Ape with 5-year-old’s brain
THE image that Baker tweeted is from 1925 and shows Jo Mendi, a performing chimpanzee who delighted US audiences of that time, with Gertrude Bauman, the wife of his trainer, the showman Lew Backenstoe. They are with an unidentified man.
The picture was taken outside a Tennessee courthouse where the notorious Scopes Monkey Trial, involving a teacher accused of breaking the law by teaching evolution, was taking place.
Jo Mendi was claimed to be as clever as a five-year-old child and he went on to appear in films. He died in 1930, but a succession chimps subsequently performed under the name.