PUTTING THE ZOO TO WORK

Evening Star, Issue 23451, 16 December 1939, Page 6

PUTTING THE ZOO TO WORK

Elephants, camels, and Shetland ponies are being trained to earn their living in Hamburg. They belong to the famous Hagenbeck Zoo. Because the war has made the price of petrol in Germany exorbitant, the Hagenbcck brothers are now drawn about the streets by sturdy ponies instead of their car. Camels are being taught to pull ploughs, and will soon ,be a common sight in the countryside, while elephants will take the place of tractors. The elephant is a good .friend of man. In Burma it is hard to imagine what timber and forestry would do without him. It is always a delight to see the painstaking and intelligent way in which the big timber elephant does his work. He picks up great logs and stacks them, with the aid of feet, head, and trunk, in symmetrical piles. MIRROR OF FASHION Quoth a goat who had seen his reflection In a pond, “Though my beard’s a protection Against cold, I suppose, As the fashion now goes, I. must shave off my hairy complexion.” CAPTURING A SCHOOL The only school of porpoises in captivity is now the centre of attraction at Marineland, the magnificent new aquarium and underwater photographic studio in Florida. The porpoises are so tame that they will leap out of the water and eat mullet out of the keeper’s hand! The two giant aquarium tanks have 200 portholes in them where students of marine life from all over the world come to watch and photograph every imaginable kind of fish. They see life going on as it does in the undersea jungle; they see a giant jelly fish swimming by with a host of little fish clustering in'the protection of its filaments, trying to keep out of sight of a pugnacious spotted moray eel.