CHAPTER II

BABOONS

How can we tell a baboon from an ape?

That is quite easy. Just glance at his face. You will notice at once that he has a long, broad muzzle, like that of a dog, with the nostrils at the very tip. For this reason the baboons are sometimes known as dog-faced monkeys. Then look at his limbs. You will see directly that his arms are no longer than his legs. That is because he does not live in the trees, as the apes do. He lives in rough, rocky places on the sides of mountains, where there are no trees at all, so that arms like those of the gibbons or the orang-utan would be of no use to him. He does not want to climb. He wants to be able to scamper over the rocks, and to run swiftly up steep cliffs where there is only just room enough to gain a footing. So his limbs are made in such a way that he can go on all fours like a dog, and gallop along so fast among the stones and boulders that it is hard to overtake him.

THE CHACMA

Perhaps the best known of the baboons is the chacma, which is found in South Africa. The animal is so big and strong, and so very savage, that if he is put into a large cage in company with other monkeys, he always has to be secured in a corner by a stout chain. A chacma that lived for some years in the Crystal Palace was fastened up in this way, and the smaller monkeys, who knew exactly how far his chain would allow him to go, would sit about two inches out of his reach and eat their nuts in front of him. This used to make the chacma furious, and after chattering and scolding away for some time, as if telling his tormentors what dreadful things he would do to them if ever he got the chance, he would snatch up an armful of straw from the bottom of his cage and fling it at them with both hands.

"If I fed the smaller monkeys with nuts, instead of giving them to him," says a visitor, "he would fling the straw at me."

Chacmas live in large bands among the South African mountains, and are very difficult to watch, as they always post two or three of their number as sentinels. As soon as any sign of danger appears one of the watchers gives a short, sharp bark. All the rest of the band understand the signal, and scamper away as fast as they can.

Sometimes, however, the animals will hold their ground. A hunter was once riding over a mountain ridge when he came upon a band of chacmas sitting upon a rock. Thinking that they would at once run away, he rode at them, but they did not move, and when he came a little closer they looked so threatening that he thought it wiser to turn back again.

An angry chacma is a very formidable foe, for it is nearly as big as a mastiff, and ever so much stronger, while its great tusk-like teeth cut like razors. When one of these animals is hunted with dogs it will often gallop along until one of its pursuers has outstripped the rest, and will then suddenly turn and spring upon him, plunge its teeth into his neck, and, while its jaws are still clenched, thrust the body of its victim away. The result is that the throat of the poor dog is torn completely open, and a moment later its body is lying bleeding on the ground, while the chacma is galloping on as before.

These baboons are very mischievous creatures, for they come down from their mountain retreats by night in order to plunder the orchards. And so cautiously is the theft carried out, that even the dogs on guard know nothing of what is going on, and the animals nearly always succeed in getting away.

When it cannot obtain fruit, the chacma feeds chiefly upon the bulb of a kind of iris, which it digs out of the ground with its paw, and then carefully peels. But it is also fond of insects, and may often be seen turning over stones, and catching the beetles which were lying hidden beneath them. It will even eat scorpions, but is careful to pull off their stings before doing so.

THE MANDRILL

Another interesting baboon is the mandrill, which one does not often see in captivity. It comes from Western Africa. While it is young there is little that is remarkable about it. But the full-grown male is a strange-looking animal, for on each of its cheeks there is a swelling as big as a large sausage, which runs upward from just above the nostrils to just below the eyes. These swellings are light blue, and have a number of grooves running down them, which are colored a rich purple, while the line between them, as well as the tip of the nose, is bright scarlet. The face is very large in proportion to the size of the body, and the forehead is topped by a pointed crest of upright black hair, while under the chin is a beard of orange yellow. On the hind quarters are two large bare patches of the same brilliant scarlet as the nose. So you see that altogether a grown-up male mandrill is a very odd-looking creature.

The female mandrill has much smaller swellings on her face. They are dull blue in color, without any lines of either purple or scarlet.

Almost all monkeys are subject at times to terrible fits of passion, but the mandrill seems to be the worst tempered of all. Fancy an animal dying simply from rage! It sounds impossible, yet the mandrill has been known to do so. And the natives of the countries in which it lives are quite as much afraid of it as they are of a lion.

Yet it has once or twice been tamed. In the Natural History Museum, at South Kensington, London, is the skin of a mandrill which lived for some years in that city in the earlier part of the nineteenth century. His name was "Jerry," and he was so quiet and contented that he was generally known as "Happy Jerry." He learned to smoke a pipe. He was very fond of a glass of beer. He even used to sit at table for his meals, and to eat from a plate by means of a knife and fork. And he became so famous that he was actually taken down to Windsor to appear before King George the Fourth!

There is another baboon called the drill, which is not unlike the mandrill in many respects, but the swellings on its face are not nearly as large, and they remain black all through its life. It is a much smaller animal, too, and looks, on the whole, very much like a mandrill while it is quite young.

THE GELADA

Almost as odd-looking as the mandrill, though in quite a different way, is the gelada, which is found in Abyssinia. Perhaps we may compare it to a black poodle with a very long and thick mane upon its neck and shoulders. When the animal sits upright this mane entirely covers the upper part of its shoulders, so that a gelada looks very much as if it were wearing a coachman's mantle of long fur.

In some parts of Abyssinia geladas are very numerous, living among the mountains in bands of two or three hundred. Like the chacmas in South Africa, they are very mischievous in the orchards and plantations, always making their raids by night. It is said that on one occasion they actually stopped no less a personage than a Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and prevented him from proceeding on his journey for several hours.

The story is, that as the Duke was traveling in Abyssinia his road lay through a narrow pass, overhung with rocky cliffs; that one of his attendants, catching sight of a number of geladas upon the rocks above, fired at them; that the angry baboons at once began to roll down great stones upon the path below, and that before they could be driven off they succeeded in completely blocking the road, so that the Duke's carriage could not be moved until the stones had been cleared away.

Whether this story is altogether true or not, we cannot say. But there can be no doubt that geladas are very warlike animals. Not only will they attack human beings who interfere with them, they also attack other baboons. When they are raiding an orchard, for instance, they sometimes meet with a band of Arabian baboons, which have come there for the same purpose as themselves. A fierce battle then takes place. First of all the geladas try to roll down stones upon their rivals. Then they rush down and attack them with the utmost fury, and very soon the orchard is filled with maddened baboons, tumbling and rolling over one another, biting and tearing and scratching each other, and shrieking with furious rage.

The Arabian baboon itself is a very interesting creature, for it is one of the animals which were venerated by the ancient Egyptians. They considered it as sacred to their god Thoth, and treated it with the greatest possible honor; and when it died they made its body into a mummy, and buried it in the tombs of the kings. Sometimes, too, they made use of the animal while it lived, for they would train it to climb a fig-tree, pluck the ripe figs, and hand them down to the slaves waiting below.

These baboons sometimes travel in great companies. The old males always go first, and are closely followed by the females, those which have little ones carrying them upon their backs. As they march along, perhaps one of the younger animals finds a bush with fruit upon it, and stops to eat a little. As soon as they see what he is doing, a number of others rush to the spot, and begin fighting for a share. But generally one of the old males hears the noise, boxes all their ears and drives them away, and then sits down and eats the fruit himself.

THE PROBOSCIS-MONKEY

Next we come to a group of animals called dog-shaped monkeys, and the most curious of them all is the proboscis-monkey. This is the only monkey which really possesses a nose. Some monkeys have nostrils only, and some have muzzles, but the proboscis-monkey has not merely a nose, but a very long nose, so long, in fact, that when one of these monkeys is leaping about in the trees it is said always to keep its nose carefully covered with one hand, so that it may not be injured by a knock against a bough.

Strange to say, it is only the male animal that has this very long nose, and even he does not get it until he is grown up. Indeed, you can tell pretty well how old a male proboscis-monkey is just by glancing at his nose. When he is young it is quite small. As he gets older it grows bigger. And by the time that he reaches his full size it is three or four inches long. Naturally this long nose gives him a very strange appearance, and his great bushy whiskers, which meet under his chin, make him look more curious still.

We do not know much about the habits of the proboscis-monkey. In Borneo, its native country, it lives in the thick forests, and is said to be almost as active among the branches of the trees as the gibbons themselves. The Dyaks do not believe that it is a monkey at all, but say that it is really a very hairy man, who insists on living in the forests in order to escape paying taxes.

THE HANUMAN

The hanuman, another of the dog-shaped monkeys, lives in India, where it is treated with almost as much reverence as the Arabian baboon was in Egypt in days of old.

The natives do not exactly worship these monkeys, but they think that they are sacred to the god Hanuman, from whom they take their name. Besides that, they believe that these animals are not really monkeys at all, but that their bodies are inhabited by the souls of great and holy men, who lived and died long ago, but have now come back to earth again in a different form. So no Hindu will ever kill a hanuman monkey or injure it in any way, no matter how much mischief it may do. The consequence is that these animals are terrible thieves. They know perfectly well that no one will try to kill them, or even to trap them, so they come into the villages, visit the bazaars, and help themselves to anything to which they may take a fancy. Yet all that the fruit-sellers will do is to place thorn-bushes on the roofs of their shops to prevent the monkeys from sitting there.

European sportsmen, however, often find the hanuman very useful. For its greatest enemy is the tiger, and when one of these animals is being hunted a number of hanumans will follow it wherever it goes, and point it out to the beaters by their excited chattering.

Next to the tiger, the hanuman dislikes snakes more than any living creature, and when it finds one of these reptiles asleep it will creep cautiously up to it, seize it by the neck, and then rub its head backward and forward upon a branch till its jaws have been completely ground away.

The hanuman belongs to a group of monkeys which are called langurs. They may be known by their long and almost lanky bodies, by the great length of their tails, and by the fact that they do not possess the cheek-pouches which many other monkeys find so useful. And it is very curious that while the arms of the apes are longer than their legs, the legs of the langurs--which are almost as active in the trees--are longer than their arms.

If you ever happen to see a hanuman you may know it at once by its black face and feet, and by its odd eyebrows, which are very bushy, and project quite away in front of its face.

THE GUENONS

We now come to the guenons, of which there are a great many kinds. Let us take two of these as examples of the rest. The first is the green monkey, which comes from the great forests of Western Africa. You may know it by sight, because it is the commonest monkey in every menagerie. It is one of the monkeys, too, which organ-grinders so often carry about on their organs. But they do not care to have it except when it is quite young, for although it is very gentle and playful until it reaches its full size, it afterward becomes fierce and sullen, and is apt at any moment to break out into furious passion.

Like most of the guenons, green monkeys go about in droves, each under the leadership of an old male, who wins and keeps his position by fighting all his rivals. Strange to say, each of these droves seems to have its own district allotted to it; and if by any chance it should cross its boundary, the band into whose territory it has trespassed will at once come and fight it, and do their utmost to drive it back.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know how the animals mark out their own domains, and how they let one another know just how far they will be permitted to go?

Our second example of the guenons is the diana monkey, which you may at once recognize by its long, pointed, snow-white beard. It seems to be very proud of this beard, and while drinking holds it carefully back with one hand, in order to prevent it from getting wet.

Why is it called the "diana" monkey? Because of the curious white mark upon its forehead, which is shaped like the crescent which the ancients used to think was borne by the goddess Diana. It is a very handsome animal, for its back is rich chestnut brown in color, and the lower part of its body is orange yellow, while between the two is a band of pure white. Its face and tail and hands and feet are black. It is a very gentle animal, and is easily tamed.

THE MANGABEYS

These are very odd-looking monkeys, for they all have white eyelids, which are very conspicuous in their sooty-black faces. Indeed, they always give one a kind of idea that they must spend their whole lives in sweeping chimneys.

They are among the most interesting of all monkeys to watch, for they are not only so active and full of life that they scarcely seem able to keep still, but they are always twisting their bodies about into all sorts of strange attitudes. When in captivity they soon find out that visitors are amused by their antics, and are always ready to go through their performances in order to obtain a nut or a piece of cake.

Then they have an odd way, when they are walking about their cages, of lifting their upper lips and showing their teeth, so that they look just as if they were grinning at you. And instead of carrying their tails behind them, as monkeys generally do, or holding them straight up in the air, they throw them forward over the back, so that the tip comes just above the head.

Only four kinds of mangabey are known, and they are all found in Western Africa.

MACAQUES

There is one more family of monkeys found in the Old World which we must mention, and that consists of the animals known as macaques. They are natives of Asia, with one exception, and that is the famous magot, the only monkey which lives wild in any part of Europe. It inhabits the Rock of Gibraltar, and though it is not nearly as common as it used to be, there is still a small band of these animals with which nobody is allowed to interfere. They move about the Rock a good deal. When the weather is warm and sunny, they prefer the side that faces the Mediterranean, but as soon as a cold easterly wind springs up they all travel round to the western side, which is much more sheltered. They always keep to the steepest parts of the cliff, and it is not easy to get near enough to watch them. Generally the only way to see them at all is by means of a telescope.

The magot is sometimes known as the Barbary ape, although of course it is not really an ape at all. But it is very common in Barbary, and two or three times, when the little band of monkeys on the Rock seemed in danger of dying out, a few specimens have been brought over from Africa just to make up the number.

The only other member of this family that we can mention is the crab-eating macaque, which is found in Siam and Burma. It owes its name to its fondness for crabs, spending most of its time on the banks of salt-water creeks in order to search for them. But perhaps the strangest thing about it is that it is a splendid swimmer, and an equally good diver, for it has been known to jump overboard and to swim more than fifty yards under water, in its attempts to avoid recapture.