PSEUDO-EXPLORERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 88, 15 April 1933, Page 7 (Supplement)

PSEUDO-EXPLORERS.

CRUELTY FOR THE SCREEN.

RHINOCEROS " THRILLS."

HOW THE LION DOES NOT KILL.

(By CAPTAIN CARL VON HOFFMAN)

The camera, manipulated by wily man, makes possible remarkable, deviations from the actual course of natural events. Africa would be a far less exciting study for the film audience were it not for imaginative incidents wrought, by the camera and the nature faker who sometimes mans it. A striking instance was that of a screen production in which a certain adventurer was shown in fearfully intimate approach to a reclining rhinoceros. Let us examine into the possibilities and then divulge the actualities of this incident. The rhinoceros is huge. He has the power of an engine, the speed of a racehourse. He is ferocious as a bull. He is a killer. But, like all other wild beasts, he has learned to fear man as a menace to animal life. The scent of the human shunts him away. Only rarely, under favourable wind conditions and with stealthy, studied approach, can you get near him. If you come within reach and he awakens, he will bolt, quite likely; though if terribly surprised and panicky he may charge. But the rhino, really would be content if you would go away from there and let him doze on. There is something wrong with a picture that shows a mighty hunter so close to the rhino, that the animal i 3 looking directly into the hunter's eyes. A film I have in mind, taken some years ago, was an example of wanton cruelty. A shot had been plumped into the rhino's. 6pine, paralysing him. The game laws of Africa make it a criminal offence "to tease a wounded beast, which must be killed at once. Here, however, it was put through terrific suffering so the camera might have its thrilling moment. While the 'beast lay helpless, the hunter, thus portraying himself a mighty man, came close to the which the audience did not know had been paralysed by a previous bullet, and killed the rhino, with a bullet in the brain. There are many warrants out for hunters who have done deeds such as this and for others who have run down beasts with automobiles. I know of a film showing an automobile pursuing and then crashing into a warthog, breaking its side. It is unfortunate that tho audience, instead of being thrilled, fails to ponder the vicious cruelty involved and' ttLd unsportsmanlike nature of the act. There isn't a white guide in Africa who will attend a party likely to wound and tease ■beasts so the leisurely camera may have its manufactured record. There wad the screen portrayal of another rhino., brought down, according to the amera, by brave adventurers. The spectators were unaware that the shoulder had been broken by a bullet before the picture was taken. What thrilled them was the apparent courage of the hunters in going right over to the beast and poking it with their guns. These men never can get back into Africa. Unfortunately, Africa does not examine films being taken to America, or there might be less readiness to engage in wanton cruelties. Had a Fair Break Once. Time was, before the movies, when sportsmen did give the animal a fair break. They had no high-powered express rifles. They had to be expert riflemen, quick eyes and fast fingers, for they operated at very close range. Each bullet had to count. The hunter had to bring down or run the risk of being brought down. But many camera huntsmen to-day don't have the nerve for close combat. Still, their pictures must give the impression that they have. I don't wish to say this is a general practice. There are any number of sportsmen who give wild game an even break and never impose a cruelty. But there are just enough of the others to warrant the conclusion that human beings' pan manifest deplorable cruelties. In one famous screen portrayal oi animal life in Africa is shown the bringing to earth of a) ferociously-charging rhinocerous. In its intense excitement, hands gripping chairs, the audience fails to note that the background does not stand still, as normally it would if a huntsman were holding his ground, gun in hand, while the beast came on. This background actually changes, while the rhinoceros plunges ahead. The reason is that the picture was taken from an automobile that moved before the brute, its speed measured to the headlong speed of the animal. When, in the swift course of events, the animal was shown with bowing head, in portrayal of a dying rhinoceros, a strange sight was placed before the eyes' of the untrained audience. To begin with, the producers had scrubbed that, head white, a ridiculous whiteness. Nobody seemed to know why. Perhaps to show a nice, clean head. None seemed to pause to consider tliaf it did not match the muddy hue of the rest of the carcase. But the big mistake, a thoughtless oversight, was in failing to go through with the tediously-artificial process of causing the eyes to blink For this actually was a lifeless head, death having been wrought before the head was photographed close up. And the producers, failing to simulate" the blinking of a dvinc eye in an animal they desired to picture as dying, not (lead, neglected to do anything about the steady, glazed Lion hunting can be very thrilling, particularly if you undertake to shoot the male first. The tried hunter goes after the female at the outset. l ( or 11 the male is brought down first, his mate invariably charges. On tlie other hand, if his wife is killed first, the male, likely as not, will saunter off to other parts. Among lions the females are as quick to protect their mates as themselves. Like man, game has a strong sense of self-protection. It is constantly in fear. This is especially so when man is near. Wounded, the wild boast will become ferocious. The Angry Warthog. I have seen eveli a warthog, which ordinarilv minds its business, turn vicious. *1 had crossed between it and the lair in which lay its family. The animal, seeming to fear it could not reach home, became panicky and charged nie. I jumped aside. The warthog saw that I no longer blocked its path home and became docile, with no further animus. It went to its family to relate, perhaps, how it had driven off an invader. I have described previously the of a lion leaping at a zebra in a movie film. The audience could not be

expected to know that its leap, a vertical dash from the ground, was clumsy and unnatural. For the audience could not know that this lion was a native of the zoo and had never seen Africa. It was fat, sleek, not a muscle standing out. The lion of the veldt is robust, but has no excess fat. His muscles show, for he leads a vigorous existence. There are days when he gets no food. Parasitic insects prey on him. Thorny brush tears his mane. The lion in the wilderness never has the beautiful mane one sees in the cage. The king of beasts in his native haunts is beautiful in his movements, agile, artistic, a fast killer. He measures distance accurately, shoots with the speed of a bullet. He does not leap vertically, as did this film lion, nor land, as did the animal of the screen, all fours on the zebra's back. In the veldt the lion would have killed differently. Thus, two years ago a friend and I were studying wild game in the Sabi preserve of South Africa. At sunrise we saw four lions, cubs of eight months or so, and their parents. A young zebra buck, straying from its fellows at a water l>cle, had come to the rim of a ravine. The lions were on their way to the water hole. They saw the zebra. Their prospective prey sensed danger, but became bewildered, and knew not which way to run. The lion cubs took root, watching their elders, getting their lesson of the kill. The female elunk through the grass, a hundred feet from the zebra. I whispered to my friend: <r Watcli, this *will be a kill! But the lioness was approaching head on to the zebra. Her mate, realising the unwisdom of this, swept into action, galloping through the grass and manoeuvring into a position from which it could spring to the zebra's haunch. The Lion Kills. At twenty-five feet the male lion measured distance and direction, claws in springing poise. He swept forward like lightning. He leaped, not vertically, but from the rear, to the haunch, landing cleanly, neatly, with businesslike precision, as the cubs watched in admiration. He straddled the zebra's haunch, plunging his full weight to one side of the prey to force it down toward the earth. A powerful left claw dug to the zebra's heart, while the hind legs gripped the haunch. A terrific jaw clamped tight, not in haphazard bite, Imt in a deliberate, measured grip of the Zebra-'e mane. A right claw swept into the victim's noseband yanked the head around with a violent jerk. The zebra's neck was broken. Death was immediate. So instantaneous was the entire episode that it took less time than this narration. In the movie production, as previously recounted, the zebra did not attempt to bolt, because it was being photographed from a foliage-camouflaged cage, from which it could not escape. In° this instance of reality I have described, when the zebra did attempt to Tun, its move was too late. So swiftly did events move that I had no time to get a picture. Our lions dragged the carcase off to the Thrush. Lions always do that with prey. They never devour in the open. They try to hide their food from the vultures. We shouted and threw stones, after a while, and the lions, now sated, ran off. I brought back that zebra's hide. It reposes on a table of the Explorers' Club in New York.— (N.A.N.A.) (To be continued.)