LONDON ZOO’S “PRICE LIST”

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 18 January 1935, Page 9

LONDON ZOO’S “PRICE LIST”

RHINOS COST £2000; LIONS £2O. SNAKES AT £1 A FOOT. (By Air Mail.) (From Our Owu Correspondent.) t LONDON, Dec. 29. The London Zoo’s ‘‘price list” just* issued provides some remarkable facts J about the £.s.d. of animals. The most valuable inmates arc the full-grown Indian rhinoceroses, which arc estimated to be north £2OOO each. At the other end of the list lions are valued at only from £2O to £3O each, and any bear, except the grizzly, can be bought for £3O. The “joint value” of Mok and Moina, the famous gorillas is put at £I2OO. A good riding elephant cannot be bought under £SOO, but she is a sound investment, as she will earn £250 a year. A newly imported giraffe, 12ft. in height, costs £250, but after it has passed through our winter, in captivity, its price rises to £SOO. Chimpanzees vary from £3O to £IOO, according to their size, while tigers cost anything from £75 to £IOO. The most expensive birds are king penguins. They cost £75 apiece. A young ostrich is considered cheap at £SO. As there is difficulty in importing cassowaries, they co>t as much as £SO, even in their youtli. Snakes are valued according to length, and a python of Oft to 12ft costs £1 per foot. Over 20ft the price per foot rises, enormously, and the Zoo’s 28ft python is worth £IOO. Alligators and crocodiles are priced according to the number of years they have survived, and for once age is at a premium. George, the centenarian alligator, is valued at £IOO, but small specimens can be bought for £2 or £•>. Apart from iish and insects, the inmate.-- of the menagerie consist of nearlv i'OOO birds, some 900 mammals and over 1200 reptiles.