He shot a gorilla and brought it back to life

In 1896, in what is now Somalia, Carl Akeley fired at something moving in the bush.

To his surprise, a female leopard weighing more than 30 kilograms jumped out of the bushes, knocked the rifle away, and pounced on him . Fortunately (for the leopard, it was a great misfortune) Ackerley was bitten on the base of his right arm, and no vital injuries were caused. In a hurry, Ackerley could hardly feel the pain. He lay on the ground, grabbed the leopard's neck with his left hand, pressed his knee against the leopard's chest, and pushed its mouth down little by little until it reached the position of his right hand. Finally, he stabbed the leopard's throat with his right fist and suffocated it.

Lucky Akeley and Unlucky Leopard | Wikimedia Commons

The anecdote of Ackley's battle with the leopard was written into the Hal Roger series by Willard Price and became famous in China, but few people know about this man's other deeds.

Bringing nature back to life in museums

Ackerley was the chief taxidermist at the Field Museum of Natural History. In his time, the techniques for taxidermy were still very crude : just peeling the skin, sewing it up, and stuffing it with straw or sawdust. Ackerley was quite proficient in sculpture and zoology, and was very dissatisfied with "soul specimens".

“Soul specimen” | David Haberthür / Flickr

He created a taxidermy technique: First, a clay sculpture of the animal is made, with muscles and bones that are anatomically accurate . Then, a layer of glue is applied to the sculpture, and a thin layer of concrete paper and wire mesh is placed over it, clinging to the sculpture to recreate its shape. Then, a varnish is applied to make the shell waterproof, and the glue is dissolved with water, so that the shell can be removed. Finally , the animal's fur is carefully covered on the outside of the shell (clay sculptures cannot be covered with skin), and a delicate hollow specimen is obtained.

Ackley working on a gorilla's face | Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

Akeley was not satisfied with "resemblance in form" but also strived for "resemblance in spirit". He made the animal specimens into playful and fighting postures, arranged them in groups to look like a family, and arranged extremely delicate scenery to reproduce their natural environment when they were alive. The specimens of " Four Seasons of Whitetail Deer " are divided into four groups according to spring, summer, autumn and winter, and the background changes from green trees and vines to snow-capped mountains, as if the forests of Virginia were solidified by magic and moved to the museum. There are more than 10,000 leaves used in the scenery alone, most of which were made by his wife and colleague Delia Akeley.

The background of the white-tailed deer specimen looks like a real forest | Biodiversity Heritage Library

Akeley's most famous creation is the "Akeley Hall of African Mammals" at the American Museum of Natural History. It has a total of 28 groups of specimens, which took him the last 17 years of his life and his successors 10 years to complete. In the center is a group of African grassland elephants, "walking" towards people with great momentum. The surrounding exhibition halls display lions, gorillas, buffaloes, etc., recreating the natural ecology of the Serengeti Plain, the upper reaches of the Nile River and eastern Congo in Africa.

African animal display at the American Museum of Natural History | Evolutionnumber9 / Wikimedia Commons

The specimen maker with blood on his hands

When we marvel at Ackerley’s extraordinary skills, we must not forget that these huge amounts of specimens were all taken from real wild animals. At the time, photography technology was still very rudimentary (another achievement of Ackerley was to improve camera technology to photograph animals, and later his modified camera played a big role in news reporting), so killing animals and making specimens was almost the only way for the Western world to learn about wild animals.

Akeley traveled to Africa five times in his life and collected a large number of specimens for the museum. This made Akeley's life full of contradictions: he took advantage of the superior attitude of a white colonist to plunder the natural resources of other people's land and kill wild animals, which is an act of aggression that should be despised by today's standards.

Ackerley and his colleagues hunt in Kenya. This elephant was shot by his wife Delia | Internet Archive Book Images

But he was not a pure and ruthless robber. Akeley loved the natural environment of Africa and called this continent " brightest Africa ", in contrast to the discriminatory "darkest Africa" ​​of some Westerners. He had seen the desolate land after most of the wild animals were killed, and condemned the actions of white colonists: "The dark chapters of African history were written by the process of civilization."

Bronze statue of African natives hunting a lion, made by Akeley, now in the collection of the Field Museum in Chicago | Evolutionnumber9 / Wikimedia Commons

In 1921, Ackerley went to today's Democratic Republic of Congo (which was then occupied by Belgium as a colony) to hunt gorillas. His goal was to find the most majestic and beautiful gorillas and create a set of specimens to show people the tranquility and beauty of the African rainforest . But this "tranquility" was based on killing. When his team shot gorillas, Ackerley felt empathy for these human-like animals, praised them as majestic and kind giants , and regretted his actions. He looked at Mt. Mikeno in the distance, the clouds dissipated, and the shape of the mountain was clearly presented in the blue sky. This scene was engraved in Ackerley's heart, and finally it was painted on the wall as the background of the gorilla exhibition hall in the African Animal Hall.

Gorillas in the African Hall | Thom Quine

Buried Under the Volcano

After the gorilla hunt, Akeley traveled to Belgium to lobby King Albert I to establish nature reserves in Africa. At the time, protecting wildlife was a novel concept. In 1925, the world's first gorilla sanctuary was established , which is today's Virunga National Park, and Akeley was one of the key driving forces.

In 1926, Ackerley went to Africa for the last time and died of illness under the volcano of Micheno. His body was buried on the land where he killed the gorilla and looked out at the distant mountains. Will he be forgiven by the African people and nature? The mountains cannot answer.

Bronze statue of a gorilla made by Akeley | taxidermy4cash

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