The Species Seekers Quiz: Name "The Original Gorilla"
Who got called "the original gorilla?"
1. The charming but hirsute explorer Paul Du Chaillu.
2. American President Abraham Lincoln
3. The missionary in West Africa Thomas S. Savage
4. The fiercely competitive British anatomist Richard Owen
And the answer is
The Rev. Thomas S. Savage and anatomist Jeffries Wyman discovered the new species "gorilla," in 1847. But the species remained largely unknown until 1861, when Paul Du Chaillu brought back the first eye-witness accounts of gorilla behavior in the wild, along with skins and bones of more than 20 gorillas. News of Du Chaillu's adventures spread worldwide. In the U. S., Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton called President Abraham Lincoln "the original gorilla," and joked that Du Chaillu was a fool to go to Africa for what he could easily have found in Springfield, Illinois. Although Stanton was often at odds with the President (having first called him a "long-armed ape" while working with him on the McCormick-Manney Reaper trial in 1855), Lincoln refused to replace him. After Lincoln's death, Stanton stated, "There lies the most perfect ruler of men the world has ever seen. Now he belongs to the ages."
