The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

The last four paragraphs reproduced above have been copied from an article which appeared in the Philadelphia Public Ledger on December 17, 1909. Dr. Witmer declares that the study of this ape's mind is a subject fit, not for the animal psychologist, but for the child psychologist. Suzette's Failure in Maternal Instinct. As a closing contribution to our observations on the chimpanzee, I must record a tragic failure in maternal instinct, as well as in general intelligence, in a chimpanzee. In 1919 our two fine eight-year old chimpanzees, Boma and Suzette, were happily married. It was a genuine love match, and strictly monogamous at that; for while big Fanny Chimp in the cage next door to Boma loved Boma and openly courted him, he was outrageously indifferent to her, and even scorned her. After seven months of gestation, a very good baby was born to Suzette, quite naturally and successfully. Boma's shouts of excitement and delight carried half a mile throughout the Park. Everything looked most auspicious for the rearing of a wonderful cage-bred and cage-born chimpanzee, the second one ever born in captivity. Instead of carrying her infant astride her hip, as do orang mothers, and the coolie women of India, Suzette astonished us beyond measure by tucking it into her groin, between her thigh and her abdomen, head outward. It was a fine place,--warm and soft,--but not good when overdone! When Suzette walked, as she freely did, she held up the leg responsible for the baby, to hold it securely in place, and walked upon the other foot and her two hands. About all this there was one very bad thing. The baby was perfectly helpless! As long as the mother chose to keep it in her groin prison, it could not get free.