Incredible as it seems today, he actually purchased a human being – it was microcephalic man who had walked with a stoop and had a large-shaped head that was kind of unique to the viewers of his expo at the time, and Barnum essentially dressed him up in a monkey suit and put him on display. It was really a hoax and quite a cruel hoax. Among the curiosities is the celebrated ‘What Is it?’ pronounced by so many people to be the connecting link between man and monkey. Barnum, the famous showman, in 1860 took out an advertisement saying that he was displaying an ‘animal’ that he called ‘The What Is It?’īarnum’s Museum! Unprecedented success! Delighted audiences! 5,000 people daily. So, it really kind of titillated the imagination.īut no one has ever seen it – at least in Europe – so people, nations, zoos, entrepreneurs, are trying to get their hands on a live gorilla.Īnd that interest drove some people to do some pretty incredible things. He described them as almost like monsters. Paul Du Chaillu, the explorer who was the first one to really describe gorillas in the wild, he encountered them during expeditions that he undertook first in the late 1850s. In 1847, the first gorilla skull had been collected and identified. It had been just very recently discovered. Today, we know, for example, a chimpanzee genetically shares more in common with humans than a gorilla, but at that time based on studies of the bone structure, generally scientists agreed that the gorilla was the closest relative, and it was a new animal. It’s a book about the discovery of the gorilla in the 1850s and 60s. My name is Monte Reel and I’m the author of Between Man and Beast. I’m a historian of science and among my case studies is the history of the nineteenth-century zoo. There was a real fascination with primates and particularly the gorilla because at that time, the gorilla was considered to be man’s closest relative in the animal kingdom. I think it’s fair to say that at the time, all of Europe was in a kind of gorilla fever. The first, twenty years ago, was mistaken for a chimpanzee.
This is the second specimen of a gorilla which has, with certainty, been seen living in this country. It had been brought from the West Coast of Africa by the German African Society’s Expedition, and measured three feet in height. During last week, a young living male gorilla was seen at Liverpool for a few days on its way to Hull, and thence to Germany. Nature, A weekly illustrated journal of science. Music: The Gorilla Quadrille by Charles Handel Rand Marriott In this show, it’s back to the 1870s as society came face to face with its animal relatives.
GORILLA SKULL VRS AFRICAN SKULL ARCHIVE
This is the Nature Pastcast, each month raiding Nature’s archive and looking at key moments in science.
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