head, which a man could only open with an axe, the orang-outan tears asunder with its hands. ”

“ When the Orangs are home in the jungles of Sumatra and Borneo they make a nest to sleep upon by breaking the leafy branches of trees, and laying them cross-wise in the top of a forked sapling. In this big nest it lies flat on its back and is rocked to sleep in its leafy cradle while in repose it grasps a branch in each hand and foot. ”

“ Habits.—The Orang-utan, the "forest-living Man" of the Malays, and the "Mias" of the Bornean natives, lives solitary in the leafy tops of the trees in the forests, except at the pairing season. A female is generally accompanied by one of her progeny, sometimes by two, the one always an infant, and the other a more or less grown but immature individual of a previous birth; for her young—of which she has only one at a birth—do not shift for themselves before they are approaching two years of age. At what age they attain maturity is unknown, but it is probably not before twelve to fifteen years. ”

“ It will be seen here, from the profile, that the young anthropoid ape has only the upper part of the head at all approaching the human type.
The orang is entirely a tree-living animal, and is only found in moist districts where there is much virgin forest. On the ground it progresses clumsily on all-fours, using its arms as crutches, and with the side only of its feet on the ground. In trees it travels deliberately but with perfect ease, swinging along underneath the branches, although it also walks along them semi-erect. ”

“ Sir Emerson Tennent records an instance wherein an elephant fed from the hand on the first night of its capture, and in a very few days evinced pleasure at being patted on the head. Such instances as the above can be multiplied indefinitely. To what else shall they be attributed than philosophic reasoning on the part of the elephant? The orang-outang, so often put forward as his intellectual superior, when captured alive at any other period of life than that of helpless infancy, is vicious, aggressive, and intractable for weeks and months, if not during the remainder of its life. ”

“ The colour of the hair of the Orang is a brick- or yellowish-red all over, but in old males it is sometimes darker on the limbs. Its length (twelve to sixteen inches) is greatest, and its character coarsest, on the arms, thighs, and shoulders; the face, ears, and throat are bare, and the skin of a reddish- or yellowish-brown colour; but there is a thin beard on the chin. The back of the hand and fingers are also thickly haired; on the arms the hair grows towards the elbow, as on the fore-arm, both meeting in a point at the elbow. ”

“ Touching the habits of adult animals, Mr. Hornaday said that the male orangs are much given to fighting, their huge canine teeth being their principal weapons of offense. One of the specimens exhibited by the author bore the scars of many a fierce contest. Large pieces had been bitten out of both lips, and his middle fingers had been bitten off. He. had also lost two of his toes in this way. The orang's nest consists of a quantity of leafy branches broken off and piled loosely in the fork of a tree. The orang usually selects a sapling, and builds his nest in its top. ”

“ But you have never seen the enormous apes which live in Africa and the forests of Borneo. Of these the Orang-outang—its name means "man of the woods"—is the largest. He is as tall as a man, and very strong, with long arms, which almost reach the ground as he stands. From the pictures I have seen, I certainly should not like to meet this "man of the woods" at home, seated in the sort of nest which he makes for himself in the trees. But these great, fierce-looking creatures can be tamed ”

“ The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the order and number of his teeth. The orang-outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no other species of animals in which this analogy exists. [4] In many frugivorous animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct [Pg 14] than those of man. The resemblance also of the human stomach to that of the orang-outang is greater than to that of any other animal. ”

“ Some of the men, who wandered farther than the others in search of wild fruits, reported seeing some very large monkeys, which they said might be orang-utans, and whilst speaking of them I was reminded of the various stories told of people being carried off by them. I have referred to this subject in my account of my journeys among the Sea Dayaks, but although many stories are related of the male orang-utan carrying off young Dayak maidens into the jungle, yet it is seldom that we hear of the female orang-utan running off with a man. ”

“ He always builds his nest low down, often within twenty-five feet of the ground, and seldom higher than forty feet. Sometimes it is fully four feet in diameter, but usually not more than three, and quite flat at the top. The branches are merely piled crosswise. I have never been able to ascertain to a certainty, but it is my opinion that an Orang, after building a nest, sleeps in it several nights in succession, unless he is called upon to leave its neighbourhood. ”

“ One finds many happy insects{52} among the oranges, too many perhaps for the joy of the grower, the perfection of whose product they mar. None should be happier than this Papilio cresphontes butterfly that is hatched on an orange twig, fattened on the crisp green leaves, falls asleep in their shadow and finally wakes, a spike-tailed fairy with shimmering black and gold wings, to drink deep of the honeyed dew in the gold hearts of odorous orange blossoms. ”

“ When she was full-grown she had no wings, no legs, and no eyes, but she had a very long beak, and could suck up a great deal of orange-sap. If you will listen and not interrupt, I will tell you how we Orange-dwellers grow. When we are hatched from our eggs we are all alike, brothers and sisters. We each have a plump little body, six legs, two eyes, and a sucking-beak to get food with. We walk about for a few days, and finally stop on some nice green leaf or juicy orange, and stick our beaks far in and go to sleep, or do something very like it. We never walk about any more. ”

“ Distinctive Characters of this Species.
The orang-outang has no pouches on the sides of the jaws, no tail, nor any callosities [177] on the posteriors, which last are plump and fleshy: all his teeth are similar to those of man: his face is flat, naked, and of a swarthy colour; his hands, feet, ears, breast, and belly, are also naked: the hair on the head descends on the sides of the temples like tresses; on his back and loins there is but a very small quantity of hair [N] : he is about five or six feet high, and always walks erect on his two hind feet. ”

“ Although the Orang resides mostly amid the boughs of great trees, during the daytime, he is very rarely seen squatting on a thick branch as other apes and particularly the Gibbons, do. The Orang, on the contrary, confines himself to the slender leafy branches, so that he is seen right at the top of the trees, a mode of life which is closely related to the constitution of his hinder limbs, and especially to that of his seat. ”

“ But if this were so, then such ridges should be equally developed in both sexes, and this is far from being true. Hideousness, rather than ferocity, has been given to the Orang-utan by the out-growth of enormous ridges on each side of the face, and these, when the great wind-bags encircling the neck are inflated, impart a repulsiveness of expression attained by no other animal living. ”

“ At the Zoological Park we have tested out the orang-utan's susceptibility to training, and proven that the task is so simple and easy that even amateurs can accomplish much in a short time. Desiring that several of our orangs should perform in public, we instructed the primate keepers to proceed along certain lines and educate them to that idea. Naturally, the performance was laid out to match our own possibilities. In a public park, where only a very little time can be devoted to training, we do not linger long over an animal that is either stupid or obstinate. ”

“ The Orang seems to be usually of a fairly mild disposition; it will rarely attack a man unprovoked. But Dr. Wallace, who has accumulated a large number of observations upon these animals, describes a female Orang who "on a durian tree kept up for at least ten minutes a continuous shower of branches, and of the heavy-spined fruits as large as 32-pounders, which most effectually kept us clear of the tree she was on. ”