Will Cuppy Tonight: "The Orang-utan" from "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes"

"The psychology of the Orang-utan has been thoroughly described by scientists from their observation of the Sea-urchin. Other facts have been gathered from the natives of Borneo and Sumatra who may have been talking about something else at the time."


We continue working our way through the title section of How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes. Following "The Chimpanzee" and "The Gorilla," tonight we come to "The Orang-utan." -- Ken

The Orang-utan

ORANG-UTANS TEACH US that looks are not everything but darned near it.¹ They look awful. Some Orang-utans have huge cheek pads and conspicuous laryngeal sacs. Others have worse. The hallux is undeveloped. The female is not so ugly but ugly enough. Both sexes brood a lot. Their prolonged spells of meditation appear to have no tangible results. Orangs often sleep on one arm and wake up with a cramp. They snore. Young Orangs who are permitted to develop their individualities turn put horribly. Young Orangs who are kicked and beaten into line also turn out horribly. The psychology of the Orang-utan has been thoroughly described by scientists from their observation of the Sea-urchin. Other facts have been gathered from the natives of Borneo and Sumatra who may have been talking about something else at the time. There is considerable doubt whether the Orang-utan is as dumb as he seems or dumber. He likes stewed apples, toast, cocoa and soap. Orang-utans have solved the problem of work. They do not work. They never worry. And yet they have wrinkles. So what's the use?

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¹About 93 per cent.


TOMORROW IN WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: The Gibbon


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

"Young Gorillas are friendly but they soon learn."

Having finished up the antecedents of Homo sapiens Tuesday night with "The Modern Man," last night we began the title section of the book, "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes, or A Monkey a Day," beginning with "The Chimpanzee." Tonight we move on. -- Ken

The Gorilla

AFTER A CHIMP THE GORILLA is a great relief. He is fierce and brutal and is not a mimic. He weighs 450 pounds and is named Bobby. Young Gorillas are friendly but they soon learn. When a banana is placed in a trick box within easy reach the Gorilla will bite the professor's cousin. Guess what that proves. The Gorilla is becoming extinct but there are plenty of professors. In affairs of the heart the male Gorilla is slow but sure. He appears to be stolid and indifferent but that may be part of his system.¹ Believe it or not he is shy. The Gorilla is an introvert. Married females and their children sleep in trees and the male sleeps on the ground. The meaning of this is unknown. The Gorilla could do with more brains. His corpus callosum is not very good but the hippocampus major is O.K. The hallux is fair. Gorillas like sugar-cane, hay, watermelons, ragout of chicken, raw ham, dandelions and lolly pops. They are subject to inflammation of the gums. Female Gorillas are likely to bump into passing objects and have trouble with revolving doors. I am in favor of Gorillas. They live in Africa.²

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¹The Gorilla is said to have hidden depths, but if they are so hidden what good are they? He has small ears, generally a bad sign.
²They have a nasty habit of biting shotguns.


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S SUNDAY CLASSICS PREVIEW, we take another listen (or two) to music we've already heard, the haunting slow movement of the Brahms First Symphony, targeting a goal that will become clear in Saturday night's preview


SUNDAY IN WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: "The Orang-utan" from How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes, as we continue to work out way through the section "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes, or A Monkey a Day"

AND NEXT SUNDAY IN RING LARDNER TONIGHT: It's the start of a week of You Know Me Al II -- "The Busher Returns"


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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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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[7/3/11] Will Cuppy Tonight: "How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes" (continued)

Illustration by Jacks

As I mentioned, we're going to be starting tomorrow night on the first part of How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes: "Memoirs of the Jukes Family; or, Where We Come In," and tomorrow night we'll have a note on the Jukes family. For tonight we have a major chunk of Will Cuppy's preface to the book.

How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes

from the Preface

I HAVE BEEN ASKED several times just what I mean by writing another book. I'm not sure that I mean anything in particular. People have been known to write dozens of books. This is only my second. So much for that.

And then the title. Why did I call the book How To Tell Your Friends From the Apes when I could so easily have called it Random Gleanings From the Natural History of the Early Assyrians? Well, that title had already been used. So had Outlines of Comparative Physiology.

I still mourn for Outlines of Comparative Physiology. There's a title that has everything: grace, sparkling wit, scientific significance and as much sex appeal as you can bring to it. Talk about romance!

Other titles were dropped for various reasons. You may think that people will let you call your own book Notes on the Larger Fauna of the Strait of Magellan, Western Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Well, they won't! And I can see now that Is the Horse Doomed? was no name for a zoological work aiming to deal with practically all of our dumb brothers. Besides, we all know that the Horse is doomed. Why keep rubbing it in?

Things went on like that most of the summer, until one day -- that terrifically hot day -- something seemed to snap, and I knew that I had been writing How Dante Became the World's Most Famous Book-end. Since then I have agreed to a few slight changes in the wording.

Certain persons have asked me whether the title as it now appears is a steal from How To Tell the Birds From the Flowers, by Robert Williams Wood, a sterling little volume in verse and pictures published in 1917 and still going strong. To this somewhat tactless inquiry I have decided to answer yes. Why argue the point?

The truth is that I have long regarded Mr. Wood's book as a step in the right direction. We need more and yet more of these how-to-tell books, for isn't it high time that we learned to tell a few things apart in this topsy-turvy old world? Let's have more light on the subject, then. Let's start right now and see who can tell the most things apart. In that way we may get somewhere.

Now about my central problem. Ninety per cent of the adult humans examined by me stated that they had never found any difficulty in telling their friends from the Apes. I wonder if some of these good people aren't kidding themselves? The other ten per cent refused either to face the facts or to be pinned down about buying the book. In several instances I got the distinct impression that I was dealing with Gibbons.

I grant you there are plenty of old-fashioned and pretty ineffective ways to tell one's friends from the Apes. What could be simpler, for instance, when you are at the Zoo? The Apes are in cages.

Yes, but when you are not at the Zoo, what then?

As for my style, as represented in my brief and all-of-a-piece biographies, an acquaintance wishes to know if I intend to go on writing in chunks for the rest of my life? That is a matter I have not yet decided. I may, and I may not. How on earth does one know whether or not one is going to go on writing in chunks?

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TOMORROW IN WILL CUPPY TONIGHT: The Java Man


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