Rare Animals that Elude Hunters

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 20

Rare Animals that Elude Hunters

XEARLY EXTIXCT.—The White Rhinoceros of Belgian Congo. Explorations of the remote parts of the earth have brought to light many strange animals , but because of the difficulties of locating them and of keeping them in captivity the rarest still remain little known. The following article, describes some of the most unusual animals. T talces a lot of courage '/ejtx to go half-way round the world, spend a small for \Jj- J tune, and blaze trails into the most remote places, all on the chance of finding a particular animal and getting a shot at it. 1 suspect that it was the “can’t-be-done” taunt that spurred Theodore Roosevelt into making his big try for the elusive and almost mythical great panda. If /ou want a specimen of the rarest and remotest animal on earth, just say to a red-blooded collector or sportsman: “Here is the money for the cost of it.but it can’t be done!" There are many distinguished men and wild animals whom I know only by correspondence and reputation. I have photographs from some of them, letters and sometimes horns, with which —and with my “mind’s eye”—l can shut my eyes in silent places and see them. Most of these animals I never expect to see in living editions, but I enjoy the fact of their existence, just the same. As I have said, the giant panda of Western China is not only a tremendously interesting animal, but also positively the rarest of all the landgoing wild animal celebrities. Beside him the once rare gorilla is now commonplace. Imagine the density of the fog that from the beginning of time has kept this panda animal enshrouded from science, when even quite recently it was put into the Old World natural histories as the “particoloured bear.” And really, without its skull, the mounted skin of the mystery animal does look much like a small, shaggy-coated black-and-white bear, and science need make no apologies for first naming the animal in accordance with its bodily appearance.

It ohght to be a bear, but it is a big-overgrown panda, and a distant blood relation of the raccoon. it must have been its short tail that settled its resemblance to the bear and threw science off the track. A normal giant panda is recognisable as far as a sportsman can see to shoot—by its black legs, black shoulder-wedge, black throat, ears and eye-patch, all set upon a dense furry coat of white. The aardvark of Africa is a real curiosity of the world of four-footed land animals. Its name is Dutch for earth pig, but its pig-likeness is only tentative. From snout to tail-tip the outline of the animal makes an almost perfect semi-circle. Its lonasuouted head is like that of a female hartebeest. Its huge and truculent ears look as if borrowed from a Spanish monkey. Its legs are descended from a big armadillo, and its tail

Man Knows Where they Roam, but they are Few in Number and the Hunt is Costly .. .

lias come down through the ages from a dinosaur. Its teeth are no good, not even for classification, and its fearfully thin coat of hairs —coarse, and few in a hill —varies from a dim vellow to yellowish brown. The head and body of the animal is four to four and a-half feet long, and its outlandish tail from IS to 21 inches. Its home range extends all the way from Cape Colony and Natal to the Cameroon country of West Africa, and every 200 miles produces “a new species.” It is very anuoying that an animal so big, so picturesque and so zoologically interesting should have been furnished with a stomach so bad. For food when wild it must have plenty ot ants —white ants preferred. In cap-

tivity it eats armadillo and ant-eater food —milk, chopped meat and raw eggs—and it dies very soon. Then there is the southern white rhinoceros. Its living presentation is a case of now or never. Its woeful disappearance from the fauna of South Africa was not noticed until it was nearly gone. It is the largest of all rhinoceroses and today only about 20 head remain. They are in the Cmfolozi game reserve of Zululand. but are faced by the prospect of the deconsecration of that sanctuary and its opening to settlement. For two years the Transvaal Government has been trying to find a workable scheme for catching and removing those 20 white rhinos to the Kruger National Park, but the problem is baffling. The great size and weight of the animals, the difficulties of catching and hauling them, and the many chances of accident and death still stand as a bar to action. Ever since the close of the war the steady disappearance of Africa’s stock of large game animals has given all African provincial governments, and the admirable British Society for the Protection of the Fauna of the Empire, grave concern. The Union of South Africa is resolutely developing its immense Kruger National Park as a great sanctuary for many species of wild animals. The Governments of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and the whole Union of South Africa have laboured long and well on their regulations and warden services, the creation of big game sanctuaries and the prevention of the killing of important species that are now giving out. In all those fields of endeavour great progress has been made. The American who about five years ago obtained from the Natal Government a permit to kill two of the 20 remaining southern white rhinoceroses, and then killed four, was promptly proclaimed an undesirable alien, and his proposed repeat performance was blocked by an order for his perpetual exclusion from all British territory in Africa.

At this time the jungles of tropical South America possesses two animal species of tremendous rarity everywhere beyond their home grounds. They are the giant otter and the giant armadillo. Both are so hard to find, so difficult to catch Qlive and so hard to keep alive when caught, that to all intents and purposes they might as well be on the deserts of the moon.

But you are not to conjure up for that giant armadillo name an image

TIIE GIAXT PAXPA of TV_ rarest of all /«*» '* c * Cwfto of an animal as big as a young .i. todon. All present-company ar'af^ los are small, and this one is tt the last small species, flowed really big one is nothing to make lii/ of. This creature »as built tor 2? ging rather than for swank. f ts Jr' armour is more beautiful than th a , 7 a crocodile, but not iieariv so inW' liable as the shell of a giant torm?. 5 ' Its limited diet of ants and iusecuT a bar to upward progress and ££ success in life. Just why the ot front h America have so long »/ muted the giant armadillo species/' survive is a mystery. It must be to carelessness rather than to inw or to lack of power to act.

Now, still speaking of rare wild mals, there happens to be an enti/ family whose members, all save on are outrageously absent from The picturesque sea-lion family ha' been saved from obscurity Jj, through the pertinacity and enter prise of the small California sea-liom which even now is so nearhr minated that Dr. H. M. Wagefarth J" sident of the San Diego ZootoriJi Society, reported in 1!.2s that onlv'v individuals then remained alive/ And that is a mighty narrow margin for zalophus to hang on by i n this an nf blood and iron. This species i* oor old and familiar friend of the Zoo, th show and tlic vaudeville stage, wh cries: “Hook! Hook! Hook!” whose intelligence and skill M , trained animal artist is positive/ thrilling.

But it is of the giants of the se 4 . lion family that I now write. Thev called “elephant seals” because’each adult male has a tree proboscis from six to fifteen inches long. I am think, ing of two species, the southern and the California. Both are great heart? and it is an infinite pity that the zoos of the world cannot have them all the time.

The almost unseen okapi is a queerlooking brown antelope nearly five feet high at the shoulders, with soma horizontal zebra stripes across its thighs, that lives In the Ituri forest of the Upper Belgian Congo country of Equatorial Africa. He wears short horns of bone covered with brown skin and hair. I think that the last quaggas and bluebucks of South Africa surely gave the okapis a valuable tip on the deadliness of white men before they themselves were eiterminated: but, even at that, the black natives now are exterminating the okapi. They ate doing it by catch ing them in pits, or in leg snares set on jungle trails, and with clubs bea’ing those wonderful animals to death. I think the okapi is probably the most man-shy and capable of all African jungle animals. No white man ever has shot one, but -the pit-digging native gets him. Thus far only one specimen ever has come out of Africa alive. It went to the Antwerp Zoological Garden, and, being young. It was unable to survive the long journey, and the slings and arrows of outrageous civilisation.