Chats with Chimpanzees

The evolutional link between ape and man was less missing than mended last week, as two separate conversations between humans and chimpanzees took place:

P: In Brooklyn, N. Y., Mrs. Gertrude Lintz has trained gorillas, chimpanzees, Saint Bernards, owls, rare rabbits for 14 years. Her affection for great apes two years ago alienated her doctor-husband--a stomach specialist sometimes taken for a veterinarian because his home was also his wife's menagerie. When she announced she had trained a chimpanzee to talk, she was invited by Sanka Coffee to have it speak on their We, the People radio program. At the broadcast, female chimpanzee Susan, proud in a man's grey business suit and huge napping basketball shoes, sat by in a chair munching grapes, while Mrs. Lintz told what apes eat, why they beat their chests. Then she turned to Susan, hopefully said: "Who-who? who-who?" Susan looked up from her grapes, said, "Who-who," and went back to her grapes again.

P: The other conversation went further. The human participant was a Chicago animal-trainer, Reuben Castang. London-born son of an animal buyer, black-haired Reuben entered circus work 50 years ago in Hamburg, Germany. His greatest boast: when Explorer Roald Amundsen planned to have polar bears instead of huskies haul sleds on his 1910 polar dash, he, Castang, was chosen as trainer. He taught 21 bears to pull sleds in harness. Then Amundsen decided to use dogs after all. Since then, Castang has trained chimpanzees almost exclusively.

Hearing that Castang also could talk with apes, an enterprising Toronto Star reporter went out to the Riverdale Zoo, had a keeper install a handset telephone in the cage of chimpanzees George & Josephine, put through a long distance call to Castang's Chicago hotel. With a "semi-scream," Castang summoned Josephine to the phone. At his whimpering mimicry of the chimpanzee mating call. Ape Josephine first looked startled, then so pleased that Ape George, becoming angry, shouldered his mate from the phone, pulled frantically at the cage's bars. With a sharp cough-like cry, Castang cursed George. George cursed Castang. Castang, with a show of temper, roared a warning that drove both George & Josephine cringing to a corner. The trainer then laughed with giggle-like simian laughter and the conversation closed.

Said Castang after the chat: "I didn't do very well. I don't know those apes, you know, and it's hard even to speak to a man to whom you've never been introduced, isn't it?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.