d is said to devour large animals when found
dead, though it does not attempt to kill them for food. The young
gorilla which was kept in captivity at Berlin became quite omnivorous in
its diet.

With all this readiness to eat animal food, none of the existing apes
are carnivorous to any large extent, but the fact of this inclination
makes it not improbable that some of the apes of the past may have been
much more so. It is quite within the limits of probability, for
instance, that the man-ape at an early date became omnivorous in its
diet. Its change in structure may well have been the result of a decided
change in diet, such as that from fruit to flesh food. Such a radical
change as that from vegetable to animal food would certainly demand a
more active employment of the arms as agents in capture. Fruits and nuts
wait to be pulled; animals must be caught before they can be eaten. The
former is an easy matter to an arboreal animal; the latter might prove a
difficult one, especially if large animals were to be captured.

In short, the pursuit and capture of any of the larger animals for prey
could not fail to modify to a great degree the use of the arms. Their
employment in locomotion would interfere seriously with their utility in
this direction. To succeed in capturing nimble prey by an animal with
the ape form of hands a considerable freedom of the arms would be
necessary, and the feet would have to be mainly, if not wholly, depended
upon for motion. The ape has not the sharp claws of the carnivora with
which to seize and hold its prey. It must have been obliged to use its
palms for this purpose, and this it could not well have done unless they
were free in their action.

It is conceivable, indeed, that the man-ape may have run down its prey,
or sprung upon it from covert, and seized it with the hands, but there
is good reason to believe that this was not its mode of capture. The
organization of the ape tribe gives it a characteristic action which is
not to be found in any other group of the vast animal kingdom, that of
handling and throwing missiles. In this it necessarily stands alone,
since no other animal has a grasping palm. The power is one of prime
importance, for without it we cannot perceive how man could ever have
emerged from the general animal kingdom. The use of missiles is by no
means uncommon with the monkeys. We cannot safely accept the story that
American monkeys will throw cocoanuts from tree-tops