OF WILD ANIMALS 85 



Fortunately for our purposes, the minds of the most intelli- 

 gent and capable apels, baboons, and monkeys have been 

 partially developed and exploited by stage trainers, and to a 

 far less extent by keepers in zoological parks. Some wonderful 

 results have been achieved, and the best of these have been 

 seen by the public in theatres, in traveling shows and in 

 zoological parks. All these performances have greatly in- 

 terested me, because they go so far as measures of mental 

 capacity. I wish to make it dear that I take them very 

 seriously. 



While many of the acts of trained animals are due to their 

 power of mimicry and are produced by imitation rather than 

 by original thought, even their imitative work reveals a 

 breadth of intelligence, a range of memory and of activity and 

 precision in thought and in energy which no logical mind can 

 ignore. To say that a chimpanzee who can swing through 

 thirty or forty different acts "does not think" and "does not 

 reason," is to deny the evidence of the hiiman senses, and 

 fall outside the bounds of human reason. 



Training Apes for Performances. As will appear in its 

 own chapter, there is nothing at aU mysterious in the training 

 of apes. The subject must be young, and pliant in mind, 

 and of cheerful and kind disposition. The poor subjects are 

 left for cage life. The trainer must possess intelligence of 

 good quality, infinite patience and tireless industry. Further- 

 more, the stage properties must be ample. An outfit of this 

 kind can train any ape that is mentally and physically a good 

 subject. Of course in every animal species, wild or domestic, 

 there are individuals so dull and stupid that it is inexpedient 

 to try to educate them. 



The chimpanzee Suzette who came to us direct from the 

 vaudeville stage performed every summer in her open-air 

 "arena cage," until she entered motherhood, which put an 

 end to her stage work. She was a brilliant "trick" bicycle 

 rider. She could stand upright on a huge wooden ball, and 

 by expert balancing and foot-work roll it up a steep incline, 



