Wild Animals Fear Man, and Run when he Approaches.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 851, 26 August 1933, Page 17 (Supplement)

Wild Animals Fear Man , and Run when he Approaches .

Film Facers Employ Many Trices.

(Written for the “ Star ” by

CAPTAIN CARL VON HOFFMAN).

1 his is the third of a series of articles in which Captain Carl von Hoffman, distinguished ethnologist and explorer, is revealing the part buncombe plays in exploring and in some of the wild animal pictures seen on the screen these days. Captain von Hoffman is a member of the Royal, National and t American Geographic Societies, the Italian Ethnological Society, the Explorers’ Club of New York, and the Adventurers’ Clubs of New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

'J’HE CAMERA, manipulated by wily man, makes possible remarkable deviations from the actual course of natural events. Africa would be a far less exciting study for the film audience were it not for imaginative incidents wrought by the camera and the nature faker who sometimes mans it. A striking instance was that of a screen production in which a certain adventurer was shown in fearfully intimate approach to a reclining rhinoceros. Let us examine the possibilities and then divulge the actualities of this incident. The rhinoceros is huge. He fas the power of an engine, the speed of a racehorse. He is as ferocious as a bull. He is a killer. But, like all other wild beasts, he has learned to fear man as a menace to animal life. The scent of the human shunts him away. Only rarely, under favourable wind conditions and with stealthy,

studied approach, can you get near him. If you come within reach and he : awakens, he will bolt quite likely; though, if terribly surprised and panicky he may charge. But the rhino really would be content if you would go away from there and let him doze on. There is something wrong with a picture that shows a mighty hunter so close to the rhino that the animal is looking directly jnto the hunter’s eyes. A film I have in mind, taken some years ago, was an example of wanton aruelty. A shot had been plumped the rhino’s spine, paralysing him. he game laws of Africa make it a criminal offence to terse a wounded v beast, which must be killed at once. h Here, however, it was put through terrific suffering so that the camera might have its thrilling moment. While the beast lay helpless the hunter, thus portraying himself a mighty man. came close to the animal, which the audience

did not know had been paralysed by a previous bullet, and killed the rhino with a bullet in the brain. There are many warrants out for hunters who have done deeds such as this and for others who have run down beasts with automobiles. I know of a film showing an automobile pursuing then crashing into a warthog, breaking its side. It is unfortunate that the audience, instead of being thrilled, fails to ponder the vicious cruelty involved and the unsportsmanlike nature of the act. There isn’t a white guide in Africa who will attend a party likely to wound and tease beasts so the leisurely camera may have its manufactured record. There was the screen portrayal of another rhino, brought down, according to the camera, by brave adventurers. The spectators were unaware that the shoulder had been broken by a bullet before the picture was taken. What thrilled them was the apparent courage of the hunters in going right over to the beast and poking it with their guns. These men never can get back into Africa. Unfortunately Africa does not examine films being taken to America, or there might be less readiness to engage in wanton cruelties. Had a Fair Break Once. Time was, before the movies, when sportsmen did give the animal a fair break. They had no high-powered express rifles. They had to be expert rifleman, with quick eyes and fast fingers, for they operated at very close range. Each bullet had to count. The hunter had to bring down or run the risk of being brought down. But many camera huntsmen to-day don’t have the nerve for close combat. Still, their pictures must give the impression that they have. I don’t wish to say this is a general practice. There are any number of sportsmen who give wild game an even break and never impose a cruelty. But there are just enough of the others to warrant the conclusion that human beings can manifest deplorable cruelties. In one famous screen portrayal of animal life in Africa is shown the bringing to earth of a ferociously charging rhinoceros. In its intense excitement, hands gripping chairs, the audience fails to note that the background does not stand still, as normally it would if a huntsman were holding his ground, gun in hand, while the beast came on. This background actually changes, while the rhinoceros plunges ahead. The reason is that the picture was taken from an automobile that moved before the brute, its speed measured to that of the headlong aniWhen, in the swift course of events, the animal was shown with bowing head, in portrayal of a dying rhinoceros, a strange sight was placed before the eyes of the untrained audience. To begin with, the producers had scrubbed that head white, a ridiculous whiteness. Nobody seemed to know why. Perhaps to show a nice, clean head None seemed to pause to con-

sider that it did not match the muddy hue of the rest of the carcase. But the big mistake, a thoughtless oversight, was in failing to go through with the tediously-artificial process of causing the eyes to blink. For this actually was a lifeless head, death having been wrought before the head was photographed close up. And the producers, failing to simulate the blinking of a dying eye in an animal, they desired to picture as dying, not dead, neglected to do anything about the steady, glazed stare. Lion hunting can be very thrilling, particularly if you undertake to shoot the male first. The tried hunter goes after the female at the outset. For if the male is brought down first, his mate invariably charges. On the other hand, if his wife is killed first, the male, likely as not, will saunter off to other parts. Among lions the females are as quick to protect their mates as themselves. Like man, game has a strong sense of self-protection. It is contantly in fear

rhis is especially so when man is. near. Wounded, the wild beast will become ferocious. I have seen even a warthog, which Drdinarily minds its business, turn /icious. I had crossed between it and the lair in which lay its family. The inimal, seeming to fear it could not

stance of a lion leaping at a zebra in a movie film. The audience could not fee expected to know that its leap, a vertical dash from the ground, was clumsy and unnatural. For the audi ence could not know that this lion was a native of the zoo and never had seen Africa. It was fat, sleek, not a muscle standing out. The lion of the veldt is robust, but has no excess fat. His muscles show, for he leads a vigorous existence. There are days when he gets no food. Parasitic insects prey on him. Thorny bush tears his mane. The lion in the wilderness never has the beautiful mane one sees in the cage. The King of Beasts in his native haunts is beautiful in his movements, agile, artistic, a fast killer. He measures distance accurately, shoots with the speed of a bullet. lie does not leap vertically, as did this film lion, nor land, as did the animal of the screen, all fours on the zebra’s back. In the veldt the lion would have killed differently. Thus, two years ago

reach home, became panicky and charg ed me. I jumped aside. The warthog saw that I no longe; blocked its path home and becamt docile, with no further animus. It weni to its family to relate, perhaps how il had driven off an invader. I have described previously the in

a friend and I were studying wild game in the-Sabi preserve of South Africa. At sunrise we saw four lions, cubs of eight months or so, and their parents. A young zebra buck, straying from its fellows at a water-hole, had come to the rim of a ravine. The lions were on the way to the water-hole. They saw the zebra. Their prospective prey sensed danger, but became bewildered, knew not which way to run. The lion cubs took root, watching their elders, getting their lesson of the kill. The female slunk through the grass, a hundred feet from the zebra. I whispered to mv friend, “ Watch, 'this will be a beautiful kill! ” But the lioness was approaching head on to the zebra. Her mate, realising the unwisdom of this, swept into action, galloping through the grass and manoeuvring into a position from which he could spring to the zebra’s haunch. The Lion Kills. At twenty-five feet the male lion measured distance and direction, claws in springing poise. He swept forward like lightning. He leaped, not vertically, but from the rear, to the haunch, landing cleanly, neatly, with businesslike precision, as the cubs watched in admiration. He straddled the zebra’s haunch, plunging his full weight to one side of the prey to force it down towards the earth. A powerful left claw dug to the zebra’s heart, while the hind legs gripped the haunch. A terrific jaw clamped tight, not in haphazard bite, but in a deliberate, measured grip into the zebra’s mane. A right claw swept into the victim’s nose and yanked the head around with a violent jerk. The zebra’ neck was broken. Death was immediate. So instantaneov.. was the entire episode that it took less time than this narration. In the movie production, as previously recounted, the zebra did not attempt to bolt because it was being photographed from a foliagecamouflaged cage from which it could not escape. In this instance of reality I have described, when the zebra did attempt to run its move was too late. So swiftly did events move that I had no time to get a picture. Our lions dragged the carcase off to the brush. Lions always do that with prey. They never devour in the open. They try to hide their food from the vultures. We shouted and threw stones, after a while, and the lions, now sated, ran off. I brought back that zebra’s hide. It reposes on a table of the Explorers’ Club in New York. “ The Ape’s Mate.” A certain movie spectacle gave a supposedly authentic reproduction of an African tribe’s sacrifice of a girl to a gorilla and her departure to become the ape’s mate. A breathless audience Ah’d and gasped and wondered how in the world this thrilling, incredible scene had been photographed. This was how. Not in Africa, but

in Hollywood. Not with a but with an actor in the ape's role. A salary dispute eventuated in his disclosure of the part assigned him. He was a unique gorilla, this man, a treeclimbing ape, and the gorilla is not a tree-climber. He was a hairy-chested gorilla, and that gentleman of the jungle does not have hair on his chest. The camera told the audience that natives stood around, spears poised for action. The camera told an unscientific fib. The gorilla, like all beasts, is afraid of humans, scurries to cover. Human scent means peril.

The “natives” turned out to be Hollywood “ extras,” negroes hired at so much a day. Their loin cloths were tied around them. The real native wears his as a skirt, never tied as shown in the film. While the gorilla, girl in arms, stood near them, their spears made a comic picture to the initiated. These weapons had the triangular-tipped points of lances. The African native uses a flat-headed, double-edged spear. The coloured men on the screen had legs outstretched, weapons held in two hands in the parrying posture of the bayoneteer. The native does not operate thus. His is not a parrying poise. He aims quickly, lets go quickly. He knows nothing of the bayonet posture

Fakers Employ Many Tricks. (Continued from page 17.) The company producing this film wrote many scientific bodies. It wanted, for promotional purposes, a letter attesting that humans and gorillas could mate. One organisation made an appropriate reply. It said, yes, girls can mate with gorillas, the type of gorillas to be found in Hollywood hotels. In anther film the spear played a fake role. So, too, did an American mountain lion, palmed off on the mov.ie public as an African lion. Supposedly it was killed by the spear. But that weapon never struck the animal. It darted from the spectator’s' view in the “ filming of the scene. The next shot of the camera showed a weapon strike in the victim’s head and fell it. That lethal blow was with a wooden dart sped from a catapult stationed out of the camera’s view. (To be concluded next Saturday.)