TWO QUEER CREATURES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20454, 4 January 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

TWO QUEER CREATURES.

AT THE ZOO.

BY F. B. FORESTER,

The anteatcr has been described by at least one visitor to the zoo as being the ugliest animal there; but this is an unenviable distinction that might much more justly be laidsfclaim to by at least one other creature in 'the gardens.

A strange beast the anteatcr is, however, without a doubt. A head somewhat resembling in: shape that of a stork, in which the eyes are set very far up; a bodv covered with coarse, longish hair, feet armed with powerful claws, and, to conclude, a tail so thick, long, and plumelike that it can, and does, form a perfect covering for the animal when lying asleep, all go to make up a most curious whole. Teeth he has none, and the slender thread of a tongue seems to be almost us long as his odd-looking head.

Look at those claws of his for a moment.. Those on the hind feet, although long and strong enough, are yet nothing out of the ordinary. But the claws with which tho forefeet are armed are truly formidable; and with these the creature, when living his life io the vast South American solitudes, not only tears down the hills of the ants on which he feeds, to lick them up by the thousand with his thread-like, glutenous tongue, but defends himself against even so terrible a foe as the jaguar, the great cat of the tropical forests, and the most formidable beast of prey in the whole South American continent. When contending with a foo so strong and ferocious as the jaguar, the anteatcr is said to throw itself on its back, and in this position to use iis formidable claws with terrible effect.

Watch linn as lie paces backward and forward with his luiious shambling gait. On close inspection it will be seen that this peculiar action is due to the way in which the claws are folded back against the pad of the forefoot, just like those of the Australian water mole, or duckbill, so that the creature actually walks on the outside edge of tho foot. Tie Anteater's Markings.

Look at him again, and notice the curious markings on each side of him; a dark band, wide where it starts at the chest, and tapering away like a pennon on the flanks. This curious marking has given to the queer beast another of his names, the " bannered " anteater, while he is also known as the tamanoir, tamandua, or antbear. Why the creature should be marked m so extraordinary a manner is beyond conjecture. The ver tical stripes of the tiger render him all but invisible in the light and shade ol the long jungle grass; the leopard and jaguar arc scarcely to bo distinguished among tho leaves, half in sun, half in shadow, the puma, appears one with the branch along which ho crouches, the tawny sand of the desert seems also ono with the tawny hide of the lion crouched upon it ; the hare is all but invisible squatting on its form; and so on. without limit. Some creatures there are, such as the skunk, of unenviable notoriety, whose striking colouring serves as a "touch me not" warning; but for tho most part the colouring of animals is protective rather than otherwise. In some parts of South America the flesh of the anteater is used for food. Concerning its wliolesomeness, however, opinions seem to differ. The author ol the " Naturalist on tho Amazons " describes the flesh of the creature as being quite palatable when stewed, and somewhat resembling goose in flavour; but the author of the " Head Hunters of the Amazon," on the contrary, declares it to be so poisonous that lie all but lost his life after eating it. As it is said to be blackish in colour, it cannot be very appetising, in any case.

Tho anteater, with his kindred, the antbears or aard varks of Africa, the pangolins or manis, and the sloths, belongs to an order of mammalia very low down in organisation and the scale of Nature. They are, for the most part, toothless, small in brain, and most tenacious of life. Only the egg-laying mammals, the duckbill or platypus and the spiny anteater of Australia, the apparently connecting link between mammals and reptiles, are graded beneath them.

The Mandrill. If the anieater is counted low down in the scale of mammalia, the mandrill, or blue-faced baboon, the second of our strange creatures, is quite at the other end, being now classed among the primates, at the head of which stands man himself. Now the mandrill may, with justice, be considered the ugliest of all the animals in the zoo; that is, taking the word ugly to mean lack of beauty, or not to use it in the American sense. It is not only that colours, the most vivid and extraordinary, appear on the animal in the places least expected, but the want of symmetry in the creature, the swollen muzzle, the blunt tail, the naked callosities on the hind quarters, all unite in giving a conception of general hideousness. such as would be hard to match. Where, in any four-footed creature, except the mandrill—an old word meaning " man-like baboon " —is such an assortment of brilliant colours to be found, or in such unlooked-for places? Bright blue, grooved with purple, decorates the huge swollen masses on each side of the, creature's muzzle, contrasting with the vivid scarlet of the end of the nose itself; and these in turn are balanced by the equally vivid tint near the tail of the animal.

Baboon, it may be remarked, is the name common to the short-tailed, dogfaced members of the monkey tribe, whose habitat is Africa and Arabia. Roughly speaking, apes arcs tailless, baboons have short tails, and the true monkeys very long ones; but all these names are popularly used indiscriminately. When grown to his full size, the mandrill is one of the largest, and certainly the most ferocious, of the baboons, and his massive jaws are possessed of terrible strength.

George, the big mandrill at (he London Zoo, a familiar figure to the children visitors there, has, unfortunately, recently died. The. cause of his death was peculiar. It was not, in this case, due to pneumonia, or consumption—the usual causes of mortality among the larger ..pes and baboons—but simply and solely because George, having developed too strong a liking for the bristles of his keeper's broom—unfortunately left within his reach—thereby converted his interior into a sort of pincushion, and thus brought about his own untimely end.