The Stationary Ark

by Gerald Durrell

  A still more unhappy example of the way an animal can appear hale and hearty and then suddenly reveal that it is suffering from a deadly disease, is provided by the case of Oscar, our male Bornean orangutan. We had procured Oscar when he was a tiny baby. During his childhood he had had the normal round of coughs and colds, but had contracted nothing serious. Eventually he grew into one of the most magnificent orangutans I have ever seen, with the wide, fleshy picture-frame of his species surrounding his face, from the middle of which appeared his small and sagacious eyes. Oscar was enormous, as strong as two men and apparently in the pink of condition. Then, one day, he seemed to be listless for no obvious reason. Four days later this powerful and apparently healthy animal was dead.

  The decline started with a lack of interest in his food. This could, of course, have been attributed to anything, from the start of a cold to toothache, but, on the rare occasions when we do get some symptoms from an animal, we always find it safer to assume the worst. As is usual practice with our apes, both our veterinary surgeons and our doctor were therefore called in. Oscar was given what treatment they could mete out, but, with such scanty evidence, it was difficult to diagnose from what he was suffering.

  On the second day, he started having diarrhoea and from then on, he went steadily downhill. Our predicament was that we could not immobilize him for examination, for the speed with which his condition deteriorated made the risk of killing him too great. So it came to the last day, as it is recorded on our cards:

  Wednesday, 25th July

  12.15 a.m. Specimen sounds as if he is coughing slightly.

  12.40 a.m. Specimen vomited very little fluid.

  1.30 a.m. – 3.15 a.m. Specimen very restless during this period, not sleeping very much and moving position frequently. Stomach contractions have been occurring at infrequent intervals, but only one observation of actual vomiting. His eyes are very bright and he appears to be alert.

  3.55 a.m. Turned over on to side, stomach contractions and wind.

  4.10 a.m.–5.40 a.m. Slept fairly well with occasional changes of position. Resp. 21-22 per min.

  5.40 a.m. Became quite alert, sat up leaning on uprights of platform. Offered drink but did not accept.

  5.45 a.m. Lying on back dozing, with periodic grunts.

  5.55 a.m. Turned over on to side, then on to stomach. Responded to gentle talking. Soft grunts. Offered drink. I thought he was going to accept, half sat up then settled down again.

  6.00 a.m. Sleeping soundly. No stomach contractions visible.

  6.50 a.m. Woke up. Came very weakly to bars. Took two mouthfuls of liquid containing Keflex. Gradually slipped off bars down to floor.

  7.05 a.m.. Shaking/trembling.

  7.12 a.m. Resp. 20.

  7.50 a.m. Resp. 24.

  9.15 a.m. On back – noise with every breath, mouth open.

  9.20 a.m. Convulsions, terminal vomit.

  The post-mortem was kindly done for us by Dr John Cragg, the Director of the States of Jersey Pathology Laboratory, and it was discovered that Oscar had been suffering from ulcerated colitis – a condition fairly rare in human beings and even more so in orangutans. The mucous membrane of the bowel is attacked and ulcers form which, eventually, cause death. It was startling to find from the autopsy that Oscar must have had this condition for some time, but had displayed no signs of it, for parts of the colon were regenerating, indicating that the large bowel had started to heal, when the disease proved fatal.

  It was small comfort to realize that such an obscure disease could not possibly have been diagnosed from the slight symptoms that we could observe, nor that, when the disease is diagnosed in humans, the treatment is the insertion of a cortisonal enema – a process which requires the cooperation of the patient for success. Oscar, immobilized, could not have helped in this. An Oscar, fully conscious, certainly would not have cooperated.

  Compared to human medicine, veterinary surgery is still in the middle ages. We are lucky in having not only intelligent, but interested veterinary surgeons looking after the Trust’s collection; but, by and large, I have met with more ignorance about wild animals among veterinary surgeons than in any other class of human being, with the possible exception of zoo-keepers, zoo directors and biologists. Face him with anything from a Fennec Fox (smaller than a miniature poodle) to the giraffe of the dog world, a Maned wolf, and the average veterinary surgeon will insist on treating the two animals as if they were Retriever puppies out of the same litter. Structurally speaking they are both dogs, but a wealth of difference lies between them, not only in size, but in habits, habitats, and psychology. I suppose it is not to be wondered at since, during the course of their rigorous training, veterinary surgeons rarely, if ever, see anything other than a domestic animal. There is little incentive to tiptoe into the unexplored and dangerous regions of veterinary surgery dealing with wild animals.

  There is a huge field of research open in wild animal veterinary surgery. In years to come when, if we behave with intelligence, we may be farming such esoteric things as Eland, Giraffe, Blackbuck or Anoa in a desperate attempt to keep at least some humans alive, a knowledge of exotic veterinary surgery will be of immense use. So little is known about wild animals that anything achieved can be counted as an advance. Take artificial insemination, widely, and to a large degree successfully, used with domestic animals. Its use with the rare wild animals is still in its infancy, but sufficient work has been done to show that it might be a major conservation tool in breeding threatened species. At Cornell University, for example, a breakthrough has been made in the artificial insemination of Hawks and in a project for returning captive-bred eggs to wild nests (the eggs from which, coming from parent birds infected with insecticides, are either infertile or soft-shelled, and the young often born deformed). Thus, hopefully, such things as the Peregrine Falcon may be reintroduced to areas in which it has suffered the fate that Rachel Carson predicted in her book, The Silent Spring.

  In the field of nutrition, there are great advances to be made, for without knowledge of the correct nutritional requirements you cannot hope to keep or breed wild animals successfully. Will the addition of mushrooms to a diet make the difference between success or failure in breeding? Or moss? Or seaweed? Or is one simply feeding too much?

  Our ignorance is vast. We know little, for example, of stress factors, which may range from the fact that the public is too close to the animal, to the fact that another animal of a different species is in the next cage. In our new Marmoset and Tamarin Complex, inadequate ventilation in the corridor between the inside bedrooms is causing a stress problem, though at first sight this may seem ludicrous to suggest. The reason is that these little primates mark their territories with their pungent, musky scent glands, rubbing them on the branches or the wire of their cages. In an inadequately ventilated area, they can, of course, easily smell the territory markings of the different species that surround them. This makes them feel that their territory is threatened and so, frantically, they mark their cages twice as much, but to no effect.

  If, in the future, a great proportion of the world’s wild life will exist only in the zoos, then it is of the utmost importance that we should solve, or at least try to solve, as many of these problems as possible. At such a time zoos will be handling even rarer species and, with these remnants, we cannot afford to take risks. We should approach such veterinary problems with the same whole-hearted enthusiasm as is now devoted to the problems of such things as the cow, the sheep and the horse. The latter, after all, are in no danger of extinction.

  The Stationary Ark

  ‘With a hazard of these dimensions looming ahead one might expect that our species, unique in the animal kingdom for its capability for logical anticipation, would already be caught up in a near-frenzy of conservationist activity. In reality it is difficult to find a single public warning, much less any sign of action . . . This
is no fanciful excursion into science fiction: given a continuation of present trends it is probably the most optimistic way of speaking of man’s future. When the swarming stage is reached in nature, mass mortality is inevitable . . . Perhaps those who anticipate the end of the road in this way are wrong, and some way out can be found. If so, it can only be through an unimaginable transference of our total scientific effort from exploitation to conservation. It is certainly to be hoped that those who have plumbed the depths of pessimism will not cease to urge constructive action along these lines in order to try to avert what they feel to be almost inevitable.’

  Dr S.R. Eyre, Population, Production and Pessimism

  ‘The Four Travellers were therefore obliged to resolve on pursuing their wandering by land, and very fortunately there happened to pass by at that moment an elderly Rhinoceros, on which they seized; and all four mounting on his back . . .

  ‘Thus in less than eighteen weeks, they all arrived safely at home, where they were received by their admiring relatives with joy tempered with contempt; and where they finally resolved to carry out the rest of their travelling plans at some more favourable opportunity.

  ‘As for the Rhinoceros, in token of their grateful adherence, they had him killed and stuffed directly, and then set him up outside the door of their father’s house as a Diaphanous Doorscraper.’

  Edward Lear

  ‘In the midst of the word he was trying to say,

  In the midst of his laughter and glee,

  He had softly and suddenly vanished away –

  For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.’

  Lewis Carroll

  I hope that in this book I have done a number of things. Above all, if you are anti-zoo, I hope I have shown that well-run zoos are an aid to animals and are not detrimental to their well-being; that, indeed, in many cases, zoos will turn out to be the last refuge of numerous species in a human-being-infested world.

  However, having said that then I must agree with you (if you are anti-zoo), that not all zoos are perfect. Of the 500 or so zoological collections in the world, a few are excellent, some are inferior and the rest are appalling. Given the premises that zoos can and should be of value scientifically, educationally and from a conservation point of view (thus serving both us and other animal life), then I feel very strongly that one should strive to make them better. I have had, ironically enough, a great many rabid opponents of zoos tell me that they would like all zoos closed down, yet the same people accept with equanimity the proliferation of safari parks, where, by and large, animals are far worse off than in the average zoo. An animal can be just as unhappy, just as ill-treated in a vast area as in a small one, but the rolling vistas, the ancient trees, obliterate criticism for this is the only thing that these critics think the animals want.

  It is odd how comforted people feel by seeing an animal in a ten acre field. Safari parks were invented purely to make money. No thought of science or conservation sullied their primary conception. Like a rather unpleasant fungus, they have spread now throughout the world. In the main, their treatment of animals is disgraceful and the casualties (generally carefully concealed) appalling. I will not mention the motives or the qualifications of the men who created them, for they are sufficiently obvious, but I would like to stress that I know it to be totally impossible to run these vast concerns with a knowledgeable and experienced staff, since that number of knowledgeable and experienced staff does not exist. I know, because I am always on the lookout for such rare beasts myself.

  I am not against the conception of safari parks. I am against the way that they are at present run. In their present form, they represent a bigger hazard and a bigger drain on wild stocks of animals than any zoo ever has done. Safari parks, properly controlled and scientically run, could be of immense conservation value for such things as antelope, deer and the larger carnivores. But they have a long way to go before they can be considered anything other than animal abattoirs in a sylvan setting.

  I feel, therefore, that one should strive to make zoos and safari parks better, not simply clamour for their dissolution. If Florence Nightingale’s sole contribution, when she discovered the appalling conditions in the hospitals of the last century, had been to advocate that they should all be closed down, few people in later years would have praised her for her acumen and farsightedness.

  My plan, then, is that all of us, zoo opponents and zoo lovers alike, should endeavour to make them perfect; should make sure that they are a help to animal species and not an additional burden on creatures already too hard-pressed by our unbeatable competition. This can be done by being much more critical of zoos and other animal collections, thus making them more critical of themselves, so that even the few good ones will strive to be better

  It is an extraordinary thing that you can trace zoos back as far as China more than two thousand years ago and the fantastic collections of the Aztecs in South America, when it was first discovered by the Conquistadores. Zoos have been going strong, in one form or another, since the first primitive man walled up his first Giant sloth in a cave. Yet legislation covering zoos is infinitesimal.

  In Great Britain, for example, subject to local council approval, anybody can start a zoo. Once he has got his collection of animals together, the proprietor is answerable only to the local health authorities for the cleanliness (and they worry more about cafés and lavatories than they do about cages) and to the local RSPCA in terms of cruelty to the animals. Now, this organization does a good job, but apart from the more obvious signs of ill-treatment (such as an animal covered with sores, or with its ribs sticking out through starvation), the inspector is pretty helpless. He has not had any training with wild animals. What, on the face of it, may look perfectly adequate, could be, from the animal’s point of view, the most monstrous cruelty.

  After the last war, there was a sudden mushroom upsurge of ill-kempt, badly-run zoos, created by a variety of unqualified people. I was once phoned up by one of these mushroom zoo directors, who wanted some advice. He had a cage, 12 ft by 6 ft, and he wanted something to fill it. His problem was that he not only did not know what anything was, but he did not know the size of it either, so he asked me to translate several available animals’ names for him (such as cougar, hyena, blackbuck, etc.) and for me to give him the dimensions of these various available animals to see which species would conveniently fit his cage. God knows, you have to have a licence for practically every other activity! Should you not be required by law to prove some competence before you are allowed to start a zoo? It is curious that this situation should exist in a country whose people never tire of telling themselves and others what fervent animal lovers they are.

  Some time ago, the responsible zoological gardens in Great Britain started the Zoological Garden Federation. Its objectives were to try, by inspection and suggestions, to raise the standards of animal husbandry, zoo design and techniques. We became a member of the Federation, because we considered that, as there was no Government control, there ought to be some standards set and adhered to, if only by the zoos concerned. This group of zoos imposed these restrictions upon themselves, so the Federation, within its framework, did a very worthwhile job.

  Its next stage was to try to get a Bill through Parliament which would at least produce a measure of control over existing zoos and set standards for any future ones. It was on the make-up of this Bill that the trouble started. It was suggested, quite rightly, that there should be set up an impartial Government body to inspect and control zoological gardens, and to have some measure of control over the sort of people who started them. Among other very necessary regulations, it provided that all zoos should keep records of their importations, births and losses and that this Government body should have access to such information. Predictably, perhaps, the majority of the purely commercial zoos violently objected to this. In an effort to try to prevent the Bill from going through Parliament, t
hey formed an opposition body called the Zoological Gardens Association which included most of the safari parks. The object of the exercise was, of course, to try to form an association including a greater number of organizations than the Federation had in its ranks, so that they could then turn to the Government and say they were the representative voice of the zoo world. This would, of course, have enabled them either to squash the Bill entirely, or else to make sure that it contained no teeth – was no more than a sanctimonious Government cloak under which, and because of which, they could continue as before, while blinding all critics with the newly acquired integrity conferred on them by the Bill.

  Fortunately, the Federation stuck to its guns and apart from a few minor alterations, insisted that the Bill should be as planned. I personally think it was not nearly tough nor searching enough, but it would have served very well as a start. However, the Government, faced with two separate bodies who did not seem able to agree on what they wanted in the Bill, or indeed whether they wanted a Bill at all, simply made a Levantine move and said, in effect, ‘mend the breach in your ranks, decide what Government control you want, and then bring your Bill back’. There is now some sort of a move afoot to endeavour to control zoos by local authorities. I suppose that would be better than nothing, but if you are, say, the Duke of Dulally and the biggest landowner in the district and you happen to have turned your stately home into a safari park, I wonder how many minor public officials would have the courage to tell you that you were maltreating your animals or, indeed, to put any sort of curb on your activities. It is really a most unsatisfactory state of affairs.