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Updated: June 28, 2025
Signing to me to remain where I was, he left the room. In a few minutes he returned, accompanied by one of the strange squirrel-like animals I had seen in the fields. I was right in conjecturing that the creature had no opposable thumb; but a little ingenuity had compensated this so far as regarded the power of carrying.
They held the stalks of the fruit they plucked in their mouths, filling with them large bags left at intervals, and from the manner in which they worked I suspected that they had no opposable thumbs that the whole hand had to be used like the paw of a squirrel to grasp an object. I pointed to these, directing my companion's attention and asking, "What are they?"
The first digits, namely, the "great toe" and the "thumb," are freely movable and opposable to the others, so that the limbs are prehensile and clasping structures; usually but not always the animals of this order are tree-dwellers in correlation with the grasping powers of the feet and hands.
Their nails, also, except those of the hind-thumbs, are long and claw-shaped; and the thumbs of the fore extremities, or hands, are not opposable to the other fingers. Their bodies are long and slender, clothed with soft hair; and their tails, though not prehensile, are nearly twice the length of their bodies.
In physical organization their approach to man is singularly close. In anatomy man and the higher apes are in most respects counterparts of each other. The principal anatomical distinction has been considered to be in the foot, which from the opposable character of the great toe was classed by Cuvier with the hand, the apes being named Quadrumana, or four-handed, and man Bimana, or two-handed.
And as to the foot, the great toe of the Marmoset is still more insignificant in proportion than that of the Orang while in the Lemurs it is very large, and as completely thumb-like and opposable as in the Gorilla but in these animals the second toe is often irregularly modified, and in some species the two principal bones of the tarsus, the 'astragalus' and the 'os calcis', are so immensely elongated as to render the foot, so far, totally unlike that of any other mammal.
Emerson is the last man we should expect to be guilty of misinterpreting Nature, yet he does so at times. He does so in this passage: "If Nature wants a thumb, she makes it at the cost of the arms and legs." As if the arm were weaker or less efficient because of the thumb. What would man's power be as a tool-using animal without his strong, opposable thumb? His grasp would be gone.
The opossum's hind foot has a genuine opposable thumb; and he also uses his tail in climbing as a supernumerary hand, almost as much as do any of the monkeys. He often suspends himself by it, like an acrobat, swings his body to and fro to get up steam, then lets go suddenly, and flies away to a distant branch, which he clutches by means of his hand-like hind feet.
For him, the giraffe had acquired its long neck by constant reaching up to the boughs of trees; the monkey had acquired its opposable thumb by constant grasping at the neighbouring branches; and the serpent had acquired its sinuous shape by constant wriggling through the grass of the meadows.
The elastic arch of the instep must be excepted in the above description, and adds lightness and swiftness to his otherwise slow gait. The great toe is short and generally not opposable. The muscles of the leg are heavy and the knee-joint has a very broad articulating surface.
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