SWALLOWING AS AN ART

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 November 1929, Page 10

SWALLOWING AS AN ART

CHAMPIONS AT THE ZOO. The mere act of swallowing can scarcely be regarded as a source of high aesthetic joy, yet it never fails to attract attention when it is carried to extremes. The human sword-swal-Jower, for instance, often commands .audiences denied to more deserving exhibitions. It is hard to say why this abuse of the oesophagus should enjoy such universal interest, writes E. G. 1 Boulenger, in the “Daily Telegraph.” The hlame may, possibly, be laid at the feet of the prophet Jonah. One might reasonably suppose that the Jonah question could be calmly t discussed after such an extended lapse of' time, yet when the writer some time ago penned a few innocent speculations on the pros and cons of the matter, he sat for days afterward knee-deep in letters! Some of these were congratulatory, but indignation prevailed, and it was only too evident that the very slightest doubts cast on the prophet’s release from his incarceration were resented. Sir John Bland-Sutton has quoted in the “British Medical Journal” the well authenticated story of a whaling vessel which, after striking a whale, had one of her boats bitten in two, and Marshall Jenkins, one of the crew, taken into the mouth of the monster. On returning to the surface after sinking, the\whale had ejected the seaman on to the wreckage of the broken boat—much bruised, but not seriously injured. Most whales vomit in their death throes, and there is not .the slightest reason why Jonah should not have been well and truly swallowed, though his survival for the period stated is still open to speculation. The swallowing capacity of some whales is almost incredible. A big Sperm whale .may measure over 80ft, and it has a. large and distensible throat. It would have no difficulty in accommodating at least a dozen. Jonahs ‘in its interior. The much smaller but ■jmore ferocious Killer whale which seldom reaches a length of more than ,20ft, has been found to contain seven .norpoises and the remains of five fully-grown seals. . Ostriches are notorious for their swallowing feats, and one which died recently at the Zoo after a bank holiday was found to contain two handkerchiefs, three gloves, a Kodak film spool, a pencil, a comb, a bicycle tyre valvei nails, collar studs, a penny, four half-pence, two farthings, and a Belgian franc piece. Another, which died some years ago as the result of the misguided generosity of the public, .was found to have 9Jd in coppers and a pocket edition of the Bible stored away inside him! It is noteworthy that the highly intelligent sea lion, though easily the greediest mammal in the Regent’s Park menagerie, never attempts food too large for his gullet. A seal that escaped from a Continental aquarium some years ago visited each tank in turn, and completely wiped out the , supply of fish. Confronted, when fully satiated, with a 3ft cod, he merely bit tasty snacks from its sides. The average fish is of a very low mental level, and dinner-table tragedies are every-day occurrences in the world beneath the waves or village pond. Fish are amazingly indiscriminate in the choice of their food, if sufficiently hungry, qnd are frequently choked when attempting to swallow their larger brethren. The miracle of the tithe money found in the fish as recounted in the New Testament need not strain. the credulity of the whole-hearted cynic. .A large cod caught recently on board a Dogger Bank trawler had made a meal of 37 hermit crabs, 40 clams, cockles, and similar shellfish, a lOin lobster, 20 worms, 43 small flat fish, a mass of refuse, and a stone weighing 31b.

The champion swallowers of the animal world are localised in the ocean abyss. The body walls of these fishes are capable of an expansion quite unknown amongst the more abundant of comparatively shallow waters < Thus, one of them • from one of the 9000 ft “holes” in the Atlantic floor, engulfs fishes three times its own length and nearly ten times its weight. V A deep-sea angler fish is capable of even greater excess, its gigantic victims being cldarly visible through the 'enormously stretched body wall. The living fish, indeed, appears as a mere annex to its meal.

Large crocodiles may occasionally swallow whole small deer, and even human infants, though such feats may be regarded as rare occurrences. At a meeting’ of the Zoological Society some years ago, Mr. C. F ,M. Swynnerton, the game warden of Tanganyika Territory, exhibited the contents of the stomach of a large East African crocodile. The exhibition was of a somewhat gruesome nature, and revealed the fact that this crocodile was a man-eater.

Snakes have justly earned the reputation of making huge mouthfuls. Their jaws are hinged and so loosely articulated that the head of the feeding snake loses its normal shape entirely during the act of swallowing. Deer and goats often figure in the menu of the larger forms of snake, and an authentic observer in Papua recently recorded the instance of a python that engulfed the leg of a native, as far as the knee, while he was sleeping off the effects of an orgy.

SNAKE SWALLOWS SNAKE* In captivity it occasionally happens that the snouts of two snakes meet at opposite ends of the same meal. One may cite the case of two Zoo King .snakes, one 3ft 6in and the other 3ft, .which fancied the same dead rat. One seized the head and the other the hindquarters. The larger snake swallowed more rapidly than its rival, and proceeded quite mechanically to take in the smaller snake as well as the rat. .More than two-thirds of snake No. 2 had followed the rat into the interior of its companion when the keeper intervened. The rescued snake quickly recovered, and soothed its ruffled spirits by eating two large rats in the quiet of a separate compartment. On another occasion a lift long com,mon boa completely swallowed another boa 9ft in length, with which it had lived on friendly terms for several years. In this instance the snake, which for weeks after its swallowing feat had no longer the power of curling itself round as snakes usually do, digested its companion and' regained its appetite as well as its normal size. A two-headed snake in the New York Zoo disputed so furiously with “itself” at meal times that when feeding the heads had to be separated by a cardboard partition to avoid fights, and to prevent the main guilet being choked by two meals sjvallowed simultaneously. ‘ The snake’s amazing plasticity of skull is seen at its maximum in the egg-eating snake of South Africa. Between meals the head measures little

more than three-quarters of an inch across, yet it can surround a hen’s egg—a much more remarkable feat than the swallowing of a pig or deer v bn the part of a python. The unyielding egg is taken entirely, and remains whole until it reaches the entrance of the gullet. The .distorted head then stalls into its normal trim [formation, and certain enamel tooth-like' .processes of the under surface of the vertebrae come into play. They crush the egg shell, powerful muscles force the yolk into the snake’s interior, and the shell, cracked in a hundred pieces, but held together by its membranous lining, is presently expelled. The feats reviewed above may sometimes, but not always, be regarded as the expressions of mere gluttony. Like the sword-swallower’s feats, they are more often performed simply to make a living in a feverishly competitive world. The animal with a big swallow is usually of sluggish habit and unable, to chase its prey, though one must ex-' cept such creatures as the giant sharks and whales. In all cases, however, digestion is slow, and whereas creatures with small intakes must feed all round the clock in order to keep going, the'“swallower,” having once taken every course in one gigantic mouthful, can enjoy a long period of dignified, repose.