ANIMALS UNKNOWN TO MAN

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11833, 14 January 1933, Page 9

ANIMALS UNKNOWN TO MAN

There are many unexplored parts of the globe which may harbor animals 'that man has never seen. There are unexplored depths of tbe sea. About 100 new types of fish are discovered yearly. The existence of unknown, animals is not improbable. Tbe queer tapir exists only in. one or two jungles of South. America and in Malaya, The okapi was not discovered in the Belgian Congo until 1599. Many South American auimals are unknown in Africa, or, indeed, elsewhere. Australia has a monopoly of egg-laying mammals and of kangaroos and wallabies. St. Helena, one of ihe loneliest places on the globe, contains about 100 insects found nowhere else, and about 20 varieties of peculiar snails. The late Mr. JTesketh Pritchard, novelist and explorer, searched Patagonia in the hope of finding a. monster supposed to haunt its swamps, having the name mylodon. But he did not succeed, and the legendary beast keeps its secret. In Alaska and Kamsehatka stories are. told of an enormous beast which can carry a reindeer in its mouth ; it has been named the keratosaurns. In the Arctic natives believe hat! the' giant mammoth still survives. . Much ivory is collected from mammoths which have been wonderfully. preserved in the , Arctic ice—so perfectly that hunters have often eaten their meat. This makes Hie people of Northern Siberia think that the mammoths could not have become extinct vary long ago.