Gorilles & grands singes

Facklam, M. Frozen snakes and dinosaur bones : exploring a natural history museum. New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976, 114 p. ISBN 0-15-230275-1.

Le chapitre 12 est intitulé "Gorillas are great" (p. 71-76).

"Nobody wants to be known as a hunter who shot a helpless animal. It is much more excinting to have people think the animal was fierce and dangerous. And so the hunter told people about the man-eating, screaming monsters that came roaring out of the jungle to attack.

Not long after that, an artist made a bronze life-size statue of a fierce-looking gorilla carrying a woman in his arms. That statue stood in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History near the elevators. Every time Carl Akeley, the taxidermist, waited for an elevator, he saw the statue. He got angrier and angrier.

"It's a lie," he told people. "Gorillas aren't like that.""