HABITS OF ORANG-UTAN 
been known to fatally injure its assailants.” A Dyak hunter 
told Wallace: “The mias has no enemies. No animals 
dare attack it but the crocodile and the python. He always 
kills the crocodile by main strength, standing upon it, pulling 
open its jaws, and ripping up its throat. If a python attacks 
a mias, he seizes it with his hands, and then bites it and soon 
kills it.” Almost every specimen taken, however, shows scars 
of fighting among themselves. It will rarely unprovoked 
attack a man. In one case, as Dr. A. R. Wallace has recorded, 
a female mias on a durian tree kept up for at least ten minutes 
a continuous shower of branches and of the heavy spined fruits, 
as large as thirty-two pounders, which most effectively kept 
every one clear of the tree she was on. She could be seen break- 
ing them off and throwing them down with every appearance of 
rage, uttering at intervals a loud pumping grunt, and evidently 
meaning mischief. This durian is the vile-smelling but delicious 
fruit which in its season forms the favorite food of men and ani- 
mals alike. Otherwise these apes live on leaves, buds, nuts, and 
soft fruits. 
This Malayan ape is smaller and weaker than its African cousins, 
males standing not more than four feet six inches, and weighing 160 
pounds, while the females are smaller. The body is bulky, the belly 
protuberant, and the legs very short, while the arms are so long that 
the fingers hang down to the ankle. The coat is a variable dark brick-red 
and long, forming a beard in old males. The head is short and high, with 
the bony crest of the skull and the ridge over the eyes less prominent than 
in the gorilla; while the nose is insignificant, and the jaws are large and 
protrusive, with a long smooth upper lip. The eyes have a pleading ex- 
pression, the ears are small and closely appressed, and many of the older 
males have the cheeks greatly and distinctively broadened by flat callosi- 
ties. Lastly, although its brain is most like that of man, the orang-utan is 
inferior, in general, to both the gorilla and the chimpanzee. 
The fact that it is confined to these Eastern islands, so far removed from 
its relatives, is singular but explainable, for fragmentary fossil remains of 
manlike apes (especially one named Dryopithecus), none older than the 
Miocene Age, have been found in southern Europe and eastward to China, 
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