Identifier: animallifeworldo119021903lond (find matches)
Title: Animal Life and the World of Nature; A magazine of Natural History
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects:
Publisher: London
Contributing Library: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library

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Perhaps onthe whole the gorilla isslightly nearer to thehuman family than is thechimpanzee. Its feet ap-proximate more to theshape, structure, andrelative length of thehuman foot; its cranialcapacity is slightly greaterthan ra the last named ape,and the nose exhibits arecognisable bridge with adistinct tip at the end,whereas in the chimpanzeethere is often a depressionat the end of the nosebetween the two largelydeveloped alae or nostrils.The gorilla leads a moreterrestrial life than thechimpanzee. This enor-mous ape (of which speci-mens have been found atthe back of the Cameroonsreaching to 5 feet 6 inchesin height, with an extraor-dinary chest measurement,and weighing perhaps asmuch as 17 stone) isobviously less likely thanthe chimpanzee to trustliis heavy body to thedoubtful support of a -1 ■, i? I) i? 1 • 1 From the original drawing by J. ^^olf in tlie possession of tlie Zoological Drancll, a tail irom Whicn society, laere reproauceaby special permission for the first time. 41
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42 Animal Life at any considerable lieight from the ground must of necessity mean death. Yet from anumber of other indications it is obvious that in the case of the gorilla (whose evolutionis novs^ rapidly nearing an end since the conquest of the Congo Forests by man willmean his inevitable extinction) there has been going on for the last few thousand years areturn from an arboreal mode of life, towards existence on the ground, which, in the caseof all anthropoid apes and man, was the universal mode of existence at what might betermed the baboon stage of their common evolution. My own humble opinion is thatwhen mankind developed from a genus of apes of the parent stock that gave rise to thegibbons, the Dyijopithectis, the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, he was a terrestrialElnimal, and had been so for a long time. The baboons are, I am convinced, but slightlydivergent from creatures that formed an actual stage in mans upward career, a stagehigher than the preceding long-tailed

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