CHIMPANZEES. 
2 9 
It is said that chimpanzees will generally take to flight at the sight of man, 
but that when driven to bay, or their retreat cut off, they will attack him fiercely, 
and are then very awkward customers to deal with. Dr. Livingstone, in his Last 
Journals, gave an account and sketch of a chimpanzee hunt by the Manyema 
tribe, describing these animals under their name of Soko, but apparently confusing 
them with the gorilla. The doctor’s graphic sketch shows four chimpanzees 
surrounded by natives, one of the former having received its death-wound, a 
second with a spear in its back, and a fourth making a vigorous onslaught on one 
of the hunters, whose hand it has seized in its mouth. Dr. Livingstone states that 
the chimpanzee “ kills the leopard occasionally, by seizing both paws and biting 
them, so as to disable them; he then goes up a tree, groans over his wounds, and 
sometimes recovers, while the leopard dies. The lion kills him at once, and 
sometimes tears his limbs off, but does not eat him. The soko eats no flesh; small 
bananas are his dainties, but not maize. His food consists of wild fruits, and of 
these one is large, a large sweet sop but indifferent in taste. The soko brings 
forth at times twins.” 
“ sally.” 
intelligence In captivity chimpanzees, when in health, are gentle, intelligent, 
m captivity. anc j affectionate, readily learning to feed themselves with a spoon, or 
to drink out of a glass or cup. Unfortunately, however, their span of life in this 
country is but brief. The longest period that a chimpanzee has hitherto lived in 
the Zoological Society’s Gardens is eight years; “Sally,” who died in 1891, having 
been kept there for that time. 
One of the earliest accounts of the chimpanzee in captivity was given by the 
late Mr. Broderip, and is to be found quoted in most works on Natural History. 
It relates to a young male brought from the Gambia in the year 1835, which was 
deposited in the menagerie of the London Zoological Society. Dr. Hartmann has 
also published an interesting description of the habits of another male, which was 
exhibited in the Berlin Aquarium in 1876, and was remarkable for its unusually 
lively and cheerful disposition. 
More recent, and thus probably less widely known, is, however, 
the description by Dr. J. G. Romanes of the mental power of the bald 
chimpanzee, “ Sally,” already mentioned as having lived so long in London. This 
account was written in 1889, after the creature had been nearly six years in the 
Zoological Gardens. The intelligence of “ Sally ” is compared by Dr. Romanes to 
that of a child a few months before emerging from the period of infancy, and is 
thus far higher than that of any other Mammal (exclusive of man). In spite, 
however, of this relatively high degree of intelligence, the creature’s power of 
making vocal replies to her keepers, or those with whom she was brought into 
contact, were of the most limited kind. Such replies were, indeed, restricted to 
three peculiar grunting noises. One of these indicated assent or affirmation; 
another, of very similar intonation, denoted refusal or distrust; while the third, and 
totally different intonation, was used to express thanks or recognition of favours. 
In disposition “ Sally” was, like many of her sex, apt to be capricious and uncertain ; 
although, on the whole, she was good-humoured and fond of her keepers, with whom 
she was never tired of a kind of bantering play, which was kept up at intervals 
