Word: castang
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Dates: during 1938-1938
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...other conversation went further. The human participant was a Chicago animal-trainer, Reuben Castang. London-born son of an animal buyer, black-haired Reuben entered circus work 50 years ago in Hamburg, Germany. His greatest boast: when Explorer Roald Amundsen planned to have polar bears instead of huskies haul sleds on his 1910 polar dash, he, Castang, was chosen as trainer. He taught 21 bears to pull sleds in harness. Then Amundsen decided to use dogs after all. Since then, Castang has trained chimpanzees almost exclusively...
Hearing that Castang also could talk with apes, an enterprising Toronto Star reporter went out to the Riverdale Zoo, had a keeper install a handset telephone in the cage of chimpanzees George & Josephine, put through a long distance call to Castang's Chicago hotel. With a "semi-scream," Castang summoned Josephine to the phone. At his whimpering mimicry of the chimpanzee mating call. Ape Josephine first looked startled, then so pleased that Ape George, becoming angry, shouldered his mate from the phone, pulled frantically at the cage's bars. With a sharp cough-like cry, Castang cursed George...
...Said Castang after the chat: "I didn't do very well. I don't know those apes, you know, and it's hard even to speak to a man to whom you've never been introduced...