Apes

Thirty years ago, at her home in Havana, Mme. Rosalie Abreu began to collect live monkeys. She kept them in cages but under conditions as close as possible to nature. She brought chimpanzees from the Congo and from Sierra Leone. In Borneo her collectors caught the rare black ape--Mme. Abreu's is the only live one in any collection. From Gibraltar came a Barbary ape, the only native European monkey. Africa and South America contributed lion monkeys. Thumbless spider monkeys swing merrily from the trees in this private zoo. In all, there are now 130 monkeys representing 25 species.

Last week it became known that Harvard anthropologists were cooperating with the Pathe Exchange, Inc., in making educational movies of the monkeys. From Havana came Anthropologist Frederick Hulse, with Pathe Cameraman Miller, bringing 3,000 feet of film, picturing fiery orangutans who showed fight when the camera clicked, other monkeys that showed fear, others that were friendly.

When the Pathe laboratories have finished developing the films they will send them to Harvard. There scientists will cut, edit, arrange, write captions, prepare two feature movies--one technical, for universities; the other elementary, for school courses in social geography. The films will be released to universities, schools, museums, not to theatres. The monkeys at Havana will remain in their accustomed seclusion, available for scientific study, but secure from tourists and the merely curious.