THE EAR IN ANTHROPOIDS 



The chimpanzee has never been observed to indulge 

 in this expression of the emotions. To call the gorilla 

 untamable is not perhaps quite fair to the gorilla. 

 These beasts live so short a time in captivity, so far as 

 experiments have shown, that there has been but 

 little time to put the belief to the proof. The gorilla 

 possesses the requisite physical basis for educatability. 

 The brain is on the average, says Dr. Keith, larger than 

 that of the chimpanzee, though the highest records 

 among the chimpanzees beat the lowest record among 

 gorillas. As to its complex structure, the brain of both 

 differs in no essentials from the human brain, and the 

 ancient controversy about the " hippopotamus minor," 

 as Kingsley called it, has been laid to rest long since. 

 Blackness of visage does not distinguish the gorilla, 

 as was once thought when every chimpanzee with a 

 black face was gravely suspected of being a gorilla 

 or the result of a mesalliance between the one and the 

 other. But the smaller and more refined-looking ear 

 of the gorilla, somewhat like that of the eastern Anthro- 

 poid, the orang-utan, contrasts with the big ears of the 

 chimpanzee, and is on the whole an external mark of 

 difference between them. Any one can observe for 

 himself that the human ear is liable to great variations, 

 and some persons are chimpanzee-like, while -others 

 come nearer to the gorilla in this feature. The general 

 structure of the two apes leads to the conclusion that 

 the gorilla is the older type, and the chimpanzee the 

 more modified. But this is not wholly true, for the 

 chimpanzee has retained the undoubtedly more primi- 

 tive aboreal mode of life to a fuller degree than the gorilla, 

 whose likenesses in this respect to man are not so much 

 an indication of special relationship as a parallel diverg- 

 ence from the normal, so far as apes are concerned. 

 These adaptations to an arboreal life have left their 

 mark upon the outward appearance of both anthropoids. 



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