Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1891 — INTELLIGENT CHIMPANZEES. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

INTELLIGENT CHIMPANZEES.

Among the most remarkable stories in Mr. Stanley’s book on Africa is one told to the explorer by Emin Pasha. Here it is; The forest of Msongwa is infested by

a tribe of chimpanzees of great stature, who make almost nightly raids on the villages and little plantations of the Mswa natives, carrying away their bananas and other fruits. There is nothing very remarkable about this fact, since many kinds of animals make pillaging forays upon the habitations of men; but the surprising part of Emin’s narrative is the statement that in these thieving raids the chimpanzees make use of lighted torches to hunt out the fruits. “If I had not been myself a witness of this spectacle,” Mr. Stanley reports Emin as saying, “nothing would ever have made me believe that any race of monkeys possessed the art of making fire.” On one occasion, Emin says, a chimpanzee of this intelligent tribe stole a drum from the huts of his European troops and made off with it, beating it as he ran. The moakey took the drum to the headquarters of his own “people,” who were evidently much charmed with it, for the Egyptian soldiers often heard the monkeys beating it vigorously, but irregularly. Sometimes in the middle of the night some sleepless chimpanzee would get up and go to beating the drum. But what the other chimpanzees thought of this midnight musical performance will never be known positively, but from the fact that no sound of battle and slaughter among the intelligent chimpanzees ever followed the Egyptians were forced to conclude that they liked it. Here at least, therefore, we had an indication that the grade of intelligence of even the chimpanzee of Msongwa is still far below that of the human race.

THE CHIMPANZEE DRUMMER