Evening Star Newspaper, June 8, 1930, Page 96

20 INTO THE Facing ““Man’s Closest Relative™ in His Belgian Kongo Haunts. The One 1ime Out of Thirty-Three Encounters That a GiantApe Charged. Myths and Truth About the Gorilla. EDITOR'S NOTE: When Carl Akeley died on the way to the Gorilla Land in the Africa that he loved, his wife carried on, bringing the expedition to its objective. Pe- culiarly gifted by temperament and expericnce to be the recorder of this splendid undertaking, Mrs. Akeley here gives a fascinating account of her observations. BY MARY L. JOBE AKELEY. UE to the fact that the gorilla is recognized by many as man’s closest relative, the study of this ape is perhaps more interesting and more important than the study of any other animal. However, there is no other African beast that has been the center of so many fables and superstitions. Not only are the inaccessibility of the gorilla forests and the persistence of the myths of an imaginative and superstitious people obstacles to those who would separate truth from fiction in our natural history literature, but there is also a tendency to tell and retell a tale which has been well told until that tale is generally believed. For instance, about the close of the sixteenth century Andrew Battell, an English captive of the Portuguese of Angola, established the idea that the gorilla walked erect, slept in trees and was the terror of natives. For many years subsequent to Battell’'s writing other writers have insisted that the. gorilla was inclined to an erect posture in walking, that he lived in trees and was exceedingly ferocious. , The intrepid little French-American Paul Du Chailly was the first white hunter known to have killed a gorilla. In spite of their fame as offensive warriors, the gorillas surprised by Du Chaillu fled away from him into the deep forest. The hunters pursued until they were exhausted, but “the alert beasts made good their escape” and the charge of his old male was “proceeding hesitatingly, step by step,” oawhea Du Chaillu's gun interrupted it. ‘l_lAD my husband been inclined to accept the ~ & traditional view of the gorilla, the speci- saens he prepared for his African Hall group might have been much more spectacularly mounted and as a result much more startling in their appeal than is acutally the case. In his eyes it was nothing short of a crime to place in an educational institution like the American Museum of Natural History an ex- hibit that lacked a basis in natural history fact. He had determined that African Hall should contain nothing but the truth. The Gorilla Group to which he devoted much time and attention in the interim between his two Kivu expeditions is the embodiment of the facts revealed by his observations of the gorilla. If the exhibit has disappointed credu- lous readers of Du Chaillu, it has at the same time satisfied men who have actually seen live gorillas, and prolonged observations by the Akeley-Derscheid Expedition in 1926 have In every detail reinforced this presentation of the Gorilla Group. - The old male of Karisimbi dominates the group. Disturbed by a movement in the bushes below he rises and beats his chest. The other male is shown on all fours in the normal walk- ing attitude. One hand is poised as he hesi- tates in his advance. His expression is one of passive interest. One old female leans lazily against the base of a tree, while a baby idles nearby. The fifth gorilla, a second mature “¥J female, is feeding on the vegetation. In discussing the experience of his 1921 ex- pedition, which had been all too short to satisfy him, but which had resulted In his belief that the gorilla is a good-tempered animal whose . utterance is a prolonged guttural bark rather than a terrifying roar, who touches his knuckles to the.ground in walking, and who is scarcely more arboreal in his habits than man, my hus- band had eagerly anticipated the completion of another important chapter in the natural history record of the gorilla. He was ever mindful of the lack of knowledge concerning this important primate, and of the necessity for more exhaustive scientific investigation. Although in the past zoologists have been THT SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, B ¢, 7URNT & Yo% MOUNTAIN GORILLA’S PARADISE. . The males stood their ground while the mothers and young made good their escape. Then one old male challenged inclined to-divide the genus Gorilla into many species, some students even advancing the* hypothesis that there are several distinot “races” on the different volcanoes of the Birunga Range, the classification has recently been simplified. An exhaustive study of this subject has been made by Dr. Harold J. Cool- idge, jr., of the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University, who concludes in his recent paper, “Revision of Genus Gorilla,” that all gorillas may be divided into two species, commonly called the Coast Gorilla and the Mountain Gorilla. The “coast gorillas” live for the most part at some distance from the Atlantic in French Equatorial Africa. The “mountain gorilla” is found in a comparatively narrow strip of the Eastern Kongo. It was the mountain gorilla that for seven weeks was our neighbor in the high Kivu forest of the Parc National Albert. Though indi- vidual gorillas differ greatly in physiognomy, yet the general resemblance b>tween these indi- viduals is always striking. The females and young are almost black. The black coat of the males is' relieved by a light colored band extending across the back. This band varies from a dark gray in a comparatively young animal to a beautiful silvery white in the largest and oldest males. J M. DERSCHEID, the explorer, who, with ® Carl Akeley, led the Akeley-Derscheid ex- pedition, believes that the denudation of the chest and the protrusive jaws becom2s accen- tuated with advancing age and also that the hood or crest of hair which gives to the goril- las of the volcanoes their characteristic aspzct appears relatively late in life. It is obviously much more pronounced in the males than in the females. With advancing age the coat of the males assumes a more grayish aspect generally. Because he lives in cloud-land where during our six weeks’ stay the night temperatures frequently fell to 32 degrees and the day temperature did not rise above 46 de- grees, and where we had rainfall on all but 5 of 42 days; it is understandable that the gorilla finds his thick hairy coat a very comfortable assct. As to size the males are, as may be expected, much larger than the females. We hear many extravagant accounts of the great weight of the gorilla. Some have been estimated at 450 pounds, others as high as 700, but in each of these cases, the actual height and other m:asurements of the gorilla have been less than those of the large gorilla which my husband collected and actually weighed in 1921. Here are the m:asurements and weights: Height, 5 ft. 714 inches. Weight, 380 pounds. Chest, 62 inches. Upper arm, 18 inches. Reach, 97 inches. Calf, 15%; inches. Reference is frequently made to the long arms of the gorilla. It is more accurate to speak of his short legs and spinal column, inas- much as the greater correlation of arms and chest makes it more logical to compare the arm length with the thorax rather than with the spinal column. A comparison of the arm and chest measurements of man and the gorilla shows that the gorilla’s arm is relatively shorter than man’s. Natural histories, encyclopedias and stories of travel have so long pictured the gorilla walk- ing erect that.it is little wonder that this mis- conception of his mode of locomotion is preva- lent. My husband saw no indication that goril- las ever walk other than on all fours. Even when they stopped to look back at him, they his presence and charged. remained on all fours. He saw gorillas stand erect only in the brief moment recorded in his motion picture film when the female and the young gorilla rose to beat thzir chests. 1t is hard to imagine that the gorilla’s short weak legs could long support his bulky trunk in an upright position. Moreover, in this mountainous region, where man himself is fre- quently forced to climb with both hands and feet, it seems illogical to find an animal that walks like a man. 1 e great weight of the gorilla’s body argues agal. % the hypothesis that he is to any extent a tree dwelling animal. With the aid of the gorilla guide, Mguru, I located the large tree in which my husband had made the motion pictures of gorillas. These gorillas, established in the low forked branches of this tree, were the only ones he saw above the ground.. I went through the forest in all directions from this spot where nearly all of the tree trunks were so covered with moss and other vegeta- tion that they would surely carry the marks it gorillas were in the habit of climbing them, but I saw no evidence anywhere that trees had been climbed by gorillas. From these indica- tions it is difficult to believe that these slug- gish creatures are any more arboreal than man. ERSCHEID had 33 encounters with gorillas. Five of these encounters were with lone adult males, 2 with couples and 26 with families or bands varying in size from 7 to 43 individuals. In all of these close-range experiences only one gorilla charged. Der- scheld provoked the charge when he sur- prised at very close range a band of males and mothers with young carried on their necks. H2 had been traveling down the slope of Karisimbi in high, unbroken vegetation and had plunged suddenly into the gorilla family, startling them as they fed. Th> males stood their ground while the mothers and young made good their escape. Then one old male challenged his pres- ence and charged. To stop the gorilla it was necessary for Derscheid to shoot. He merely grazed the gotilla’s shoulder, when the animal turned immediately and follow:d the band, now well out of range. * Onece when Derscheid was en route from his Lake Rukumi camp on Karisimbi to his camp on Bishoke he found in a low -valley between the two volcanoes a large area whera gorillas had been feeding an hour before. Two hundred yards farther on his guide stopped him because hes heard gorillas. He ordered the safari to stop and went forward with the guide. He had progressed 50 paces when he saw gorillas feed- ing 50 yards ahead. Climbing to higher ground for a better view, he saw a band of mor: than %0 scattered about a space of less than 100 yards long and feeding on wild celery. He approached to within 20 yards of them and one barked. This band had progressead only about 300 yards in one hour, It was late in the afternoon and Derscheid, wishing to mak: camp, returned to his safari. His boys then made a noise to induce the gorillas to let them continue on their way. The gorillas were not frightened, but went slowly up one slope of the valley and stopped on a small hill 60 yards away, where they watched the safari pass. Three or four seemed inter- ested in the safari, but wers not at all alarmed. Less than a mile away from this little valley Derscheid made camp at Kashidi on Bishoke. Three-quarters of an hour later, as he w2nt up a little stream to get water, he found evidence of another band of about 14 gorillas and saw 2 males and several others. “Two days later,” says Derscheid, “I met the same gorillas within 100 yards of the spot in which I first saw them. “Then they were making a vocal noise which in its beginning was like a bird song ‘hui hui hui hui hui’ from pianissimo to forte, increas- ing in volume and in pitch. It was very sweet in the beginning and quite different from the guttural bark and other sounds I had heard them make before. Only once again did I hear it. I am quite sure it was a female, probably warning her young ones. The whole band soon went away up the slopes of Bishoke in a light forest—almost a savannah of paper bark trees.” During the time the gorillas were climbing obliquely to the higher zone of Bishoke, three big gorillas remained behind as a rear guard. Two of these were males. Derscheid did not get a good view of the third. All three stood their ground for five or ten minutes, until the others were 200 yards away and quite out of sight and sound. Then they followed, taking the same trail. . When my husband in 1923 advocated to the Belgian government the desirability of protect- ing the gorilla, he estimated their number a$ not more than about 100 in the Mikeno= Karisimbi forests. It must be remembered, how= ever, that he was in the gorilla country in 1921 for only three weeks and that in speaking and writing of this animal he always stressed the fact that his records were incomplete; that he still wished “to learn the other 95 per cent of the gorilla’s story.” Mr. Benjamin Bur- bridge, who spent six weeks in the Birunga Range in 1924, estimated the number of gorillas at 2,000. The evidence gathered by the Akeley- Derscheid Mission during a period of s2ven months gives us every reason to believe that, although my husband's estimate is too low, Burbridge’s estimate is entirely too high. WHEN my husband was studying the gorilla in 1921 he heard of only one case of a native having been killed by a- gorilla. - I was told a similar story by various natives in 1926. Derscheid, who was able to converse freely with the natives in the Kinyaruanda language, learned the true story, which follows: Nineteen years ago a native of the Boringo tribe was cutting bambco. Unaware of the preserce of a gorilla sleeping near by, he awoke the animal by the noise of his ax. This gorilla must have been bad tempered berause, with no other provocation, he charged and scizing the man, tore him in pieces. The man’s head was found quite detached from the body. At Kisola, in British territory, a. female in a shamba was killed by natives. Obviously the gorilla wanders from the volcanoes only occa- sionally and then he raids a shamba to supply his immediate need for food. We have only one or two instances, and those in British territory, of the volcano gorilla going down (o the lower altitude out of the bamboo. “In fact,” says Derscheid, “the gorilla of the volcanozs does’ not interfere in any way with the natives; nor until the present time have the natives inter- fered with the gorillas.” There are no natives—not even pygmics— living in the true gorilla forests. However, the natives often climb up to the gorilla forest to get honey, to trap birds and hyrax, and to cut firewood. In the lower pari of the bamboo zone, where gorillas are not plentiful, they dig pits to trap wart hog or buffalo. There is no record that a gorilla has ever been trappzd by natives. In the higher altiiudes they cannot dig trap pits -because of the lava, but as high as Rweru, on the upper edge of the bamboos, they fell hollow trees for honeyv. On these occasions it may easily happen that they find themselves in the midst of a gorilla band or unwillingly disturb a sleeping gorilla, The Kivu pygmies who hunt in th: gorilla