MUSEUM OF NATURE

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32116, 11 October 1969, Page 16

MUSEUM OF NATURE

The Mythical New Zealand Otter

(Contributed by the Canterbury Museum)

Two species of bats are usually regarded as the only land mammals native to New Zealand. But early European settlers of the South Island heard persistent stories of an otter or beaverlike animal living in its rivers and lakes. At Dusky Sound in May, 1773, some of the crew of Captain Cook’s Resolution reported seeing a mousecoloured cat like-animal with a bushy tail. Cook remarked in his journal that New Zealand could not be as destitute of quadrupeds as was once thought, and went on to write about the small black sandflies and the intolerable itching from their bites. The naturalists in the Resolution, Johann Forster and his son George, were more sceptical about the reports of a mammal and suggested that the sailors may have seen a weka or possibly one of the ship's cats. In 1844 a surveying party explored the south-eastern coast of the South Island in search of a suitable site for the Scottish settlement. Maoris at the mouth of the Clutha told them of beaver-

like animals living in lakes near the head of the river. David Monro, who recorded the stories, heard so much of these animals that “it was scarcely possible to doubt that there was some foundation for the story.” Ellesmere Report Similar stories were heard by Walter Mantell four years later in 1848 when he was investigating Maori land claims in coastal Canterbury and Otago. Maoris at Taumutu, near the outlet of Lake Ellesmere, told him of a fourfooted animal called the kaurehe which lived in inland Canterbury and seemed to resemble an otter or badger. They were reported to live a day and a half's journey inland from Taumutu, and in the Temuka district about 10 miles inland from Arowhenua bush.

Mantell, who had already discovered the fossil bones of the takahe (Notornis mantelli), wrote to his father, the noted English geologist Gideon Mantell, telling him of these stories and saying he was going in search of the kaurehe. “So now for a good retriever, my old gun (there never was a better), dry powder, shot and balls, and a fortnight’s provisions, and the Walteria mantelli will be added to the fauna of New Zealand.”

Printer’s Error

Regarding this curious name “Kaurehe” or “Kaureke” which did not exist as a genuine Maori word, Dr Roger Duff in his book “The Moa-hunter Period of Maori Culture” (first published in 1950) has pointed out that these terms were almost certainly printer’s errors for “karara ke” meaning a “different sort of lizard” with' “karara” representing the variant in the South Island dialect of the standard Maori word “ngarara” (lizard). The Maoris themselves were retailing traditional memories of the tuatara, which once lived on the mainland. They tried, unsuccessful! as it turned out, to convey to Mantell that it was like a “lizard” (karara) but different (ke). Had this howler been detected earlier it might well have killed the myth of the New Zealand otter at birth. Unlike ' the seals which could range across vast ocean distances "and colonise New Zealand, the otter ranks as a more obvious land mammal which could only have reached our country over seml-cbntinubus land bridges,

: which were last available over . 70 million years ago, before I the otter had come into exisi tence as a form of life. As s the otter failed to make its ; way to Australia it could not • under any circumstances have reached New Zealand without the aid of man, and the nearest available source would have been the delta of I the Mekong in South-East ; Asia. By tracing the progress of i the myth of a New Zealand I otter it is seen to be a repe- , tition of unsubstantiated re- ' ports and probably some de- . liberate hoaxing, eagerly accepted by a series of gullible listeners, including Haast himself. Richard Taylor, the pioneer Wanganui missionary, recorded in 1855 several reports of beaver-like animals having been seen at Dusky Sound, i “Beavers” In Nelson The next report was from Julius Haast who while camping rt Lake Rotoiti, Nelson, in 1859 heard of beaver-like animals living in the lake. Some animal had attempted to make off with some 201 b of eels one of his party had left tied to a line in the water. Haast in 1961 claims to have seen otter-like tracks on mud flats in the upper Ashburton River, and wrote to his friend the Austrian geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter. “The animal itself . . . was likewise seen by two gentlemen, who have a sheep station at Lake Heron . . . They described the animal as darkbrown, of the size of a stout cony. On being struck at with the whip, it uttered a shrill, yelping sound, and quickly disappeared in the water amid the sea grass.” In 1868 portions of the skin of a supposed kaurehe from the Selwyn were brought to Haast at the museum, then in its original home in the Provincial Buildings. It seems likely that the skin might have come from a marsupial cat, one of two imported from Australia by the Canterbury Acclimatisation Society the same year. James Watson, of the Animal Ecology Division, D.5.1.R., carefully examined the evidence for the existence of the otter. His conclusions were published in 1960, a year after his death, in the “Record of the Canterbury Museum” where he wrote ”... there is very little ground for any belief in the animal’s existence; nevertheless a shadow of doubt remains and it would be unwise altogether to ignore the possibility however remote it may be.” — D.R.G.