Drill
It was in West Africa, where I got the baby drills, that I also got Sophie, the puttynose monkey. I think these monkeys are very handsome, for their black fur has each hair tipped with green, they have a nice white shirt-front, and, on their nose is a white spot, as if someone had thrown a snowball at them and it had stuck. Sophie was quite a baby when I first got her, and when she grew bigger I used to have her tethered on a long leash attached to a collar round her waist, so that she had plenty of room to move about, and she could watch everything that was going on in the camp. She was inclined to be a rather greedy monkey, and would eat almost anything that was eatable, if she got the chance, but what she liked best of all was grasshoppers. I used to get the local African children to catch these grasshoppers for me, and I kept them in a large blue tin. As soon as Sophie saw me with this tin she would get terribly excited, dancing up and down at the end of her leash and uttering loud squeaking cries. I would tip a pile of grasshoppers out on to the ground in front of her. and she would lean forward and grab a handful and stuff them into her mouth as rapidly as she could and scrunch them up, screwing up her eyes tight, and wiping her hands hastily on her fur, for, although she loved the taste of grasshoppers, she did not like the way they wriggled and tickled.
Puttynose Monkey
A lot of people think that all monkeys can hang by their tails, but this is quite wrong. In actual fact very few monkeys can do this, and they all come from South America. The woolly monkey, for example, can use its tail like another limb. It can not only hang by it, but can, if it wants to, pick up things with it. Our woolly monkey is called Topsy, and we got her from a dealer’s shop.
She was very tiny—far too young to have been taken away from her mother—and, when I found her in the shop, she was very ill indeed, and there seemed very little chance of her living. However, we gave her injections and various medicines which we hoped would cure her. The trouble was that, at that age, Topsy would normally still be carried about everywhere by her mother. Naturally, she wanted something to cling to, but—not surprisingly—she did not trust human beings, and if we tried to handle her she would scream until we put her down. We were in despair, for we knew that she would not get better unless she had something to cling to which made her feel safe. Then we had an idea. We bought a very large teddy bear and put that in Topsy’s cage. To our delight she took to it at once, and spent all day with her arms, legs and tail wrapped round her new “mother.”
After a few days, of course, the teddy bear grew dirty, and we had to take it away to wash and dry it. Topsy objected strongly to having her mother taken away, and she just sat in her cage and screamed and screamed, until we could not stand it any longer, and we went into the town and bought her another teddy bear to take the place of the first one while it was being washed. Of course, this was a long time ago, and Topsy is now very grown-up, so much so that she has quite given up teddy bears and has a big guinea pig in her cage to keep her company.
Douracouli
Another monkey that, like Topsy, comes from South America is the douracouli. This is probably one of the strangest of the monkey family, for it is the only monkey that comes out at night instead of the day. They are quaint looking animals, for their mouths are so shaped that they look as though they are smiling the whole time. Then they have the nice white ‘‘picture frame” of fur round their faces, which makes them look like a cross between an owl and a clown. When I was collecting animals in South America, I once lived in a native hut in the forest and just outside the hut there were some fruit trees. The douracoulis would come down every evening to feed in these trees, and so I had a chance to watch them.
The first thing I noticed was that they had a very complicated language, making more different kinds of noise than any other monkey I had ever heard. They could give a sort of half purr, half barking noise, shrill squeaks, grunts, a mewing noise rather like a cat, and a strange bubbling noise like water in a pipe. They were very affectionate little monkeys, and would sit side by side, their arms round each other, peering earnestly into each other's faces and uttering their strange bubbling noise. Sometimes they would lean over and kiss each other on the mouth in the most human fashion. In the bright moonlight they were the most charming animals to watch.
White-eared
Marmoset
During the daytime the douracoulis’ place in these fruit trees was taken by the white-eared marmosets. These delightful squirrel-like monkeys are small enough to fit into a teacup, and they travel through the trees in big groups, searching for fruit, spiders, tree frogs and birds’ eggs, if they can find them. Marmosets generally have twins, and the curious thing is that the mother does not bother much with them. As soon as they are bom, she hands them over to the father, and he carries them clinging to him, one on each hip. He licks them clean, combs their fur with his claws, and only hands them over to their mother at feeding time. This is quite the opposite to normal monkey behavior. If you get them young enough, marmosets make very good pets. For eight years I had one called Pavlo and he was never shut in, but allowed to run all over the house and garden. His favorite perch was on the fence between our house and the next one, where he would sit in the sun and make faces at the big white cat that lived next door. The cat, naturally, thought that he was some sort of queer rat, and that it was her duty to kill him. but she was old and very fat, whereas Pavlo was young and agile, and she never really had a chance. She would stalk Pavlo carefully, and then, when she got close to him, she would rush along the fence, looking like a fat. white and rather wobbly tightrope walker. But Pavlo always saw her in time, and he would dive into a thick mass of creepers that grew on the fence, and hide there, still making faces at the poor cat, while she tried, without success, to squeeze her fat body between the creepers and catch him.
Another tiny member of the monkey family that makes a good pet, if you get one young enough, is the bushbaby. There are many different kinds of bushbaby found in Africa, ranging from ones the size of a cat, down to the demidoff's bushbaby, two of which can fit comfortably into a teacup. I remember, when I was collecting animals in West Africa, my hunters took me to a certain place where they said the Demidolfs lived. It was a wood, in the middle of great rolling grassfields, and the trees, though very thick and thorny, were not very tall. I waited at one side of the wood, while the Africans went round to the other side and started to make a noise, shouting and banging on tins. Nothing happened for a long time, and then suddenly the trees in front of me were full of bushbabies. There must have been twenty or thirty of them—mothers, fathers and babies. Some of the babies were only about the size of a walnut. They moved through the branches as silently as cats, and took huge leaps from branch to branch which were quite amazing. One baby I was watching suddenly found a large locust sitting on one of the branches, and. his eyes wide with excitement, he leaped on it and grabbed it in his little pink hands. Now, the locust was almost as big as the bushbaby, and as soon as he felt himself grabbed he kicked out with his powerful hind legs, and both he and the bushbaby fell off the branch. But the bushbaby managed to grab another branch with his hind legs, and, hanging upside down like a circus performer, he very soon polished off the locust.
At the moment we have one of the moholi bushbabies—which are considerably bigger than the Demidoffs—living in our house. He was bora in the zoo, and as soon as he was old enough we took him away from the parents, and kept him in our drawing room. Every evening, about seven o'clock, he wakes up and starts hopping around the room, investigating everything, for he is extremely curious and does not seem to be a bit afraid of anything new. The first time he saw the tea tray he jumped straight on top of the teapot, and of course burned his feet. Now he gives the teapot a wide berth, but he knows that there is milk on the tray, and he approaches very carefully to try to steal a drink from the milk jug, keeping a careful eye on the teapot meanwhile, to make sure it does not suddenly attack him. His jumping ability, like all bushbabies, is quite ext
raordinary, i have seen him sitting on the hearth rug in front of the fire, and the next moment he is on the mantelpiece, and a second after that on the bookcase six feet away, and all done so quickly that you can hardly follow it with your eye. He seems to be able to land on any sort of a surface,
and to get a grip where I am sure no other animal would find one.
We let him have the run of the drawing room when we go to bed, and in the morning every single picture is hanging crookedly on the walls, showing that he has jumped from one picture frame to another. I do not know of any other animal that can land on a picture frame.
Now we come to three very curious little animals which do not look as though they belong to the monkey family at all. They are the slender loris and the slow loris, from Asia, and the potto from Africa. It is very interesting to note that although these little animals live so far apart in the world, they are very similar in a number of ways, and have adapted themselves to a similar way of iife. The slender loris is, as you can see from the picture, very well named, with his long thin legs and baby. He is a night animal, and lives up in the trees. His enormous, owl-like eyes enable him to see very well at night when he stalks through the branches searching for his prey, which ranges from cockroaches, birds’ eggs and birds, to various wild fruits. During the day he sleeps on a branch, curled up in a ball, his head tucked down between his front legs. If you wake him up, he pulls his head up very slowly and glares at you, uttering a faint hissing noise, and then moves slowly down the branch. You get the impression that he is a very slow-moving animal; but watch him at night, and you will see his long, slender legs moving at high speed; the creature can gallop through the branches of the trees like a miniature racehorse. The slow loris (who is much bigger than the slender loris, and looks just like a cuddly teddy bear) can also move very fast at night, so “slow” is certainly not the right name for him. In the daytime he curls up on a branch, like the slender loris, and puts his head between his front legs. If you disturb him, he lifts his head and blinks at you sleepily, uttering a low, bearlike growl, just to let you know that he does not like having his slumbers disturbed. The third member of this trio, the potto, is very similar to the lorises in looks and habits. He too lives up in the trees and only comes out at night, sleeping all day in the same position that the lorises adopt, though I have seen some pottos go to sleep hanging under the branch. How they manage to do this without letting go of the branch when they go to sleep, and falling down, is a mystery. Now, if you look at the photographs of these three animals you will see that they have very similar hands and feet, which they have developed specially for climbing; the grip they can get on the branches is terrific. In the case of the potto, he has even got the
Slender Loris
forefinger of each hand reduced to a tiny stump, so that with his second finger and thumb he has a much wider and stronger grip on the branches. He has also got a special method of protecting himself against his enemies. With the lorises, if they meet an enemy, all they can do is to run away, or else bite. But the potto has a much more clever idea. The bones on the back of his neck—the vertebrae —protrude in a little series of spikes, rather like a saw blade. When an enemy meets him up in the treetops and rushes along the branch at him, the potto simply ducks his head between his front legs and holds on tightly. The enemy tries to grab him by the back of the neck, and gets the mouthful of sharp spikes for his pains.
Now we leave the monkey family and come to another large group of animals, the meat-eating animals. One of the chief members of this group is, of course, the lion. Our lion is called Leo, and he is nearly two years old. He is just starting to get his mane, which is a very pale straw color, and I think he is going to be a blond lion, which I am pleased about, because I think that blond lions are more handsome than the ones with brown or black manes. Leo is still very tame with those he knows, and he will come up to the wire of his cage and let you scratch his back and chin, while he purrs as loudly as a hundred domestic cats put together.
Up to now, except for his purring, he has been very silent, but just recently, in the evenings, he has started to teach himself to roar.
They are very quiet, thoughtful sort of roars, as though he is practicing. You have to listen carefully to hear them at all, but they will gradually get louder as soon as he is satisfied with them.
Lion
Of course, he is still a baby, by lion standards, and at times he gambols round his cage and behaves just like a gigantic kitten. He has a great log of wood in his cage, and sometimes he pretends that this is a juicy buffalo, and he stalks it carefully, moving slowly forward, inch by inch so as not to frighten the log into running away. Then, suddenly, he pounces, and wrapping his legs round it rolls over and over on the ground, growling to himself, and biting at the log. Another toy that he has, of which he is very fond, is a big, black rubber bucket. He likes to chase this round the cage, patting it with his big paws, just like a kitten with a ball of wool. One day a lady asked if we had got Leo from a circus, because he was doing such clever tricks. 1 went to see what he was up to, and found that he had succeeded in jamming the bucket on his head, and was walking proudly about the cage, wearing it like a rather curious hat.
Another delightful little animal that, like the lion, lives on meat, is the genet (Jen-et), different species of which are found in Africa and Asia. They are very handsome little creatures, with their long, slender bodies, and their golden fur covered with chocolate colored spots, like a miniature leopard. Genets make very good pets, if you can get a young one and hand-rear it, and they are like a mixture of a dog and a cat in their habits. They will climb very skilfully, and gallop along the ground like a dog when you go for walks. I have seen them in the wilds, and I always admired the way they could rush up the vertical trunk of a tree as though they were running on level ground, and then leap from branch to branch as skilfully as a monkey. The only time I decided that I did not like a genet was one day in the West African forest. There was a special place that I used to go' to near some wild fig trees, and there I would hide myself and watch the various forest animals that came to feed on the figs. The first would be the touracous—beautiful golden green birds with long tails. They would perch'in the branches and peck away at the ripe figs. While they were feeding, they would sometimes be joined by a troupe of monkeys. Well, the touracous and the monkeys between them used to drop as much fruit on the ground as they actually ate, and so as soon as they had left the trees all the little ground-living animals used to come out and feed off the leftovers lying on the ground. In the undergrowth beneath the trees lived some delightful mice. They were a pale fawn color, with rows of white spots running in stripes from nose to tail, and they were about the size of a house mouse. They would come out, their whiskers wiffling, and bite pieces off the fallen figs, and sit up on their hind legs and eat them, uttering little squeaks of pleasure. If danger threatened, they would all leap straight up in the air, as though they were on springs, and then come down and sit quivering until they were sure the danger was past. On this particular morning they were all feeding among the grassroots, when a genet happened to pass by, back from a night’s hunting and on his way to bed. The mice were all busy quarreling over a particularly large and delicious fig, and so they did not notice the genet, and before I could do anything to warn them, he had leapt daintily into the air and landed among them. Of course, they all dropped their bits of fig and ran, but some of them were not quick enough, and the genet continued his way to bed, carrying in his mouth two dead mice. I had grown very fond of those mice, and I was annoyed with the genet. Still, I suppose he was very hungry, and you can hardly blame him.
The mongoose family contains different kinds, some quite small, others the size of a small dog. The black-footed mongoose comes from West Africa, and it is not only one of the largest of the mongooses, but also one of the rarest. We call our black-footed mongoose Ticky, and I got her in a father curious way. I was travelling by truck through the th
ick West African forest, on my way to my base camp in the mountains. We had been travelling all day in the Genet terrific heat, and I was tired, hungry and hot. I decided that we
would stop at the next village and buy a big bunch of bananas. As usual when you stop at an African village, all the villagers came out of their huts and surrounded our vehicle, and stood watching us, completely fascinated. I bought my bananas and ate them, watched by a silent crowd of about a hundred people. Suddenly I noticed that a girl in the crowd was carrying something in her arms, something white that wriggled. I called her, and she came forward shyly, and there in her arms was a baby black-footed mongoose. I was amazed, for it was such a rare animal and so hard to find in the forest that I had expected to have to search for weeks before I could add one to my collection. She told me that her father had found it in a hollow log when out hunting. After some bargaining I bought the mongoose, which was only about the size of a kitten, and was then faced with a problem. I had nothing to put it in, and I did not like to let it wander about in the front of the truck, in case it got tangled up with the gears or the brake and caused an accident.
Island Zoo Page 2
