ANIMAL CEMETERIES

Evening Star, Issue 21079, 16 April 1932, Page 2

ANIMAL CEMETERIES

[Written by M.G., for the 1 Evening Star.’.] The recent discovery of some moa skeletons in limestone caves, brings to mind the fact that few people have over seen an animal cemetery. The bush in this country is full of life. Some districts are overrun with rabbits. Yet what happens to them when they die? It is one of those problems of Nature that baffle the scientists.

In one of Rider Haggard’s books be works in the South African legend that elephants have lonely spots to which they retire when old age creeps on them, and the discovery of such places has been the rainbow’s end for many an ivory hunter.

In Australia, hundreds of miles north of Adelaide, I have seen limestone caves filled with the remains of kangaroos, wallabies, and dingoes. Some of the bodies still had the hair on them, but even in this spot, far removed from the disturbing influences of civilisation, there was not a single body on which any flesh was left. During this trip, Professor Wood Jones, of the Adelaide University, whose reputation as an anthropologist is international, admitted that nothing was known of what happened to bush life after death. Some forms of it are eaten, but this cannot happen with all. As an illustration, take the case of rabbits. These are chased and worried in all manner of ways, but no one has yet found a dead rabbit whose death could be ascribed to natural causes. Birds, too, throng tho busljoili their carcasses are never found unless one has met with an accident. In the scheme of Nature one of the fundamental laws is that everything returns to its elemental chemicals as soon as possible. The working of this can bo seen by any one who has taken even the most superficial interest in what goes on,round about him.. In tho case of vegetation the process can bo traced in tho surburbnn garden, without going any . further afield. Also in those cases in, which tho favourite tabby sings its love song once too often to suit the neighbour,, the history of the carcase can be traced. It is when we stop to think of the millions of tiny lives moving about us, each one of which must come to an ond some time or other, that the whole question becomes so interesting. To como back to our friend, Brer Rabbit. Having successfully dodged all the perils that a nearby civilisation has thrust upon him, what really happens when, having reached his allotted span, he dies? There are many factors that come into it, all of which are known. Hawks will eat his flesh. Flies—the natural scavengers of the bush —will do their share. But what happens to tho bones? Who is Nature’s dustman that carts them away and buries them out of sight? Lending colour to the theory that all animals, when they feel the end coming, like to get away from their kind, such a trait can be noted even with I domestic pets, who are inclined to go off by themselves when they feel death, as undoubtedly they do.

It is in the limestone formations and the glacial areas where decomposition is resisted, that we can rend a great deal of the past history of evolution, and it is a rather curious fact that so many animals have 'made such places their last resting place. Among the caves mentioned earlier, through which I wont with Professor Wood Jones, there were some in which there were great deposits of guano. This, he told us, eamc from millions of bats who used to live in the caves, and who died there, as the bones from their bodies testified. There were also equal quantities of bones from a small mouse that is now extinct in Australia, and in one of the caves had been found a tooth from an Australian lion—one of tho few relics of this animal discovered in the continent. Where do tho deer go when they die? Their bones must lie in some place or other. Either that, or else Nature has found some way of disposing of them more quickly than we know of. A cow, or a sheep may die and tho hones will lie on the spot for years. In hot, dry countries, the length of time runs to quite a period. If there is some natural way of destruction, why is it that such bones as these do not disappear with those of tho rabbits, the deer, and tho birds? Sea life comes under a different heading. Practically all fish life is cannibalistic, and the very action of the sea tends to break and destroy anything that may he floating about in it. j Again, wo cannot trace what is under the surface or in its depths. Here, then, is something for those who live in the bush, who go there, or who take some interest in the workings of Nature, to unravel. It is one of the problems of life that I am curious about, but on which I can get no further information.