Buddy (gorilla)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Buddy (* 1929 ; † November 25, 1949 in Miami ) was a gorilla who was marketed as a monster under the name "Gargantua".

Life

In 1931 missionaries in Africa handed over a friend of theirs to a freighter captain in Kribi, a young gorilla who had been caught in the Belgian Congo and who was a little over a year old at the time. The animal was taken aboard the West Key Bar as a mascot by Captain Arthur Phillips and was named Buddy. The ship's crew had fun with the animal until a seaman in Boston threw nitric acid in the face of the little gorilla and seriously injured him. The animal almost lost its sight, remained severely disfigured and could no longer be tamed. The captain sold Buddy on December 28, 1932 to Gertrude Lintz , who kept numerous exotic animals in Brooklyn and, among other things, nursed the young gorilla Massa . In a letter to the editor in 1941, Roger Conant referred to this Massa as "Gargantua's Pal". But the two gorillas were kept together for a maximum of four years, since Massa did not come to Lintz's household until 1931 and left him again in 1935.

Lintz had an operation on Buddy's face, but the gorilla remained disfigured by the acid attack. His upper lip never returned to its original shape. In September 1936, the animal was seriously damaged again: a boy who had been employed by Gertrude Lintz for a while gave him a sweetened disinfectant to drink and almost killed him.

When Buddy was about eight years old, he supposedly broke out of his cage, frightened by a thunderstorm, and crawled into bed with Gertrude Lintz. She then decided to abolish it and in 1937 offered it to John Ringling . He took over, took over the monkey on December 4, 1937 and started Buddy, who now bore the name Gargantua and was still looked after by Richard Kroener, who had already worked at Lintz for 20 years, as the largest gorilla ever to be exhibited , and to market the most gruesome living creature imaginable. The promotion was successful and Buddy did a lot to help Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey survive the Great Depression . Henry Ringling North discovered during a visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago that Buddy was a little smaller than the zoo gorilla Bushman .

Buddy alias Gargantua was driven around and presented in an air-conditioned cage wagon, and the audience was encouraged to keep as far away from the wagon as possible because the animal could reach out. In 1938 ex-boxing champ Gene Tunny speculated about how Buddy could be defeated. He attempted to knock the animal down, but apparently not despite the resounding words about the well-trained abdominal muscles that a boxer has over a gorilla.

In 1941, Buddy was given a partner. In the press, the first meeting with Mitoto, usually just called Toto or Mrs. Gargantua, was romanticized. In reality, the gorillas were not interested in one another and consequently did not produce any offspring. In 1949 Buddy showed signs of illness. But since no one dared to approach him, he was not examined and given medical attention. He died of double pneumonia in November 1949 at the age of about 20. After his death, he was also found to have had severe kidney disease and massive dental problems.

His skeleton was donated to the Peabody Museum of Natural History in 1950 . In 1997 the film Buddy was made, which is based on the fate of Buddys and Massa.

Web links

  • Gargantua the Great Or: Buddy, the gorilla who was scared of lightning on thenonist.com

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jack Phillips, There Was Once a Gorilla Named 'Gargantua' Called 'World's Most Terrifying Living Creature' , June 2, 2016 at www.theepochtimes.com
  2. ↑ a b c d e f John E. Cooper, Gordon Hull, Gorilla Pathology and Health , Academic Press 2017, ISBN 0128020393 , p. 577 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  3. ↑ According to Cooper, the animal was named later. He thinks that Gertrude Lintz called it Buddha and that name was then changed to Buddy.
  4. ↑ Roger Conant, Gargantua's Pal , in: Life , March 18, 1940, p. 4 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  5. ↑ SM O'Connor, Bushman at Lincoln Park Zoo and The Field Museum , Jan. 2, 2018 on inthegardencity.com
  6. ↑ The latter is likely to have been public fraud, as the car was air-conditioned and, according to Cooper, was glazed.
  7. ↑ Barbara Ensor, Monkey Business , June 2, 1997 in New York Magazine , p. 15 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  8. ↑ Massa the Gorilla on de.findagrave.com