OF WILD ANIMALS 273 



of arm and hand. It seizes its antagonist's hand, carries it to 

 its own mouth, and bites at the fingers. Usually, the bitten 

 finger is severed as evenly as by a surgeon's amputation, and 

 heals quite as successfully. 



I never saw two big orang-utans fighting, but I have had 

 several captive ones seize my arm and try to bring my fingers 

 within biting distance. The canine teeth of a full grown male 

 orang, standing four feet four inches in height, and weighing 

 a hundred and fifty pounds or more, are just as large and 

 dangerous as the teeth of a bear of the same size, and the 

 powerful incisors have one quality which the teeth of a bear 

 dc not possess. A bear pierces or tears an antagonist with 

 his canines, but very rarely bites off anything. An orang- 

 utan bites off a finger as evenly as a boy nips off the end of 

 a stick of candy. 



When orang-utans fight, they also attack each other's 

 faces, and often their broad and expansive lips suffer severely. 

 My eleventh orang bore the scars of many a fierce duel in the 

 tree-tops. A piece had been bitten out of the middle of both 

 his lips, leaving in each a large, ragged notch. Both his 

 middle fingers had been taken off at the second joint, and his 

 feet had lost the third right toe, the fourth left toe, and the 

 end of one hallux. His back, also, had sustained a severe 

 injury, which had retarded his growth. This animal we 

 called "The Desperado." 



Orang No. 34 had lost the entire edge of his upper lip. It 

 had been bitten across diagonally, but adhered at one corner, 

 and healed without sloughing off, so that during the last years 

 of his life a piece of lip two inches long hung dangling at the 

 corner of his mouth. He had also suffered the loss of an entire 

 finger. No. 36 had lost a good sized piece out of his upper 

 lip, and the first toe had been bitten off his left foot. 



All these combats must have taken place in the tree-tops, 

 for an adult orang-utan has never been known to descend to 

 the earth except for water. 



