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An orangutan in Paris: pondering Proximity at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in 1836

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Abstract

When the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in Paris learned in 1836 that it had the chance to buy a live, young orangutan, it was excited by the prospect. Specimens were the focus of the Museum’s activities, and this particular specimen seemed especially promising, not only because the Museum had very few orangutan specimens in its collection, but also because of what was perceived to be the orangutan’s unique place in the natural order of things, namely, at the very boundary between the animal kingdom and humans. Frédéric Cuvier, the superintendent of the Museum’s menagerie, urged that studying the orangutan’s mental faculties would help resolve fundamental questions regarding the similarities and differences between animals and humans. Archival and printed sources allow one to reconstruct the orangutan’s capture, acquisition, and subsequent career at the menagerie in greater detail than has generally been possible for animals of nineteenth-century zoos. Scientists, artists, the public, the press, and even musicians (Franz Liszt included) sought to engage with the orangutan, seeing in it not just another ape or monkey but a special creature unto itself at the animal/human boundary. Key to their fascination with the orangutan was the question of proximity—just how close was the orangutan to humans? The orangutan’s story illuminates not only how the animal-human boundary was conceived at the time but also the problematic status of the zoo as a site for scientific research and the roles of scientific and non-scientific actors alike in constructing how the orangutan was understood.

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Notes

  1. On the differences between Buffon and Descartes in this regard, see Roger (1997), pp. 247–249.

  2. The literature on the animal/human boundary is extensive. Ritvo (1995) affords a wide-ranging historical overview of the multiple ambiguities associated with the question of the animal/human boundary. See also Creager and Jordan (2002) and Corbey (2005). Scientists and scholars have often recounted the history of ideas about apes and how to distinguish them from humans, going back to the early work of Bontius, Tyson, Linnaeus, and others. For early reviews see Huxley (1863) and Yerkes and Yerkes (1929) and more recently (among many others) Corbey and Theunissen (1995) and Herzfeld (2017). For a collection of articles arguing for the inclusion of “all great apes” (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans) in a “community of equals,” see Cavalieri and Singer (1994). For a recent overview of the differences between the thinking of humans and higher apes, see Suddendorf (2013).

  3. Buffon additionally identified the dog as the animal closest to man with respect to faithfulness and the beaver as the animal closest to man in its abilities to plan and execute communal projects.

  4. The gap would be produced and maintained by the highest form of life driving its competitors away to environments unsuited to the development of the kinds of habits the competitors needed for their mental faculties to advance (Lamarck 1809, 1, 355–357).

  5. Anatomical characters, intelligence, and behavior (scaled from civilized to bestial) were all brought together in the comparison of apes and humans. Bory de Saint-Vincent credited the Dutch anatomist Vrolik with the “judicious expression” that the Hottentot “is much more below the Negro than the brute [animal] is below him” (Bory de Saint-Vincent, 1827, p. 267). See Blanckaert (2013, 2014) for French naturalists’ views of the Hottentot through the nineteenth century. Few Europeans writers on the orangutan could resist alluding to travelers’ lurid accounts of the African orangutan (i.e., the chimpanzee) abducting native women. See Virey (1818), p. 593; Bory de Saint-Vincent (1827), p. 271. Even Frédéric Cuvier (1825a, p. 286) referred (without critical comment) to the reports of Buffon, Battell, and Labrosse on the subject.

  6. It has been written with respect to German and Austrian zoos that after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 “apes and monkeys were suddenly no longer just apes and monkeys” (Hochadel 2010, p. 82). In Paris in 1836, however, the orangutan was quite definitely viewed as more than “just an ape”—and without the subject of evolution playing any overt role in the public discussion.

  7. Van Iseghem letter to the Director of the Museum dated Nantes le 12 April 1836, in séance of 19 April 1836, AN AJ/15/651. See Cozic (2014) for an engaging account that is especially helpful in situating the story of Van Iseghem and the orangutan in the context of Nantes.

    Manuscript papers of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris (hereafter MNHN) are conserved both at the MNHN and the Archives Nationales (hereafter AN). Among the Museum’s papers, those pertaining to the Museum’s menagerie appear more ample than the archives of other zoos of the nineteenth century, judging from what historians of these zoos have said about their sources and what they have been able to write about individual specimens. See, for example, Åkerberg (2001), Hanson (2002), Rothfels (2002), Mehos (2006), Cowie (2014), and Ito (2014). For the history of the MNHN’s menagerie, see Laissus and Petter (1993) and Burkhardt (1997a, 2007). For the history of zoos in general see Loisel (1912) and Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier (1998). Other animals at the menagerie in Paris for which there is abundant archival information include the elephants that arrived in 1798 (Saban and Lemire 1990), the lions that also arrived in 1798 (Burkhardt 2014), and the giraffe that arrived in 1827 (Dardaud 1951; Allin 1998; Baratay 2017). For studies of orangutans in captivity at other sites see especially Ingensiep (2008) on Vosmaer’s orangutan, and Hochadel (2010), whose study of post-1859 zoos in Austria and Germany includes a discussion of “Madame Sophie,” the first orangutan at Schönbrunn..

  8. Séance of 19 April 1836, AN, AJ/15/133, p. 44.

  9. Marion de Procé letter to the Museum, dated Nantes, le 27 April 1836. Read in the professorial assembly of 3 May 1836, AJ/15/651. «J’ai été frappé de la lenteur des mouvemens de l'Ourang-outang, laquelle contraste avec la turbulence des autres singes. J'ai été plus frappé encore de son air calme et réfléchi, de sa sociabilité apparente et de je ne sais quoi d'humain répandu sur sa physionomie.

    «Il est de la plus grande douceur et recherche les caresses, même des étrangers».

  10. Ibid. «Et s'il m'est permis de donner mon avis en pareille matière, je serai vous engager à conclure une affaire qui vous mettra à même d'étudier au moral et au physique l'animal le plus voisin des races inferieures de l'espece humaine».

  11. Frédéric Cuvier menagerie report of 3 May 1836, in séance of 3 May 1836, AN, AJ/15/651. Henceforth the date of the séance when a menagerie report was read will only be specified if it differed from the date of the report. «Je ne crois pas qu’une ménagerie puisse faire aujourd’hui une acquisition plus utile que celle d’un orang outang, qu’aucun animal puisse être pour la science le sujet d’observations plus étendues et plus importantes. Ce quadrumane est placé sur la limite des races animales et de la race humaine ; l’appréciation de ses facultés peut donc seule résoudre une des questions les plus agitées en histoire naturelle et en philosophie».

  12. On the high mortality of monkeys and apes at the Museum see Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier (1998), pp. 144–149.

  13. L’Écho du monde savant, 15 May 1836, pp. 85–86.

  14. Cuvier menagerie report of 17 Mai 1836. AN, AJ/15/651. AJ/15/133: 60–61.

  15. Although some earlier observations were reported on the behavior of menagerie animals (e.g., in Louis XIV’s menagerie at Versailles), the scientific study of these animals was represented primarily by the anatomical studies conducted on them after they died. See Loisel (1912), 2, 296–304. This continued to be the case in nineteenth century zoos, the Paris menagerie included.

  16. Some earlier observations had been made on the behavior of animals in menageries (e.g., in Louis XIV’s menagerie at Versailles), but the most scientific part of the study of these animals was generally taken to be the anatomical studies conducted on them after they died. See Loisel (1912), 2, 296–304. This continued to be the case in nineteenth century zoos, even the menagerie in Paris.

  17. One mini-experiment that he did report (though it is not clear that he conducted this experiment himself) was an attempt “to see what impression our music would make on this animal.” The orangutan displayed no interest in the music at all. The result was just what one could have expected, Cuvier believed, since there was nothing about the organization or the lives of mammals to suggest they would be susceptible to music’s charms. “Even for us,” Cuvier acknowledged, “[music] is only an artificial need.” He added, “never does [music] have any effect on savages other than that of noise” (Cuvier 1810, p. 50).

  18. Branch shaking is routinely reported as an element of orangutan agonistic display behavior and can be explained without calling on theory mind. For the kind of evidence supporting an animal having theory of mind see Premack and Woodruff (1978).

  19. Also omitted in Cuvier’s 1824 orangutan paper were his previous comments on (1) the orangutan’s medical treatment; (2) how intelligence was related more to the brain than to the senses; and (3) his plans to do a comparative study of animal intellectual faculties.

  20. Lamarck (1802). See Stoczkowski (1995) for eighteenth-century ideas about humans developing from ape-like ancestors and Barsanti (1995) for Lamarck’s sources of information on apes.

  21. Bory de Saint-Vincent (1827) criticized Cuvier on this score, viewing it as impossible to conceive of an animal with neither reason nor instinct. Bory willingly credited the orangutan with reason.

  22. The Procès-verbaux of the professorial assemblies at the Museum list the attendees of each meeting. Geoffroy (1838) and Appel (1987) provide some references to Geoffroy’s unhappiness after his feuds with colleagues.

  23. Séance of 31 May 1836, AN, AJ/15/133, p. 70.

  24. Geoffroy letter to the Museum, 6 [sic] July 1836, read at the assembly of 5 July 1836, AN, AJ/15/652. It only made Geoffroy angrier when his colleagues decided to defer any action on housing or clothing the orangutan until Frederic Cuvier’s return at the end of the summer.

  25. One should perhaps take with a grain of salt Geoffroy’s account of changing his own views in light of the public’s perception of the orangutan, given how he had already used the phrase “ni l’un ni l’autre” in his 1828 course at the Museum. However, he was at that time still separating the bimana and quadrumana into two distinct orders (Geoffroy 1829).

  26. Blanckaert (2014) identifies Xavier Bichat’s “fundamental law of the distribution of forces” as the primary source for Geoffroy’s thoughts on the inverse relation between muscular power and intellectual function.

  27. Thiers not only gave some animals to the menagerie but also had the menagerie temporarily care for some of his animals for him, according to Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire’s menagerie report of 19 July 1836 and Frédéric Cuvier’s menagerie reports of 13 September and 13 December 1836. AN AJ/15/652.

  28. La Mode, 9e année, (October 1836), p. 133.

  29. “L’orang-outang du Muséum national d’histoire naturelle de Paris,” Magasin pittoresque (1836), p. 224; Rousseau and Lemonnier (1837), p. 144.

  30. Cuvier menagerie report of 17 October 1837. AN, AJ/15/654.

  31. Mesnager letter of 10 June 1836 to the Museum. Séance of 14 June 1836, AJ/15/651.

  32. Séance of 7 June 1836. AN, AJ/15/133, p. 79. Draft of letter to Mesnager, 22 June 1836. AN, AJ/15/755.

  33. Séance of 31 May 1836, AN, AJ/15/133, pp. 70–71:

    «Le même Professeur fait part de la proposition qui lui a été faite par Mr Litz et plusieurs autres artistes de donner un concert à l’orang outang pour juger de l’impression de la musique sur cet animal».

  34. Press reports concerning the orangutan include: Journal des débats, 22 and 29 June, 15 July, 25 August, 20, 24, and 30 October, 10 December 1836; L’Echo du monde savant, 8 and 15 May, 10 and 17 July, 7 August, 11 September, 22 October, 2 and 25 November 1836; La Presse, 8 and 13 July, 19, 30, and 31 October, 27 November 1836, 8 January 1837; Figaro, 16 May, 30 June, 21 October, 15 November, 19 November 1836, 5 January 1837; Mercure de France 2 (1836), 76–77; Le Magasin universel, 4 (1836–1837), 92–94; Le Constitutionnel, 23 and 30 October, 1836.

  35. Le Moniteur universel, 15 May 1836, p. 1083.

  36. Revue de Paris, n.s. 29 (1836), pp. 200, 278.

  37. Le Charivari, 2–3 November 1836, reproduced in Jobling (1993). The paper allowed that Jacke [sic] was soon to have “a magnificent palace, constructed on the plans of an architect and under the direct supervision of M. Thiers.” On how the giraffe of 1827 served as a vehicle for political criticism see Lescart (2013).

  38. Daboncourt may have provided some of the press’s information about the orangutan’s behavior, but he was not explicitly identified as having done so. In contrast, the anatomist Leuret (1839) not only sought out but also cited Daboncourt as a source of information on apes and monkeys.

  39. But Jack could be jealous as well as generous. Daboncourt reported that when Jack was ill he liked to sit on Daboncourt’s lap and in that situation displayed jealousy toward any child that approached (Leuret 1839, p. 536).

  40. L’Echo du monde savant, 11 September 1836, reproducing an article from Le Temps.

  41. L’Echo du monde savant, 17 July 1836.

  42. Journal des débats, 29 June 1836.

  43. Cuvier menagerie report of 18 October 1836. AN, AJ/15/652.

  44. The most extensive (and apparently most reliable) account of Jack’s treatment appeared in L’Echo du Monde Savant, 2 November 1836.

  45. La Presse, 19 October 1836; Figaro, 21 October 1836; L’Echo du Monde Savant, 22 October 1836; Le Journal des debats, 24 October 1836.

  46. Le Constitutionnel, 23 October 1836, Le Journal des debats, 24 October 1836.

  47. Had Atir helped with Jack’s care, Cuvier might well have mentioned it in his weekly reports, for Cuvier in this period was looking for reasons not to dismiss Atir, whose fondness for drink and carousing had become a problem for the Museum (Burkhardt 2013).

  48. Cuvier menagerie report of 25 October 1836. AN, AJ/15/652.

  49. Le Figaro, 14 November 1836.

  50. Cozic (2014). Le Monde dramatique (1836, p. 14) indicates Jack was also a theme of revues at the Théâtre du Vaudeville and the Théâtre du Palais-Royal.

  51. The earliest archival evidence of this affair appears in a letter dated 24 November 1836 where Elwart asks Geoffroy to respond to the proposal Elwart already made to him about a concert for the orangutan. Séance of 29 November 1836. AN, AJ/15/652.

  52. Presumably Elwart did not intend to have such a heterogeneous group of musicians performing together all at the same time, otherwise the concert would have been highly experimental in more ways than one.

  53. Elwart letter of 5 December 1836. Séance of 6 December 1836. AN, AJ/15/652. Elwart did not identify any previous experiments, but there was at least one, a concert that fourteen musicians played in April 1798 for two elephants recently arrived at the Museum. The results were not conclusive, but it seemed to the musicians and some other observers that the different pieces played elicited different emotional responses (even romantic ones) from the two animals (Toscan AN VI 1798; Burkhardt 1997a; Putnam 2007).

  54. Cuvier menagerie report of 6 December 1836, AN, AJ/15/652. See too AN, AJ/15/133, p. 168. A draft of the Museum’s response to Elwart, dated 10 December 1836, is in AN, AJ/15/755.

  55. Cuvier menagerie report of 20 December 1836. AN, AJ/15/562.

  56. Cuvier menagerie report of 27 December 1836. AN, AJ/15/652. «L’orang-outang continue à manger en quantité convenable ; mais il paraît abatu; il est habituellement triste et inactif. Le froid et la neige semble [sic] augmenter cet état, quoique sa loge soit toujours suffisamment chauffée. Depuis trois jours il ne quitte pas sa couverture».

  57. Sand’s visit to the menagerie is mentioned by Corsi (2012). See Sand (1964–1965) 3, 621–623 (letter to Eliza Tourangin, 30 December 1836).

  58. Cuvier’s menagerie report, 10 January 1837, AN, AJ/15/653, indicates the orangutan died during the night of January 2–3.

  59. Rousseau and Lemonnier (1837). Jack’s “afterlife” (see Alberti 2011) was thus much less complicated than that of Vosmaer’s orangutan Ingensiep 2008) or Wurmb’s pongo (Barsanti 1989).

  60. Fredéric Cuvier’s final illness is detailed in Mss. 341-6 in the Fonds Cuvier, Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France.

  61. The quotations come respectively from pages 153e and 139e of Charles Darwin’s “Notebook M” of 1838. See in Barrett et al. (1987).

  62. We refrain from using the phrase “boundary object” here because that phrase, as presented in Star and Griesemer’s (1989) classic study, suggests a more constructive collaboration among diverse agents than took place in the Paris orangutan’s case.

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Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank two unnamed reviewers and Rachel Mason Dentinger in particular for their helpful suggestions about an earlier version of this paper. The author is also grateful to Chris Herzfeld, author of Wattana: un orangutan à Paris (2012) for her willingness to have the happy phrase “an orangutan in Paris” reappear in the title of the present work.

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  1. Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA

    Richard W. Burkhardt Jr.

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Burkhardt, R.W. An orangutan in Paris: pondering Proximity at the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in 1836. HPLS 40, 20 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-018-0186-1

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