Gargantua (1929 - November 1949) was a captive
western lowland gorilla
The western lowland gorilla (''Gorilla gorilla gorilla'') is one of two Critically Endangered subspecies of the western gorilla (''Gorilla gorilla'') that lives in montane, primary and secondary forest and lowland swampland in central Af ...
famed for being exhibited by the
Ringling Brothers
The Ringling brothers (originally Rüngling) were seven American siblings who transformed their small touring company of performers into one of the largest circuses in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Four brothers ...
circus
A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicyclis ...
. He has been credited with saving the business from bankruptcy. An
acid
In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a se ...
scar
A scar (or scar tissue) is an area of fibrous tissue that replaces normal skin after an injury. Scars result from the biological process of wound repair in the skin, as well as in other organs, and tissues of the body. Thus, scarring is a ...
on his face gave Gargantua a snarling, menacing expression, which the circus management exploited by generating publicity falsely exaggerating his purported hatred of humans. He was also claimed to be the largest gorilla in captivity.
Gargantua was captured as a baby in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
, and was known as "Buddy" for years. After he was sold to Ringling Brothers by his previous owner,
Gertrude Lintz, he was renamed, after
François Rabelais
François Rabelais ( , , ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French Renaissance writer, physician, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He is primarily known as a writer of satire, of the grotesque, and of bawdy jokes ...
's
giant
In folklore, giants (from Ancient Greek: ''gigas'', cognate giga-) are beings of human-like appearance, but are at times prodigious in size and strength or bear an otherwise notable appearance. The word ''giant'' is first attested in 1297 fr ...
character, to sound more frightening.
He had a "mate" named
Toto, but apparently never showed any interest in her.
She was, nevertheless, advertised by the circus as "Mrs. Gargantua".
Early life
Gargantua was born wild in the
Belgian Congo
The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964.
Colo ...
in approximately 1929. In the early 1930s, the gorilla was given to a Captain Arthur Phillips as a gift from
missionaries
A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...
in
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. The captain was fond of him and called him "Buddy". He was kept aboard his
freighter and became popular with most of the crew. One sailor, however, drunk and seeking
revenge
Revenge is committing a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Francis Bacon described revenge as a kind of "wild justice" that "does... offend the law ndputteth the law out of office." P ...
on the captain's strictness, threw
nitric acid
Nitric acid is the inorganic compound with the formula . It is a highly corrosive mineral acid. The compound is colorless, but older samples tend to be yellow cast due to decomposition into oxides of nitrogen. Most commercially available ni ...
in Buddy's face. This did not kill the gorilla but the attack almost blinded him, left physical scars, and led to much more aggressive behaviour.
Unable to deal with this aggression, the captain gave Buddy to
Gertrude Lintz, a wealthy
eccentric
Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to:
* Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal"
Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics
* Off-center, in geometry
* Eccentricity (graph theory) of a v ...
who looked after sick animals in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
. Her husband, Dr. Bill Lintz, diagnosed Buddy with
double pneumonia
Pneumonia can be classified in several ways, most commonly by where it was acquired (hospital versus community), but may also by the area of lung affected or by the causative organism. There is also a combined clinical classification, which combi ...
. Gertrude Lintz treated the little gorilla back to health, including chewing his food for him, and along with her kennel-man, Richard "Dick" Kroener, trained and raised Buddy. She cared for Buddy, and other apes, as her children and even arranged for plastic surgery on the scar, leaving Buddy with a permanent
sneer. She was known to drive around Brooklyn with Buddy, dressed in clothes, in the passenger seat. The arrangement came to an end one night in 1937 when the 7-year-old, Buddy, frightened by thunder, broke out of his cage and climbed into bed with his "mother" for comfort; Gertrude Lintz contacted
John Ringling
John Nicholas Ringling (May 31, 1866 – December 2, 1936) was an American entrepreneur who is the best known of the seven Ringling brothers, five of whom merged the Barnum & Bailey Circus with their own Ringling Bros World's Greatest Sho ...
shortly thereafter.
[Gargantua the Great](_blank)
''The Nonist'', retrieved 4 July 2007
Circus attraction
Ringling bought Buddy from Bill Lintz for a sum less than $10,000
($ in ) and renamed him "Gargantua" at his wife's suggestion. The
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, in financial problems after the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, heavily advertised their newest attraction. Their extravagant claims included:
*"The Largest Gorilla Ever Exhibited!"
*"The World's Most Terrifying Living Creature!"
*"The Largest and Fiercest Gorilla Ever Brought Before the Eyes of Civilised Man!"
*"The Only Full-Grown Gorilla Ever Seen On This Continent!"
Regardless of the truth of these slogans, Gargantua attracted millions and single-handedly saved the circus.
A special cage was built for Gargantua by the Crane Company. It was air-tight and air conditioned, designed to keep Gargantua in and the spectators' diseases out.
Another source attributes construction of Gargantua's special climate-controlled cage to the Carrier Corporation: "Gargantua's cage, a 20-foot-long steel and plate glass climate-controlled box constructed at a cost of $20,000 by the Carrier Corporation, became as celebrated as its occupant, and was paraded around the ring at every performance."
His first public appearance was in April 1938 and was recorded by ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' magazine:
''Appearing as Display No. 14 on the 26-item program, Gargantua was hauled round & round the Garden in a heavily barred, thickly glassed, air-conditioned wagon drawn by six white horses. Stocky & truculent, he stared menacingly out of his cage, was characterized by Frank Buck as "the most ferocious, most terrifying and most dangerous of all living creatures."''
Gargantua's supposed aggression and violence were emphasized in the circus' publicity. For example, ''Time'' magazine also wrote this earlier in the same year:
''"Gargantua the Great, wrote Gargantuan Columnist Heywood Broun
Heywood Campbell Broun Jr. (; December 7, 1888 – December 18, 1939) was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, later known as The Newspap ...
three weeks ago, "is the fiercest looking thing I have ever seen on two legs. And probably his power and truculence were all the more impressive because he did look a good deal like a distant relative. No one was allowed to go close to his cage, because Gargantua can reach about five feet through the bars and get a toe hold on a visitor whom he dislikes." Gargantua may not be the world's biggest captive gorilla—since the death of Berlin Zoo
The Berlin Zoological Garden (german: link=no, Zoologischer Garten Berlin) is the oldest surviving and best-known zoo in Germany. Opened in 1844, it covers and is located in Berlin's Tiergarten. With about 1,380 different species and over 20,2 ...
's monster, many zoos have claimed that honor for their gorillas—but he is one of the most vindictive. Last week the circus' executive vice president, young John Ringling North, nephew of the late John ("Three-Ring") Ringling, was inspecting the circus' Sarasota, Fla. winter quarters. Imprudently disregarding warning signs, he leaned against the bars of Gargantua's cage to rest. Gargantua reached through, got no toe hold but wrenched Circusman North's left arm into the cage, bit & wrung it until Trainer Richard Kroner, pounding the gorilla with an iron stake, distracted its slow attention.''
In 1941, he was paired with another gorilla,
Toto (short for ''Mitoto'' or ''M'Toto''), who was advertised as "Mrs. Gargantua". Nothing ever came of the relationship, however, and both lived in separate cages.
In May 1942, his trainer since babyhood, Richard Kroener, died. As Kroeners' assistant Julius Gerlick had just been drafted, this left Gargantua to be trained by strangers.
Death
Gargantua
''The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel'' (french: La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a pentalogy of novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais, telling the adventures of two giants, Gargantua ( , ) and his son Pantagruel ...
died in November 1949 of double
pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severit ...
. A necropsy performed at
Johns Hopkins Hospital
The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. It was founded in 1889 using money from a bequest of over $7 million (1873 mo ...
revealed that Gargantua had been suffering from several conditions at the time of his death, including skin disease and four impacted and rotten wisdom teeth.
His skeleton was donated to the
Peabody Museum in 1950,
but it is now only displayed on special occasions.
Physical characteristics
Sources report Gargantua's weight variously as -.
The 7-year-old Gargantua was described as when first displayed.
His standing height was said to be 1.68 m (5 ft 6 in). Western lowland gorillas usually only reach in the wild.
Legacy
The 1997 film ''
Buddy
Buddy may refer to:
People
*Buddy (nickname)
*Buddy (rapper), real name Simmie Sims III (1993–Present)
*Buddy Rogers (wrestler), ring name of American professional wrestler Herman Gustav Rohde, Jr. (1921–1992)
*Buddy Boeheim (born 1999), Amer ...
'', starring
Rene Russo
Rene Marie Russo (born February 17, 1954) is an American actress and model. She began her career as a fashion model in the 1970s, appearing on magazine covers such as ''Vogue'' and ''Cosmopolitan''. She made her film debut in the 1989 comedy '' ...
, is very loosely based on the early life of Gargantua/Buddy and another of Gertrude Lintz's gorillas,
Massa
Massa may refer to:
Places
*Massa, Tuscany, the administrative seat of the Italian province of Massa-Carrara.
*Massa (river), river in Switzerland
* Massa (Tanzanian ward), administrative ward in the Mpwapwa district of the Dodoma Region of Ta ...
.
See also
*
List of individual apes
This is a list of non-human apes of encyclopedic interest. It includes individual chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, bonobos, and gibbons that are in some way famous or notable.
Actors
* Bam Bam, an orangutan, played Precious (Passions), Preciou ...
References
Further reading
*''Gargantua: Circus Star of the Century'' by Gene Plowden (
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
, )
*''Animals Are My Hobby'' by Gertrude Davies Lintz (Museum Press Limited, 1945, ASIN B0007JAIJC)
External links
Gangantua Photos- History of Gargantua
Gargantua the Great at The NonistThe ''News-Times'': The Real King Kong
at Apes & Monkeys
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gargantua
Individual gorillas
Circus apes
1929 animal births
1949 animal deaths
Deaths from pneumonia in Maryland