OBSERVATIONS ON THE MENTALITY OF 

 CHIMPANZEES AND ORANG-UTANS. 



By WILLIAM H. FURNESS, 30., A.B, M.D. 

 (Read April 13, igi6.) 



\\ hen in the course of un-human events some years ago in 

 Borneo, I became acquainted with several members of the genus 

 Wild-man that made the island famous, I was possessed with the 

 idea that with constant human companionship and surroundings at 

 an early age, these anthropoid apes — the orang-utan (which of 

 course you know is a Malay name meaning Wild-man or Man of 

 the Jungle ) — were capable of being developed to a grade of human 

 understanding perhaps only a step below the level of the most primi- 

 tive type of human being inhabiting the island — I mean the wander- 

 ing tribe of Punans. If deaf, dumb and blind children have been 

 taught by beings they could not see to use language they could not 

 hear would one not be justified in an earnest endeavor to teach the 

 higher apes with faculties and senses alert and with traditional 

 powers of imitation, to do the same to a limited degree? It seems 

 well nigh incredible that in animals otherwise so close to us phys- 

 ically there should not be a rudimentary speech center in the brain 

 which only needed development. I have made an earnest endeavor 

 and am still endeavoring, but I cannot say that I am encouraged. 



I took as my pupils, or patients, whichever it may please you to 

 consider them, the orang-utan of Borneo and the chimpanzee of 

 Africa. The other anthropoids, the gibbon and the gorilla, are ex- 

 ceedingly difficult to keep in captivity ; the gibbon is very frail and 

 the gorilla, animal dealers declare, soon succumbs to homesickness. 



My first orang-utan I obtained in February, 1909, in South 

 Borneo, when it was, as well as I could estimate, about one year 

 old ; it still had all its milk, teeth. It had been in captivity only a 

 week and yet it was as docile as a human baby and never attempted 



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