when I was taking the moving picture of a mother and two youngsters, and an active man could have walked up the inclined trees these gorillas were on about as easily as they did. Nor did I see any evidences of their having been in trees. The German, Eduard Reichenow, who observed gorillas in this same area, agrees that the gorilla is seldom in trees:
While travelling, both kinds of apes (the gorilla and the
chimpanzee) move on the ground; yet the gorilla is much more
a stranger to tree living than the chimpanzee. . . . If the
gorilla climbs a tree in search of food, he again climbs down
the same trunk. Also at the approach of danger he is not
capable of swinging himself from tree to tree as the chimpanzee
does.
The hand of the gorilla is as interesting to me as his
foot. If you look at the illustration of the plaster cast
you will see that it looks much like a man's, fingernails
and all. You will see that the fingers are bent
over. When running he puts his knuckles on the
ground. It is a peculiarity of the gorilla that when his
arms are extended his fingers are always bent over.
He can't straighten them out except when his wrist
is bent. I can take the hand of the mummified baby
gorilla when its wrist is bent and put it over a stick
and then straighten his wrist and his fingers will close
over the stick so that I can lift him off the ground and
hang him up in this fashion. I suppose that this
peculiar characteristic is a legacy of his arboreal life
which has not left him even in all the years he has
been developing heels, muscles, and toes which are
good for ground work only.
