Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature by Thomas Henry Huxley
page 43 of 59 (72%)
enemy, and beats him to death, or rips up his throat by pulling the
jaws asunder!

Much of what has been here stated was probably derived by Dr. Muller
from the reports of his Dyak hunters; but a large male, four feet high,
lived in captivity, under his observation, for a month, and receives a
very bad character.

"He was a very wild beast," says Muller, "of prodigious strength, and
false and wicked to the last degree. If any one approached he rose up
slowly with a low growl, fixed his eyes in the direction in which he
meant to make his attack, slowly passed his hand between the bars of
his cage, and then extending his long arm, gave a sudden grip--usually
at the face." He never tried to bite (though Orangs will bite one
another), his great weapons of offence and defence being his hands.

His intelligence was very great; and Muller remarks, that though the
faculties of the Orang have been estimated too highly, yet Cuvier, had
he seen this specimen, would not have considered its intelligence to be
only a little higher than that of the dog.

His hearing was very acute, but the sense of vision seemed to be less
perfect. The under lip was the great organ of touch, and played a very
important part in drinking, being thrust out like a trough, so as
either to catch the falling rain, or to receive the contents of the
half cocoa-nut shell full of water with which the Orang was supplied,
and which, in drinking, he poured into the trough thus formed.

In Borneo the Orang-Utan of the Malays goes by the name of "Mias" among
the Dyaks, who distinguish several kinds as 'Mias Pappan', or 'Zimo',
DigitalOcean Referral Badge