soko

plural sokos

1. datedA species of African ape, supposedly a variety of the chimpanzee.

   Old hunters and travellers say that they would rather steal the child of a native savage than to take one of the sokos.

   1918, Royal Dixon, The Human Side of Animals, page 232

   1 more example

   A soko alive was believed to be a good charm for rain; so one was caught, and the captor had the ends of two fingers and toes bitten off. The soko, or gorilla, always tries to bite off these parts, and has been known to overpower a young man and leave him without the ends of fingers and toes. […] The subjoined account of the soko — which is in all probability an entirely new species of chimpanzee, and not the gorilla, is exceedingly interesting, and no doubt Livingstone had plenty of stories from which to select. Neither Susi nor Chuma can identify the soko of Manyuema with the gorilla, as we have it stuffed in the British Museum.

   1875, Horace Waller, The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa