Note 330 — Chapter XVI

With regard to the erect attitude, we must remember that, although the chimpanzee and orang never adopt it, the only other kinds of anthropoid apes—namely, gorilla and gibbon—frequently do so when progressing on level surfaces. In the case of the gorilla, indeed, although the fore-limbs quit the ground and the locomotion thus becomes bipedal, the body is never fully straightened up; but in the case of the gibbon the erect attitude may be said to be complete when the animal is walking. (Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature, pp. 36-49). With regard to the selection and use of stones as tools, Commander Alfred Carpenter, R.N., thus describes the modus operandi of monkeys inhabiting islands off S. Burmah:—“The rocks at low-water are covered with oysters. The monkeys select stones of the best shape for their purpose from shingle of the beach, and carry them to the low-water mark, where the oysters live, which may be as far as eighty yards from the beach. This monkey has chosen the easiest way to open the rock-oyster, namely, to dislocate the valves by a blow on the base of the upper one, and to break the shell over the attaching muscle” (Nature, vol. xxxvi., p. 53. In connection with this subject see also Animal Intelligence, p. 481).