The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-09-07
ORANG-UTAN COULD THINK
Animal In New York Zoo Patched UI
 His Broken TrapeZe

Animal In New York Zoo Patched Up
 His Broken Trapeze
 An orang-utan named Dohong, who was brought to the New York zoo from Borneo eight years ago, astonished us by his intelligence. A gas pipe four feet long and two inches in diameter was wired to the bars at the front of his cage. The pipe itself could not be tilted or moved. Inside this pipe-in the very middle-a piece of banana was placed Dohong, who was very fond of bananas, tried to get it. First he at tempted to reach it with his hands, then his feet and failed. He tried to loosen the pipe, but he couldn't do that. He was very much disturbed over his in- ability to get at that banana, and sat down to think it over. But no happy solution came to him-for the simple reason that, under the circumstances, there wasn't any.
 Finally, without Dohong's knowledge, a stick two feet long with a hook in the end of it was concealed in the straw of his cage. Then Dohong was put back in the cage, and we waited. In the hooked end of the stick into the accidentally came across the hooked stick. It didn't mean anything to him on the instant, but presently he was struck by a bright idea. He inserted the hooked end fthe stick into the pipe, and, To! out came the banana on the hook After that, when a banana was put inside the pipe, Dohong wasted no time trying to reach it with his hands, but began looking at once for the hooked stick.
 This seemed to me to indicate high order of intelligence; but Dohong has done still more remarkable things. As unique an exhibition of reasoning power as l ever saw in any animal was when Dohong turned inventor.
 One day Dohong broke his trapeze. At the end of the chains which support a trapeze is a heavy bolt which goes through a perpendicular hole in the hickory bar and is fastened with a nut and washer nthe under side. The bolt had broken off just above the nut. To fix the trapeze would require new bolt, and I told the keeper to attend to it.
 Fifteen minutes later the keeper ex- citedly informed me that Dohong him self had fixed the bar so that he could swing on it. This news was astonish- ing, and I couldn't figure out how he had done it. So I went to the cage to see.
 There was Dohong swinging on his trapeze. Just as l came up the trapeze parted and Donhong fell to the straw at the bottom of the cage. noticed that he looked about for applause, and I rather think the fall was intentional "a well-managed stunt-rather than an accident. Dohong had been performing on the trapeze when it broke in the first place. When it broke and he took a tumble, he received a hand-clapping ovation from the onlookers. This time Dohong seemed to have let himself , fall for the sake of the hand-claping. But what I was interested in was how he had fixed the trapeze so he could swing on it at all! l had not long to wait before Dohong made up his mind to have another swing.
 First he went to the top of his sleep ing box. Reaching out, he pulled over to him the trapeze bar and also the chain with the broken bolt at the end. He tried to put the broken bolt through the hole in the bar, but it was tight fit and didn't go at first. So he put the bolt in his mouth and turned it about several times. Thus lubricat ted, the bolt slipped through the hole. And now came the demonstration of Do- hong's ability to think.
 He took the hickory par Tn ms handS and deliberately twisted it a little more than a quarter turn. Thus, you see, the broken bolt was put in slant ing position instead of a perpendicular one. And when Dohong swung his weight on the bar the bolt could not slip out of place. As long as he wanted to hold the bar at a quarter turn he could swing on it. When he wanted to add comic relief to his familiar exer- else, he could let the bar slip through his fingers-the bolt would come out of the hole and down would tumble Dohong.
 We left the trapeze unrepaired for a week. During that time Dohong fixed it and used it in the way have told you more than a hundred times.-M. K. Wisehart quoting w. Reid Blair in the American Magazine.
 -S-S----------