ZOO ILLNESSES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21763, 31 March 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

ZOO ILLNESSES

CHIMPANZEE'S CHILBLAINS SLEEPING ELEPHANTS Zoo creatures are liable to be attacked by all kinds of human ills, but a chimpanzee at Whipsnade Zoo, near London, is believed to have .established a record by developing a chilblain on her finger. Her chilblain looks like the familar variety, andapparently feels like it, for the ape "drew attention to her finger by rubbing and sucking it. She is having it attended to daily, and as she greatly appreciates the treatment that eases the itching and burning it is hoped that her trouble will disappear. This ape is one of two young chimpanzees sent to Whipsnade from the London Gardens for a summer holiday. But both did so well in the country zoo and became so thoroughly at home there that it was decided not to bring them back to London in the autumn, but to provide them with. a heated caravan and leave them at Whipsnade through the winter. They are-keeping very well, and have no objections to their comparatively exposed quarters; and this satisfactory state of health is a strong argument in support of the zoo belief that the bad colds; which are so common among the apes in the London- Gardens in winter are due to infection caught from their visitors. Neither of the Whipsnade chimpanzees has had a cold, but two of the four young chimpanzees in the Regent's Park menagerie a-re in hospital with bronchitis. Owing to the legend that elephants never lie down till they die, the soo keepers in the elephant house are frequently asked if their charges sleep standing up. The answer to the question is no; but the zoo's elephants are never seen lying down, for they are always on their feet when the keepers go home in the evening and they are standing up when the men arrive at work in the morning. Only the clear imprints of their huge bodies on the straw bedding prove that these great creatures do lie down to sleep when all is quiet.

A report from a ranger in the game areas in Tanganyika, however, contains accounts of wild elephants being seen lying asleep on their sides. A magnificent bull elephant, a notorious night raider, always spent the day lying down on his side in the bush only a few hundred yards from the shamba he raided; and he refused to be scared away by shouts, drums, or even by rifle shots fired over his back.