Translation of a letter written by Herr Professor Otto von Pumpenstein to the MÜnchen Philological Society.

Enclosure

Report of certain experiments carried out in the Monkey-house of the Hamburg Zoological Gardens.

The following experiments were made by me by kind permission of the Herr Vorsteher of the Zoological Gardens, with the object of ascertaining whether monkeys actually converse in language. I was drawn to make these experiments by a consideration of the extraordinary similarity between the structure of the mouth and vocal chords in Man and the Anthropoid Apes, and by the amazing correspondence between their brain-charts. I accordingly had a small travelling cage fitted up with table, ink-stand, and so forth, and placed inside the large cage of the chimpanzees, which happened to be next that of the spider monkeys, in such a position that I could enter it without fear of attack.

In this cage I spent my holiday, arriving at the Monkey-house at 10 every morning, and leaving at 6 p.m. My meals I took when the chimpanzees were fed, to avoid arousing jealousy. During the first week I filled five notebooks with the noises made by these animals (spelt phonetically), but without being able to attach any particular thought to any of them. My first success was the result of flashing a mirror in the eyes of the old male chimpanzee. He invariably showed signs of distress, beat the wires of my cage, and said, “Kee—kee—r-r-r-t!” which would seem to mean, “This I can no longer stand!” I tried this experiment on 105 occasions, and always with the same result.

My next success was with regard to the spider monkeys. I discovered that by singing a particular note I could induce these monkeys to imitate me in a very shrill strident tone, but always in perfect pitch. In a few days’ time they could sing up and down the scale, but without any articulation. I next sang them “Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles” in a loud voice. They received the first few lines in silence, and were then seized with a wild enthusiasm, gathering handfuls of bran and flinging them into my cage. Since that experiment I have so far been unable to induce them to sing.

I next carried out a series of important experiments with the aid of a gramophone. Observing that an old fierce chimpanzee was kept in a cage by himself, I induced his keeper to deprive him of water for several hours. I then approached a basin of water to the outside of the beast’s cage, placing the gramophone close to his mouth as he hung by one foot from the ceiling. I took a record of his remarks, which appeared to consist of a repetition of the word “G-r-r-ump”. I then carried the record to my original cage and turned it on. My first trials were unsuccessful, but on the fifteenth repetition I observed that an old female chimpanzee pushed her saucer of water in my direction. From this I concluded that the meaning of the old ape’s remark was, “I a drink of water want”. I have made a great number of experiments with the gramophone, and am inclined to believe that the chimpanzee for “nut” is “warra-yak”; “banana” is “kee-e” (very shrill), and so forth.

I shall spend another fortnight in my cage, and I confidently hope for still more startling and far-reaching results. I have attempted to reproduce these noises, or phrases, myself; but so far they have not been received in a friendly spirit.