The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1891-07-11
LANGUAGE OF APES.
Professor Garner Has Obtained Several
CIews to the Dialect Of Monkeydom.

Professor Garner Has Obtained Several
CIews to the Dialect of Monkeydom.
There is a very remarkable paper by Pro
fessor Garner on the language Of apes,
| which he has been studying with the help
fof the photograph, and of which he thinks
that he has acquired at least some of the
rudiments. He tells US that, with the con-
sent of DIR. Frank Baker, director of the
National Geological gardens at Washing
| ton, he separated pair of apes which had
| been living together, and placed them in
| different rooms.
Then he placed the photograph near the
cage of the female, and recorded few of
the sounds which she had uttered in that
! instrument. 1t was then removed to the
cell of the male and made to repeat the
sounds thus registered. 1.-The surprise and
! perpleXity of the male were evident. He
| traced the sounds to the horn from which
they came, and failing to find his mate he
! thrust his hand and arm into the horn
| quite up to his shoulders, withdrew it, and
! peeped into the horn again and again. He
would then retreat and again cautiously
approach the horn, which he examined with
evident interest. The expressions of his
face were indeed a study"
Using the photograph and doing all in
his power to initiate its sound after he had
obtained what he believed to be the CHM
panzee word either for milk or for the de-
sire TO obtain milk, Professor Garner made
the greatest effort to repeat this word with
his own tongue and lips to a capuchin
monkey. The monkey Immediately turned
to look at him, and when be had repeated
it three or four times very distinctly the
monkey repeated the sound and turned to
pan kept in his cage for supplying him
with drink, brought the pan to the front of
the cage, came quite up to the bars and
uttered the word himself, though as yet
Professor Garner had not shown him any
milk or any other drink. Then, and not
till then, milk was brought and poured
into the pan, which the monkey drank
with great zest. and then repeated the
sound again some three or four times.
And Professor Garner found that when
he wanted his pan replenished he always
used the same sound. And as, when water
was used instead of milk, the same word
was repeated to express the desire for it,
the inference was drawn that the word de-
noted either liquid or the thirst which was
satisfied by liquid. The same experiment
was tried with sound which Professor
Garner discovered to be always used in con-
nection with solid food, a banana or a car
rot, bit of bread or an apple; and as the
same word seemed to apply TO all of them
equally, Professor Garner inferred that the
word described either solid food in general
or the hunger for it.
And in the same way he discovered the
sound which described pain or sickness,
and another which expressed either sense
of danger or a threat, the effect of its ut
terance being to alarm the monkey so VIC
lently that he always sprang to the highest
point in his cage, and after it had been re-
peated three or four times the result was
that the creature became almost frantic
with dread; nor would this monkey even
allow himself to be attracted by the words
for drink or food after he had once learned
to associate Professor Garner with this
sound, expressive of either danger or
menace.
In this fashion Professor Garner OBJ
tanned the mastery of about eight or nine
sounds, which may be changed by different
modulations into three or four times that
number, SO as to express modified forms of
the same word, all of them chiefly vowel
sounds with the barest indication of some
thing like consonant; and these sounds
Professor Garner regards as the constituent
elements of an ape language which has a
variety of different dialects, according TO
the species of ape addressed.-London
Spectator.