RAIDS ON FARMS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20310, 21 May 1934, Page 5

RAIDS ON FARMS.

Baboons Are Ferocious and Cunning. » SHEEP SLAIN. Troops of the ferocious fighting baboons of the mountains are on the warpath in South Africa, says the Cape Town correspondent of the Daily Express.” So ravenous have they become that, though normally vegetarians, they are raiding farms and slaying and partly devouring sheep. One farmer reports that in a recent raid thirty-five of his lambs were slain. A farmer’s wife, noticing a commotion among a flock of sheep, was horrified to see one of the flock being chased by two savage baboons. The apes caught their quarry and killed it before her eyes.

Two hundred dead lambs were the sum total of another man’s losses. A dozen rams were included in one kill. Rams may have plenty of pluck, but no skill in fighting with a crafty, ferce enemy like a baboon One farmer claims to have poisoned 600 baboons in the past four years, but still the hordes come along. They are so clever that when one of their number was caught in a trap they came in force, destroyed the snare, and liberated the prisoner The drought, with the consequent lack of green food is blamed for the apes taking tc the eating of flesh. The baboons live in clans, and are almost as suspicious of poison and as clever in detecting it as a Home Office pathological expert The sultans of the tribe have their grand viziers, tc whose care the wives are handed over when a family fight is afoot. They will put out sentinels before making a raid, and will fix up lines of communication, passing the booty from hand to hand back to the mountain rocks and caves they inhabit.