MAN SCENT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4754, 22 September 1924, Page 2

MAN SCENT.

REARING WILD ANIMALS. DANGER OF HANDLING YOUNG. Lena, the London Zoo lioness, is rearing her second litter of cubs (states Leslie C. Mainland, in the Daily Mail). The secret of success with lion cubs born in captivity seems to lie in this simple rule: No human being must lay a finger on the whelps while they are in their mother’s charge. In the past the keepers, men of science, and privileged visitors would take a peep at the cubs when the mother had been "fed away” from the nursery. The cuddlesome spotted infants were not moved into the cold air. but who could resist giving them a pat or a caress ? Well, that affectionate stroking was their death sentence. It left the dreaded “man scent” on thir soft coats. For hundreds of thousands of years man has been the arch enemy of all wild creatures. Some he was obliged to kili off in self defence, and others he hunted for food. It follows that the smell of the destroyer raises an instinctive terror in the mind of an animal. The tolerance acquired by a captive beast for the smell of man| comes because the alternative isstarvation. The primitive instincts of a nursing mother bring back primitive fears. Therefore, when the lioness returns to the nursery and scents the dreaded taint she either destroys her babies or leaves them to die. A wolf mother at the Zoo once proved herself unequal to the task of rearing a family. When the next Utter arrived the Zoo called in a motherly collie. There were four cubs and four puppies. As an experiment it was decided to leave one cub with the wolf mother, and in addition to give her three of the puppies to see if she would rear them. She was shut out of her dark sleeping box while the change was made, and the puppies were given more than an hour to snuggle in the cubs’ nest and get thoroughly "wolfy” in scent. Then the wolf mother was readmitted.. There were four sniffs and three snaps—and only the wolf cub lived. Another case in point. While the usual keeper of the Zoo deer wasaway a substitute found a baby tottering in an open paddock during bad weather. The man picked it up and carried it into shelter. From that moment the mother refused to go near her baby, and the mite had to be reared by hand. Even the tame domestic rabit will kill or abandon her young snould the owner handle them in the nest and leave a trace of the fatal "man scent.” Leave all baby 'animals to their mothers, and don’t touch them unless you mean to take them away for good.