284 ANTHROPOID APES. 



certainty as if only one object had arrested its 

 attention. He bit off the bird's head, plucked out 

 the feathers, and then threw it away. 



Another female specimen of Hylobates agilis 

 suddenly attacked her keeper, sprang upon him, 

 scratched him with hands and feet, and bit him on 

 the breast, so that it was fortunate for the man that 

 the creature had shortly before lost her canine 

 teeth. It was said that the same ape had killed 

 a man in Macao. 



Anthropoids when kept in confinement suffer from 

 caries of the teeth and jaws, from chronic and acute 

 bronchial and intestinal catarrhs, from inflammation 

 and consumption of the lungs, from inflammation of 

 the liver, from pericardial dropsy, from parasites of 

 the skin and intestines, etc. When ill, as we learn 

 from many sources, these animals display much 

 resemblance to men. Among others, Bock observed 

 an aged male orang-utan in Sumatra, suffering from 

 consumption, which lay nearly all day wrapped in 

 a coverlet, and was constantly racked by a violent 

 cough.* 



On the skulls of wild gorillas and chimpanzees 

 we find traces of caries of the teeth and jaws, by 

 which, therefore, these animals may be affected in a 

 state of nature, as well as by parasites on the skin 

 and intestines. 



* Unter den Kannihalen auf Borneo, p. 31. 



