PACIFIES ENEMIES.

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 103, 1 May 1926, Page 20

PACIFIES ENEMIES.

A bird-eating spider from Brazil and' a giant scorpion from Gambia, at tlio London Zoo, recently belied the reputation of such creatures as being mortal enemies (states the London "Daily Chronicle"). In Mesopotamia during the war "Tommy" often amused himself by matching such creatures and watching them fight to the death. Whilst the spider has only hair to protect its soft body, the scorpion is well armoured, and has some formidable pincers with which to hold its victim whilst it throws its sting over its bael» and strikes downwards over its head. However that may be, the Zoo specimens, when confronted, instead of raising themselves on their legs to do battle as is their wont, refused to recognise each other, and remained perfectly quiet—on the hand of their keeper! Many deaths are recorded at the hands, or rather jaws, of bird-eating spiders, and the sting of the giant scorpion is said to be as dangerous as the bite of a venomous snake. Keeper Brown, however, has so accustomed his charges to being handled, not only by himself, but by young children, that he attributes their pacific behaviour to the magic influence of the human hand.