MALAY CURIOSITIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 June 1925, Page 2

MALAY CURIOSITIES

; •-MONKEYS BRUSH TEETH

Fish that ’flirt. and climb trees, monkeys, that brush their teeth after every, meal, aind birds that sleep upfifde dpwn. are: a few of the animals described by/Garyetlr Wells. F.R.G.S. in a.: lecture ' in New York last/mon th, reciting bis six years of adventure in the jungles of. the Malay peninsula". ' • ' l '•

/The tree-clim bijig fish comes out of (the.: water to fclay on the beach.

ft :“Wheri yo.if tickle its tummy it ■wellAtip with air and bounces about Bfcr sheer . happiness,” said Wells. ® Another, finny freak is the flirting Kh. 'the- only swimming animal known K’.have a '.genuine wink. This ■kpettish ; erdature. is known as the Scliloser.il, which is Kreek - for “eye winker.” KWells. /told of a live Teddy bear, 15 Knphes-bigl.i pnd looking when full (grown precisely like the toy. Even .smaller is the. vest-pocket deer, wh’cii ' pleasures seven inches from, hoof to horn. . There -is a lizard that flips off its tall at will.. . ■ /

There is a pliant so sensitive that it flattens itself against the ground when-one stamps near it. yet so Htrhrig. that it resists the fiercest typhoons. . , ’Y

■ There ‘is the hygienic monkey, so careful of hjs Jiealth that after every meal'and before;going to. bed at night he repairs to the nearest stream and brushes his teeth with the aid of the firrt finger of bis right hand. There- is the bird which sleeps upside down. “But then,”' Wells concluded, “everything is upside down in the Malay jungles.”