Author: Trisha Leigh Zeigenhorn / Source: did you know?
In the 1880s, a man named James Edwin Wide worked for the railroad, where his main job was to listen for the whistle of approaching trains and change the track based on the specific sequence, which was a signal for where they were headed.
One day, James was visiting a South African market when he stumbled upon a chacma baboon that would change his life – the primate was driving an oxcart, and as a man with two peg legs, James thought perhaps he could put the enterprising baboon to work.
He bought him, named him Jack, and took him home. For awhile, Jack was content (I assume) to push Wide back and forth to work in a trolley and help out around the house sweeping floors and taking out the trash. Then, one day when the two were hanging out at the railway station, something remarkable happened.
He had been watching Wide listen for the specific whistles and then pull levers for so long, he started to do it by himself.
Presumably, Wide oversaw Jack at the beginning, just to make sure he was really getting it right, but after awhile the human employee sat back and put his pegs up, letting the baboon do his job. According to The Railway Signal, Wide had “trained…
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