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

When three years old he discovered his own strength, and at first he used it good-naturedly to hector his cage-mate, a female chimpanzee smaller than himself. That, however, was of trifling interest. The day on which he made the discovery that he could break the wooden one and one-half inch horizontal bars that were held out from his cage walls on cast iron brackets, was for him a great day. Before his discovery was noted by the keepers he had joyfully destroyed two bars, and with a broken piece used as a lever was attacking a third. These bars were promptly replaced by larger bars, of harder wood, but screwed to the same cast-iron brackets that had carried the first series. For a time, the heavier bars endured; but in an evil moment the ape swung his trapeze bar, of two-inch oak, far over to one side of his cage, and applied the bar as a lever, inside of a horizontal bar and from above. The new force was too much for the cast-iron brackets, and one by one they gave way. Some were broken off, and others were torn from the wall by the breaking of the screws that held them. Knowing that all those brackets must be changed immediately, Dohong was left to destroy them; which he did, promptly and joyfully. We then made heavy brackets of flat wrought iron bars, 1/2 by 21/2 inches, unbreakable even with a lever. These were screwed on with screws so large and heavy that our carpenters knew they were quite secure.