Will Cuppy was one of the original staff of Harold Ross's New Yorker and the author of How to Be a Hermit and How to Become Extinct. He is also, says P.G.Wodehouse in his introduction, "the author of the best thing said about Pekingese, viz. 'I don't know why they should look so conceited. They're no better than we are.'" This quip sounds the characteristic Cuppy note: concisely expressed misanthropy, a.k.a. pith and vinegar.

About the title: "I grant you there are plenty of old-fashioned and pretty ineffective ways to tell your friends from the Apes," confesses the author. "What could be simpler, for instance, when you are at the zoo? The Apes are in cages. Yes, but when you are not at the zoo, what then?"

"Then" is when we need to be taken by Mr. Cuppy's incomparable hand, which, unlike the chimpanzee's, is clean and has an opposable thumb.