"Orang-outang étranglant un sauvage de Bornéo"

 An adult male orangutan  is portrayed in exceptional detail strangling an indigenous Dayak hunter to death with its vice like grip seeming to breaking the mans neck. At its side is an infant ape that cowers behind its parent shrieking in alarm.  The orangutan is shown with an expression of concentrated ferocity while the “savage” Dayak hunter judging by his lifeless pose is evidently either dead or dying. 

 This  masterpiece  sculpted from marble was completed by the French sculptor Emmanuel Fremiet in 1895 and was placed in the front foyer of the gallery of paleontology and comparative anatomy , where it remains to this day. The dramatic scene was inspired by Fromier reading “The Malay Archipelago” by the naturalist , explorer and codiscovered of the theory of evolution,  Alfred Russell Wallace. 

When the book was published in 1869 it became an immiediate sensation and a popular read for natural historians and armchair naturalists.  A chapter in this work featured a description of a male orangutan attacking Dayak hunters who had cornered it in defense which Wallace claimed to have witnessed in the forests of Borneo.