PYGMY ELEPHANT

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 27 January 1923, Page 12

PYGMY ELEPHANT

EATS 150 BANANAS A DAY.

For the first time on record a baby pygmy elephant' has justj reached England from Africa (says "L'.G.M." in the "Daily Mail"). < This" most interesting little animal was left at the London Zoological Gardens " recently "on deposit, with instructions that he would eat nothing but bananas, and that he needed 150 a day! He stands about 3 feet high and was unlucky enough to break his leg when he was captured in French Gaboon, West Africa. His father was .only six feet hi"h, and his mother \vas six inches shorter stills-half the height and a quar-_ Her of the bulk of the ordinary African elephant. Both parents were shot when the baby was captured. The injured leg has set rather badly, and thera-is to be a consultation of surgical experts on it. The little elephant 'is only three years old, but is Table to feed himself with his IS-inch trunk—a sign, that he has got. out of the longclothes stage of babyhood. He is perfectly tame.and wilfkt the keepers do anything with -him, which is <ill in his favour, since he has come at the worst possible time of year. He has been deposited, together with two chimpa!i:«en, by Miss Cunnroghara. who owned the gorilla "John 'Do-nle'i-'" Alter he disd "Miss Cunningham \rcai- to West 'Vfrica. and succeeded in oTstaimijjEf Mother.gorilla. (which she is keeping- it her horns), in addition 'to the pyg^y elephant and the chimpanzees.