20 



THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 



victory, they were at a loss 

 to guess who these new foes 

 might be. The alarm was 

 given, and the Macedonian 

 troops set out in battle-array. 

 Then through the morning 

 mists they saw that the 

 enemy was an immense troop 

 of monkeys. Their prisoners, 

 who knew what the alarm 

 was caused by, made no small 

 sport of the Macedonians. 



THE SPEECH OF MONKEYS 



Something should be said 

 of the alleged " speech of 

 monkeys" which Professor 

 Garner believed himself to 

 have discovered. He rightly 

 excluded mere sounds showing 

 joy, desire, or sorrow from the 

 faculty of speech, but claimed 

 to have detected special words, 

 one meaning " food," another 

 " drink," another " give me 

 that," another meaning 

 " monkey," or an identification 

 of a second animal or monkey. 

 He used a phonograph to 

 keep permanent record of the 

 sounds, and made an expe- 

 dition to the West African forests in the hope that he might induce the large anthropoid 

 apes to answer the sounds which are so often uttered by their kind in our menageries. 

 The enterprise ended, as might have been expected, in failure. Nor was it in the least 

 necessary to go and sit in a cage in an African forest in the hope of striking up an acquaint- 

 ance with the native chimpanzees. The little Capuchin monkeys, whose voices and sounds he 

 had ample opportunity of observing here, give sufficient material for trying experiments in the 

 meaning of monkey sounds. The writer believes that it is highly probable that the cleverer 

 monkeys have a great many notes or sounds which the others do understand, if only because 

 they make the same under similar circumstances, otherwise they would not utter them. They 

 are like the sounds which an intelligent but nearly dumb person might make. Also they have 

 very sharp ears, and some of them can understand musical sounds, so far as to show a very 

 marked attention to them. The following account of an experiment of this kind, when a violin 

 was being played, is related in " Life at the Zoo " : " The Capuchin monkeys, the species selected 

 by Professor Garner for his experiments in monkey language, showed the strangest and most 

 amusing excitement. These pretty little creatures have very expressive and intelligent faces, and 

 the play and mobility of their faces and voices while listening to the music were extraordinarily 

 lapid. The three in the first cage at once rushed up into their box, and then all peeped out, 

 chattering and excited. One by one they came down, and listened to the music with intense 

 curiosity, shrieking and making faces at a crescendo, shaking the wires angrily at a discord, and 



Photo by Ottomar jtnichiitx] [Berlin 



CHACMA BABOON 



This photograph shows his attitude when about to make an attack 



