ABSTRACT
The life activities of individual monkeys or apes in their natural surroundings can ever be studied as fully as the life activities of individual humans have been studied. The habitats and modes of life of nearly all the primates, especially of the great apes, place special obstacles in the way of such studies. The question of whether monkeys and apes are liable to self-injury from their own normal types of action may next receive attention. Although the evidence of “injury to kind” as a maladaptive activity among anthropoids is admittedly very limited in quantity, its character is such that we seem justified in presuming further information will prove consequences of this nature to be nearly, though not altogether, as characteristic of these as of other higher mammalian species. One illustration of excessiveness of activity in the monkey tribe is in connection with the mother’s solicitude for and care of her young.
