THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
extremely keen, cunning, mischievous sort of “‘good fellow,” fond of scaring 
persons alone in the forest, or of picking up a child and pinching it to hear 
it squeal, but meaning no great harm by its pranks. 
The chimpanzee families move about a great deal, mostly 
at night and in search of food, and now and then gather about 
a village in such numbers as to work great damage, especially . 
to young bananas. Their food consists almost wholly of the 
softer forest fruits, varied by grubs, eggs, and fledgelings of 
birds, lizards, and the like, and in captivity they become very 
fond of meat, and cleverly catch live birds put into their cages. 
It is to obtain such food that the apes climb the trees, and the 
German explorer Schweinfurth describes ®° how prevalent and 
secure they are in the forests northwest of Albert Nyanza, where 
the trees grow one above the other in stages, the upper spring- 
ing from seeds implanted in the top branches of those beneath 
them, and forming ‘‘galleries’”’ so dense that it is difficult for 
the wiriest of climbers to penetrate them, and ‘‘bowers in which 
perpetual darkness reigns.” 
To such a leafy stronghold the ape retreats at night, and builds 
a rude platform of branches on which his family lie down for 
rest, while he may curl up in a crotch beneath its shelter; but 
no such a roofed hut as Du Chaillu portrayed seems ever to be 
constructed. 
Their feeding time is mainly evening and early moming, 
and it is then that these apes are most active and noisiest, 
uttering the cries, shrieks, and howls which have impressed all 
travelers, and whose loudness is due to air sacs and an arrange- 
ment in the throat resembling that of the South American 
howlers. Hence we read of troops of hundreds, but in reality 
eight or ten chimpanzees together make a “crowd,” and it 
usually consists mostly of young ones, who make as much 
sport as possible out of the occasion, and are particularly fond 
of drumming on resonant logs or hard earth with sticks. That 
this simplest of possible employments of an instrument or tool 
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