“ALL PIGS’’

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 488, 18 October 1928, Page 15

“ALL PIGS’’

ENGLISH WRITER DIS- ! COURSES ON BASIC SIMILARITY OF ANIMALS AT THE LONDON ZOO 1 GLUTTON IS THE RULE “The Zoo contains 4.723 creatures—all pigs.” writes Leslie G. Mainland, describing the London Zoo. Under their feathers, quills, stripes, armour, fur, spots, and blotches you will find the essential hog. When an animal ceases to be a pig the Zoo fears the worst. It means that the end is very near. If a python, for instance, stops eating out of pure cussedness, the Zoo has to take steps in the shape of forcible feeding. Dead guinuea-pigs and pigeons are strung together into a kind of sausage and guided into the reptile’s maw. Then, to ensure that the involuntary meal shall “stay put,” a kind of dog-collar is strapped round the snake’s neck and left till the subsiding bulge announces that Nature has completed tho cure. This case is only given as an amazing exception. The glutton is the rule and the hunger-striker the curiosity. Nearly all the inmates are prepared to dig their graves with their teeth or beaks. Wuen warned of the consequences -hey reply, in effect: “Well, it’s a beautiful death!” Take the ostrich. Take that particular ostrich “Wilkins,” who recently died, leaving the following estate: Seven coins, including a franc; a patent collar-stud; nine small nails and brads; a bicycle-tyre valve; three handkerchiefs, two hemstitched; three gloves, all lefts; a camera spool and two yards of twine; yuetal-backed comb and lead pencil; quite a lot of wire clippings; two biggish pieces of wood; a screw and a screw-eye; and one 4in nail.

Nail Meal Fatal Note the last object. It was fatal. Wilkins failed to master the nail, and it was “Exhibit A” at the inquest. Apologists for the ostrich claim that U ese strange items on his menu are not signs of greed, but of a weak digestion. They are stowed inside, not as food, but as supplementary teeth. By this means, they argue, hard grains of corn become flour without chewing. Be it sol But the ostrich is a confirmed, bigamist and wife-beater, so he deserves all the hard things I have said about him. Anyhow, a photograph of. tho Wilkins collection is preserved in the Zoo archives There is also another photographic record of gluttony—a film this time. It shows a keeper who leaves a bucket of fish at the mercy of a pelican. No mercy is shown. In about 250 feet of film the feathered glutton envelops -7 herrings. squeezing his neck against the side of his concrete pond to make room for the last. And then there was Riki, the mongoose. When on his best behaviour ho is given a grass snake to eat. He tackles it like a sugar-stick and eats it from the tail upwards. Then one day he came across Methusaleh, a giant, seven-foot monitor lizard.

“More grub!” Riki seemed to think, end the little wretch —half the size of an ordinary cat- —started to devour the monster, starting with the tail. Methusaleh’s squeals of rage brought the curator The giant was bandaged, and the mongoose was shut up in a Zoo office. Even then he began to gnaw the correspondence files. The hyena’s idea of something to eat is anything he can get at with his teeth. In a natural state the hyena starts a meal when some more finicky creature has finished. Bones will dr* —meaty ones for choice —but, if not then just bones. , Not quite realising this, a Zoo doctor treated a young hyena for rickets by' putting the beast’s forelegs in splints. The ;ob looked ‘temart when finished —something like neat spats. But tho splints were eaten the first ‘time the patient felt like a little extra snack. Fish Diet Expensive It is the Zoo fish-eaters which cost the money, and some of the figures are surprising You get some strange proportion sums when you go into things, such as: Three elephants equal one walrus. (“Old Bill” cost £4OO a year for cod) Three penguins equal two lions. One sea-lion equals li elephants. Lions are very cheap to entertain—they only average about Is 6d a day in cat's-meat, and it is strange that we do not see more of them as pets in private families. Still, the Zoo is not so expensive to feed (£13,000 last year) as it would be if the creatures had their own way. Many come with “oysters and champagne” ideas and have to be brought to their senses with “whelks and gingerbeer.” The infant pigmy elephant, who would not consent to continue to live on less than 150 bananas a (lay, was soon brought to see that porridge jas hoth filling* and appetising—and, incidentally, it was very much cheaper.