CHIMPANZEE FAMILY LIFE 
Chimpanzees belong to the forests of all equatorial Africa 
west of the great lakes, but the bald species seems limited to the 
Gaboon Valley. 
They are rarely found in open country, although they spend 
much of their time on the ground, hiding in thickets in family 
groups, and are nowhere numerous. Mated pairs 
seem to remain together permanently; and more 
than one missionary has been disconcerted, when he tried to 
show the Africans the wrongness of having several wives, by 
their disgusted reply that they did not wish to be like apes. 
They show great affection for their families, the father often 
taking the baby from the mother and carrying it, especially in 
dangerous places; and they seek to assist one another when 
hurt or in trouble. The grief shown when one loses its mate 
in captivity is real and touching. When at rest they usually 
sit with their backs against a tree, and ordinarily move about 
on all fours, their gait when walking erect being weak and un- 
certain, so that then they feel unsafe. They are secretive and 
timid, and will run away from a man or woman if allowed; 
yet when cornered they prove themselves ugly fighters, striving 
always to bite off the fingers or toes of the foe — usually an- 
other ape. The only quadrupeds they need fear are leopards 
and crocodiles. 
Habits. 
There is no good evidence that they arm themselves with sticks as 
weapons, but the Niam-niams told Schweinfurth that in a fight with a negro 
one would if it could wrest the spear from the man’s hand and use it vigor- 
ously. The Manyema hunters, on the other hand, assert that a captured 
spear is simply broken and thrown away. Both reports may well have been 
true. Dr. Livingstone writes® of battles between the sokos, as he calls 
them, and the Manyema negroes west of Lake Tanganyika, who frequently 
organized hunts for these pillagers of their plantations, and drove them into 
nets, where they would become entangled and could be killed with assagais. 
They hunted them similarly for the sake of their flesh; and the missionary 
suggests that the cannibalism of these negroes might have grown out of 
this taste. The Manyema seemed to regard the animal on the whole as an 
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