166 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
THE HOWLERS * 
Although, articulate speech is denied to the Monkey world, many have very extraordinary voices, 
the capacity for making a noise being great in them. Thus, the Gorilla has a tremendous voice, and 
the Gibbons are especially noisy, one of them having been noticed (page 77) to be able to emit something 
like a series of musical notes. But they are all silent in comparison with the noisiest of all Monkeys 
the South American Howlers. The females of this group can make a moderate amount of disturbance, 
but the males surpass every animal in their prolonged and sustained yelling. Their bowlings, 
commencing often suddenly at the close of day or in the middle of the night, amongst the strange 
stillness of the great virgin forests, appal the traveller on his first visit. u Nothing,” says Waterton, 
speaking of the Red Howler, u can sound more dreadful than its nocturnal bowlings. While lying in 
your hammock in those gloomy and unmeasurable wilds you hear him howling at intervals from 
eleven o’clock at night till daybreak. You would suppose that half the wild beasts of the forest were 
collecting for the work of carnage. Now it is the tremendous roar of the Jaguar as he springs on bis 
prey ; now it changes to his deep-toned growlings as he is pressed on all sides by superior force ; and 
now you hear his last dying moan beneath a mortal wound.” Humboldt and Bonpland landed at 
Cumana, and travelled towards the celebrated cavern of Guacliaro, and they saw and heard the 
Howlers often ; and on getting into a cold district their horrible din became worse, and was heard at a 
distance of two miles. This was near the convent of Caripc, which is more than 4,000 toises (a toise 
being rather more than our English fathom) above the sea, and where the nights are cold. The 
animal clearly has earned its appellation of the Howler, and might properly have been called Stentor, 
as was proposed by a distinguished French zoologist. Stentor was a Greek, whose voice was louder 
than that of fifty men. But Illiger, probably familiar with the writings of the learned Apuleius — 
that student of Carthage and Athens who married a rich Roman widow, and was therefore accused 
of witchcraft, and who wrote the “ Golden Ass,” a book singularly applicable to modern society — 
called the Howler after the word Mycetias , an earthquake with a hollow bellowing noise. The word 
is from Mr'£o> (to moan). An old writer (Margrave) wrote in his Natural History of Brazil, in 1648, that 
all the Howlers assembled in the morning and evening in the woods, and that one takes his place on a 
tree high up, and motions to his companions to sit down and listen, and then, after having seen them 
all seated, commences his discourse, pitched at so high a key that at a distance one would imagine that 
all the congregation were joining in. But this is not the case ; only one orator is allowed to speak at 
a time, and all the rest wait politely, but not very patiently. When he has had enough howling he 
motions to the whole, who burst out into a fine chorus for some time. Then, by order, they all cease, 
and the first recommences, and after having been listened to with due attention the whole depart. 
What the noise must be sometimes, if they all join in, may be gleaned from the fact that Humboldt 
saw the trees crammed with them, and believed that more than 2,000 may be found in a square 
league. 
It really does occur that when there is an assemblage of these Monkeys — for instance, of the Mycetes 
Carctya, — when the weather is warm and open, they make the forests resound in the morning and evening 
with their overwhelming voices. The males begin the dreadful concert, in which the females, with 
their less powerful voices, sometimes join, and which is often continued for several hours. It does 
not appear that any especial cause induces them to begin their noise, and probably they do it because 
it pleases them, as the birds do in their prolonged songs. Mr. Darwin suggests very forcibly that 
the females are pleased or attracted by it, liking (as in higher animals) the loudest and most 
intolerable of the noise-makers best. Hence one Howler is, of course, always trying to outdo the 
others. But it is true that some Howlers live in pairs and indulge in their vocation all the same. 
Wallace, however, states that the females do not join in the noise, and that the howling is made before 
bad weather, and in the evening. 
These Howlers are the largest of the Monkeys of the New World, some being nearly three feet 
in length, without counting the long prehensile tail ; they have movable thumbs on their hands, a 
hairless space underneath the tip of the wonderful tail, and the howling apparatus in the throat. 
* My cites. 
