The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 160 pages of information about The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes.

The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 160 pages of information about The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes.

[Footnote 1:  See bibliography at end of report.]

In the early months of the war while I was making every effort to obtain reliable information concerning conditions in the Canary Islands, I received an urgent invitation from my friend and former student, Doctor G. V. Hamilton, to make use of his collection of animals and laboratory at Montecito, California, during my leave of absence from Harvard.  This invitation I most gladly accepted, and in February, 1915, I established myself in Santa Barbara, in convenient proximity to Doctor Hamilton’s private laboratory where for more than six months I was able to work uninterruptedly under nearly ideal conditions.

Doctor Hamilton without reserve placed at my disposal his entire collection of animals, laboratory, and equipment, provided innumerable conveniences for my work, and in addition, bore the entire expense of my investigation.  I cannot adequately thank him for his kindness nor make satisfactory acknowledgment here of his generous aid.  Thanks to his sympathetic interest and to the courtesy of the McCormick family on whose estate the laboratory was located, my work was done under wholly delightful conditions, and with assistance from Ramon Jimenez and Frank Van Den Bergh, Jr., which was invaluable.  The former aided me most intelligently in the care of the animals and the construction of apparatus; and the latter, especially, was of very real service in connection with many of my experiments.

The collection of animals which Doctor Hamilton placed at my disposal consisted of ten monkeys and one orang utan.  The monkeys represented either Pithecus rhesus Audebert (Macacus rhesus), Pithecus irus F. Cuvier (Macacus cynomolgos), or the hybrid of these two species (Elliot, 1913).  There were two eunuchs, five males, and three females.  All were thoroughly acclimated, having lived in Montecito either from birth or for several years.  The orang utan was a young specimen of Pongo pygmaeus Hoppius obtained from a San Francisco dealer in October, 1914 for my use.  His age at that time, as judged by his size and the presence of milk teeth, was not more than five years.  So far as I could discover, he was a perfectly normal, healthy, and active individual.  On June 10, 1915, his weight was thirty-four pounds, his height thirty-two inches, and his chest girt twenty-three inches.  On August 18 of the same year, the three measurements were thirty-six and one-half pounds, thirty-three inches, and twenty-five inches.

For the major portion of my experimental work, only three of the eleven animals were used.  A growing male, P. rhesus monkey, known as Sobke; a mature male, P. irus, called Skirrl; and the young orang utan, which had been named Julius.  Plates I and II present these three subjects of my experiments in characteristically interesting attitudes.  In plate I, figure 1, Julius appears immediately behind the laboratory seated on a rock, against a background

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The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.