THE APES. MAMMALIA. THE ORANG-OUTAX. 



21 



of the characters which have been chiefly relied upon 

 for the discrimination of these species are fallacious. 

 The Bornean orangs all seem to be referable to two 

 species, the differences between which are, as Mr. 

 Wallace observes, well marked in the males, but much 

 less distinct in the females. Both these species appear 

 to be called Orang-outan, or " man of the woods, " by 

 the Malays of the coast of Borneo, but the Dyaks, who 

 are more familiar with them, call them Mias, and dis- 

 tinguish two or three kinds by particular names. 



The largest, species found in Borneo, and the one 

 which is most abundant there, may be regarded as the 

 true orang-outan, or Simia Satyrus of Linnaeus. It 

 is called Mias Pappan, Mias Chappan, and Mias Zimb 

 by the natives; the second name, according to Sir 

 James Brooke, being applied to it by the Malays. 

 The arms are of great length, reaching nearly to the 

 heel when the animal is in an erect posture; the body 

 is covered with long reddish hairs, which form a long 

 beard pendent from the chin; the hairs of the fore-arms 

 are turned towards the elbow, in the same way as in 

 the chimpanzee and gorilla; the face is naked, and, in 

 the males, greatly expanded at the sides by two large 

 fatty protuberances on the cheeks; the ears are small 

 and rounded, and greatly resemble those of man in 

 form; and the lips are very large, and capable of 

 being protruded and retracted to a great extent. The 

 largest adult males met with by Mr. Wallace in 

 Borneo, measured four feet two inches in height, from 

 the crown of the head to the heel ; but if we can believe 

 the accounts of other travellers, the species must attain 

 much larger dimensions. M. Temminck mentions 

 his having heard of a Bornean specimen of five feet 

 three inches in height ; and a specimen from Sumatra, 

 described by Dr. Clarke Abel, was said to measure 

 about seven feet. The females are considerably 

 smaller than the males. 



In the orang there is a remarkably large guttural 

 pouch descending in front of the sternum, and com- 

 municating with the wind-pipe, from which it may be 

 greatly inflated with air. This occurs also, although 

 far less developed, in the chimpanzee and gorilla. 



The observations of M. Salomon Miiller, and of 

 Mr. Wallace, have furnished us with a tolerably com- 

 plete history of the orang-outan in a state of nature. 

 This animal lives in the lofty primaeval forests of 

 Borneo and Sumatra, but only in the swampy dis- 

 tricts, where the forest is unbroken, and the interlacing 

 branches afford him a means of passing readily from 

 tree to tree, without the labour of descending to the 

 ground. Mr. Wallace describes it as a " singular and 

 most interesting sight to watch a mias making his way 

 leisurely through the forest. He walks deliberately 

 along the branches, in the semi-erect attitude which 

 the great length of his arms, and the shortness of his 

 ! legs give him ; choosing a place where the boughs of 

 i an adjacent tree intermingle, he seizes the smaller 

 twigs, pulls them towards him, grasps them together 

 | with those of the tree he is on, and thus, forming a 

 kind of bridge, swings himself onward, and seizing hold 

 of a thick branch with his long arms, is in an instant 

 walking along to the opposite side of the tree. He 

 never jumps or springs, or even appears to hurry him- 



self, and yet moves as quickly as a man can run along 

 the ground beneath." Unlike the chimpanzee and the 

 gorilla, it is a solitary creature ; Mr. Wallace says, that 

 he has " never seen two adult animals together; but 

 both males and females are sometimes accompanied 

 by half-grown young ones, or two or three of the latter 

 go in company." 



When not disturbed, or in search of food, the orang 

 appears to be sedentary in its habits. It sleeps every 

 night on a nest made by breaking off the leafy branches 

 of trees, and laying them over each other upon a forked 

 horizontal branch, until it forms a bed so thick as to 

 conceal it entirely from below ; in rainy weather it is 

 also said to cover itself in a similar manner with small 

 branches and leaves, and to keep its bed till about nine 

 o'clock, when the sun has become hot enough to dis- 

 perse the mists. The nest is usually placed at about 

 fifty or sixty feet from the ground. As the same animal 

 appears seldom to use these nests more than once or 

 twice, they are very abundant in places frequented by 

 the mias. 



The food of the orang-outan consists almost entirely 

 of fruits ; but when these are scarce, the tender shoots 

 and leaves of trees do not come amiss to him. An old 

 male was once found to have in his stomach fragments 

 of the bark of trees of upwards of a foot in length. 

 According to Mr. Wallace they seem to prefer their 

 fruit unripe, and many of them are intensely bitter ; par- 

 ticularly the large, red, fleshy arillus of one fruit, which 

 seems to be an especial favourite. Of another large 

 fruit they only eat the small seed, and in search of this 

 destroy great quantities of the fruit. " The Durian 

 (Durio zibethirms}" says Mr. Wallace, "is also a great 

 favourite, and the mias destroys large quantities of this 

 delicious fruit, in places where it grows surrounded by 

 lofty jungle, but will not pass over clearings to get at 

 them. It seems wonderful how the animal can tear 

 open this fruit, the outer covering of which is so thick, 

 tough, and densely covered with strong, conical spines. 

 It probably bites a few of these off first, and then, mak- 

 ing a small hole, tears the fruit open with its powerful 

 fingers." In some places the orangs appear to be 

 somewhat migratory in their habits, moving after par- 

 ticular fruits of which they are fond ; thus they are 

 said to move into the southern parts of Borneo, and to 

 make their appearance on the right bank of the river 

 Dousson, at the period when the fruits of a certain 

 species of fig (Ficus infectoria) are ripe. After this 

 they disappear from those localities. They seem rarely 

 to descend to the ground except in search of water, 

 which they drink by taking a little up in their hands . 

 and letting it flow into the lower lip, which is protruded 

 so as to form a sort of channel for this purpose. When 

 on the ground they walk on all-fours, like the other 

 apes, and appear to have less power of maintaining 

 themselves in an erect posture than the chimpanzees. 

 Some individuals, in confinement, have been seen to 

 move along a flat surface by resting on the knuckles of 

 their hands, and then throwing the body and legs for- 

 ward in the manner of a lame man on crutches ; this 

 mode of progression is not natural to the species, as has 

 been supposed, but appears only to be adopted by sickly 

 individuals. 





