ZOO IN MOURNING

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1030, 22 July 1930, Page 10

ZOO IN MOURNING

SEA-LIONS DIE FROM PNEUMONIA STRANGE COINCIDENCE There is sighing and sorrowing at the Auckland Zoo, for the death is announced of Mr. and Mrs. SeaLion —both. And there is a singular thing about their going. They died of the same malady, double pneumonia, and strange to relate, each was taken ill on a Friday and died on a Sunday, within a week. Mr. Sea-Li on was first to contract the illness. He became seedy and melancholy on Friday, July 11. and succumbed on Sunday, July 13. According to story-books, Mrs. SeaLion should thereupon have pined in grief and died at once of a broken heart. But this is a world in which fact rarely gives place to romance.

Mrs. Sea-Lion flopped about in her pond for several days more, until at length Auckland’s treacherous climate inflicted the ill which took her mate. She grew* miserable on Friday. July IS. and lingered until Sunday last. “We shall greatly miss the sea-

lions,” said the curator of the zoo. Mr. L. T. Griffin, in relating the story this morning. “We had had them for about two years and it will be some time before they can be replaced. They came from islands south of New Zealand, and were given by the Government, which has been very good to us. We shall have to wait until the Governnient’s steamer which visits the home of these animals can bring some

Discussing the cause of death, Mr. Griffin said that the zoo's honorary medical staff had conducted the postmortems and found severe pneumonia in each case. The doctors said this:

“Little or nothing could be done to prevent the illness, and there arc no measures available to avoid this trouble in the same circumstances/* Mr. Griffin said that sea-lions are usually regarded as very hardy animals that are quite capable of living in captivity. He supposed some members of the group were able to stand up better to changes in climatic conditions than others. Probably, they did not suffer from illness in the southern latitudes because of the very cold, clear atmosphere of those parts, whereas the frequent changes in temperature experienced in Auckland might have a harmful effect. “I have noticed the same thing with penguins which have been presented to the zoo,” said Mr. Griffin. “They also took pnoumonia and died.” Asked if the animals did not some sort of housing, the curator said that in their native habitat sea-lions simply sheltered beneath tufts of bushes. This was the arrangement at the zoo. Jn any case they were very* fat animals, and should not feel the cold. The fault doubtless lay in the changing atmospheric conditions.