THE FOOD OF YOUNG ANIMALS 201 



the two little monkeys were still very young, and had come to 

 the Gardens when they were such babies that almost certainly 

 they could have had no individual experience of snakes. The 

 difference in the behaviour of the lemur and the monkeys was 

 startling. The lemur, like all the others I had tried, was almost 

 aggressive in its want of fear ; the monkeys were panic-stricken, 

 and the snake had to be removed at once. 



The anthropoid apes in the Ape House at the Londoii Zoological 

 Gardens were also tried with various kinds of snakes. The gibbons 

 were east timid ; a very small agile gibbon showed no fear and very 

 little curiosity, while a full-grown example of the same species 

 and a hoolock gibbon showed no panic, but retreated very decidedly. 

 It is possible that gibbons, as they are the most agile and completely 

 arboreal of all the monkeys, run little risk from snakes and 

 have partly lost their fear. The chimpanzees, except one baby 

 which took no notice, recognised the snakes at once and fled back- 

 wards, uttering a peculiar, soft warning cry. They then became 

 more excited and began to scream, getting high up on the branches 

 or wirework of their cages, but keeping their eyes fixed on the 

 enemy all the time. They soon took a little courage and drew 

 nearer in a body, chattering loudly, but fled off screaming again. 

 The panic in the presence of snakes was most sudden and complete 

 in the case of orangs. When I tried the experiment, there were 

 two unusually fine examples in the collection, one a large and 

 probably adult male, the other a well-grown young female that had 

 been two years in the Gardens and was very tame and gentle. 

 Both of these animals were usually most deliberate in their 

 movements, coming slowly across the cage even for their favourite 

 food, and climbing as if it were too much trouble to move. But 

 as soon as they caught sight of a snake and long before it was 

 near them, they fled silently, but with the most unusual celerity, 

 climbing as far out of reach as possible. 



Most certainly it would be cruel to supply snakes with living 

 monkeys as food. Except for a few of the more intelligent passerine 

 birds, monkeys are the only animals with an instinctive deep- 

 seated terror of snakes. Such an instinctive terror does not exist 

 in most animals, and certainly there is no trace of it in any of the 

 birds and mammals, the frogs and fishes that are usually given 

 alive to snakes. The instinctive dread of snakes that so many, 

 perhaps most, human beings display is simply one of the many 

 legacies that we have inherited from our monkey-like ancestors, 



