Will Cuppy Tonight: "The Chimpanzee" from "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes"

"The love life of Chimpanzees is about what you might expect. When a Chimpanzee looks at another Chimp he does not see what we see."


Last night we completed the opening section of Will Cuppy's How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes, "Memoirs of the Jukes Family, or Where We Come In" -- with "The Modern Man." I thought we'd just go straight on into the book's second section, "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes, or A Monkey a Day" with "The Chimpanzee" tonight and "The Gorilla" tomorrow night, then continuing on through next week, to be followed by what I'm calling "You Know Me Al II" -- yes, it's the return of Ring Lardner's busher, Jack Keefe. -- Ken

The Chimpanzee

THE CHIMPANZEE¹ is found in Equatorial Africa and vaudeville. He is the brightest of the Anthropoid Apes because he is so classified by scientists with incomes over five thousand dollars [remember, this is in 1931 dollars -- Ed.]. If the scientist places a banana in a box the Chimpanzee will go and get it and eat it. The Chimpanzee also likes hominy, lettuce, raspberries, weak tea and black beetles. Chimpanzees are highly excitable and partly web-footed. They are amusing but terribly shallow. They can be very trying. The love life of Chimpanzees is about what you might expect. When a Chimpanzee looks at another Chimp he does not see what we see. They frequently have twins. Male Chimpanzees are called Soko or Bam. Females are called Malapunga. Chimpanzee sweethearts say very little. They can say "Yes" and "No" and "Thank you very much."² They can count up to five. They are faithful within reason. In the Chimpanzee the hallux is opposable and the pollex is not. In Man it is just the other way round so it all comes out even. The Chimpanzee smokes, rides a bicycle and wears pants. His chief ambition is to play the Palace. The Chimpanzee has one-third enough brain and that's something. Or is it?

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¹Aristotle did not mention Chimps but they got along somehow.
²What they really say is gak gak, ngak ngak and wha wha. Chimpanzees find these words sufficient for all practical purposes.


THURBER TONIGHT (including BENCHLEY, WILL CUPPY, WOLCOTT GIBBS, RING LARDNER, BOB AND RAY, E. B. WHITE, JEAN SHEPHERD, and PERELMAN TONIGHT): Check out the series to date

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