The Stationary Ark Read online

  We had thought that, if either of them displayed immediate interest, it would be the basically friendly, extrovert N’Pongo. Nandi always tended to be suspicious and kept herself to herself. But the moment Jambo strolled into view, N’Pongo took one good look at him and then turned and walked off, showing by the set of her broad back a measureless disdain. She expressed quite firmly a total lack of interest in the opposite sex and Jambo in particular. The effect on the anti-social Nandi was quite different and charmingly comic. She was a little way away from the bars, squatting on her haunches, when Jambo came into view. She took one look at the massive shape and reacted in much the same way as a teenage girl might if her favourite pop star suddenly walked into her bedroom, clad in nothing but a guitar. The expression on her face was one of incredulity and wonder; nothing in her previous life had prepared her for this miracle. No one had told her that such a thing as a handsome male gorilla existed. She took one look at Jambo and fell instantly and irrevocably in love.

  I am sorry if this sounds unscientific and anthropomorphic, but in the dry and pedantic jargon of the biologist there is no way to describe it. She shuffled her way to the bars, never taking her eyes off this wonderful apparition, and clung on to them in a rather desperate sort of way, gazing wide-eyed and immobile at the apparently disinterested Jambo. She sat in a trance, drinking in his every movement. Once, during the course of investigations, he disappeared behind the wall for a few moments. Her distress was immediate; she ran to and fro, trying to see where he had gone. Eventually, when he did not reappear, she came to the conclusion that he had gone out through the slide into the outdoor area. Instantly she ran to her own slide, bent down and tried to peer under it. Fortunately for her peace of mind, Jambo reappeared, nonchalantly sucking a piece of orange and ignoring Nandi’s display of uncontrolled passion. Relieved to see him again, she once more took up her station at the bars and gazed at him reverently and adoringly. N’Pongo, meanwhile, had eaten a few nuts, peered out of the window at us and finally lain down on her shelf, utterly ignoring the presence of a male in their midst.

  When they were finally allowed in with each other, both females carried on in much the same way. It was obvious that N’Pongo, for so many years the queen of all she surveyed, viewed the newcomer with suspicion and jealousy but with a certain caution too. She decided to continue her policy of pretending that the eighteen-stone Jambo did not exist. Nandi, on the other hand, behaved, if possible, in an even more inane manner now that she could get close to the object of her passion. She would squat within a foot or so of him, gazing at him raptly, her eyes shining with affection. After a time, when Jambo lay in the sun and allowed her to groom him, her joy knew no bounds and she would lean up against his massive body, with a look of besotted pride on her face that was so human it was laughable. N’Pongo was somewhat distressed by this liaison, but she still maintained her domination over Nandi. However, there now developed an unfortunate association between N’Pongo and Jambo.

  Jambo, for all his experience, was still very young and full of what can only be described as youthful high spirits and crude humour. He knew N’Pongo disliked him and this aroused in him a sort of devilment. He would practise all sorts of schoolboy pranks, which, as we know, can become very wearing to the nerves. He would jump out on her suddenly when she least expected it, or, sauntering past, would suddenly rush at her and pull her hair. Immediately N’Pongo would attack him and he would run off. This teasing would go on until N’Pongo was in a towering rage and would pursue him, screaming abuse, accompanied by Nandi who, rather half-heartedly, took her part. But it was obvious that Nandi would consider such attentions from Jambo as a pleasure and privilege and was somewhat puzzled by N’Pongo’s reaction.

  Jambo, of course, like all practical jokers, did not know when to stop. He never actually hurt N’Pongo, except for a few minor bites and scratches (nothing by gorilla play standards), but as soon as he found that he could make her lose her temper, he teased her unmercifully. N’Pongo began to have the hang-dog air of the wife of a professional humorist and, what was worse, she started to lose condition. Reluctantly we had to separate her from Jambo, allowing them into the outer areas separately, and dividing Nandi’s time between the two so that Jambo would not get bored and N’Pongo not become too jealous.

  Then N’Pongo came into season and suddenly it was vouchsafed to her what a male gorilla, even an irritating practical joker male gorilla, was for. With complete shamelessness she would solicit him through the bedroom bars and, when allowed in with each other, copulation took place almost at once. During the whole time she was in season, N’Pongo tolerated Jambo. Although she did not display quite the hero-worship of Nandi, she nevertheless abandoned herself to the carnal delights in the most wholehearted fashion. Then, the moment she was out of season, she resumed her former relationship with Jambo. Once again they had to be separated. Though she became more tolerant of Jambo as the months passed, she still only really had time for him when she was in season. It would have made things much easier for us if she had lived in harmony with him, but we had to be thankful for small mercies. At least she had mated with him and that was the main thing. Nandi, too, had received his attention when in season and so now all we could do was wait and hope that both females would be fertile, give birth successfully and, most important, prove to be good mothers.

  At long last, from the latest batch of urine samples that had been sent off to the laboratories, came back the exciting news that both females were pregnant. The first one to give birth was Nandi. This, our first gorilla birth, was a never-to-be-forgotten occasion. Apart from the importance of the birth itself, gorillas have only been bred since the 1960s and only forty-seven of them have been reared successfully. We hoped that there were going to be no complications because it was Nandi’s first baby. With the aid of a closed-circuit television we had installed in the den, a twenty-four-hour watch was possible and thanks to this we noticed that Nandi was starting her labour at eight o’clock one night. Operation Gorilla came into force at once.

  Over the months, as Nandi and N’Pongo had grown more and more rotund, we had been making our preparations to try to cover all eventualities. We could not assume that both gorillas were going to be good mothers, nor could we assume that the births were going to be easy and normal; so everything, from the possibility of having to do a Caesarean section to taking the babies away and handrearing them, had to be taken into consideration and planned for.

  The most likely event was that we would have to remove Nandi’s infant and hand-rear it. This being so, a room in the Manor was prepared as a nursery. It had a built-in airing cupboard, wash basin and cupboard space, and in this room were installed our two Oxygenair baby incubators and, for use when the babies grew older, large wickerwork clothes’ baskets to act as sleeping quarters and a playpen. The nursery was heated by a thermostatically controlled radiator and kept at between 70° and 75° F. As well as this, we installed a washing-machine for nappies and a tumbler clothes dryer. In addition, of course, we had to lay in a stock of oddments ranging from baby oil, baby lotion and nappies, to feeding-bottles, thermometers and plastic pants. In spite of the fact that the outlay had been considerable, we hoped we would not have to use any of it.

  By the time Nandi started to strain at eight o’clock that fateful night, we felt we had taken every precaution that was humanly possible. Now it was up to Nandi and we could only watch and be ready to help, should it be necessary.

  It was a nerve-racking time. From the moment we noticed the first straining until the moment Nandi had the baby in her arms, took nine hours and twenty-four minutes – an unprecedented length of time according to the observations we had of gorilla births in other zoo collections. The baby was what is known as a ventex presentation – that is to say it was born face downwards instead of face upwards – and, as such, it inevitably produced an unnaturally prolonged labour. There was one point (when Nandi had already beaten
the record for the longest labour so far observed) when we seriously and reluctantly started thinking in terms of a Caesarean section, but we eventually decided against it, as Nandi, although in pain and restive, was in good physical condition. We decided to wait, for a Caesarean section is not an operation you undertake unless you have to. Luckily Nandi gave birth before reaching the time limit we had set.

  From the commencement of labour until the moment of birth, every move that Nandi made was recorded; a total of 260 observations, which make up one of the most comprehensive scientific coverages of a gorilla birth ever made. Nandi cleaned up the baby very well and then ate the placenta and membranes. She held the infant close to her body and with great tenderness, so we had high hopes that all was going to be well. But then we came up against the usual stumbling block. Nandi had no idea that the baby should feed. Four hours after birth, the baby, a male, tried to suckle, but was pulled off the nipple by Nandi. The maximum recorded time that a baby gorilla had been left with its mother before being removed for hand-rearing was thirty-two hours, but our baby was so strong and so eager to feed that we left him with Nandi for forty hours. Still she would not let the infant suckle. Reluctantly we loaded the capture-dart gun, tranquillized Nandi and removed the baby. This was taken up to the nursery (beautifully decorated with cut-out pictures of Walt Disney characters on the walls and ceiling, so that the babies’ eyes would have something to focus on) and installed him in the incubator. The baby’s first few feeds, which he took greedily, consisted of glucose and water; after that he was started on Dextrose and rapidly gained weight. We christened him Assumbo after an area in the Cameroons, which is the most westerly part of Africa in which Lowland Gorillas are found. He proved to be an exceptionally good baby.

  Three months later, it was N’Pongo’s turn. Unfortunately, she gave no preliminary signs that she was going to commence labour and, as we had had several dates recorded as possible birth dates, we were taken by surprise. The first we knew of it was at eight o’clock in the morning, when our Curator of Mammals, Quentin Bloxam, came on duty and found N’Pongo sitting on her shelf, totally ignoring her baby, which was lying on the floor, waving its arms about and whimpering. N’Pongo had eaten the placenta, cleaned up the baby and then, feeling that that was the extent of her obligations to the future of the gorilla race, had placed it on the floor and left it to its own devices. Quentin opened the slide leading into the outside area and N’Pongo walked past the squealing infant without even a glance and went outside. It was obvious that, as far as she was concerned, it was now up to us. Quentin rescued the yelling baby and it joined Assumbo in the next-door incubator. It proved to be a male as well, so we christened it Mamfe, again after a place in the Cameroons which I had used as a base camp on my collecting trips in West Africa.

  The two boys grew apace and eventually graduated from incubator to basket and play-pen and (when they got too boisterous) to a cage in the Mammal House. Here, with access to sunshine and fresh air, they grew even quicker, beating up their toys and thumping their chests like adult gorillas in an effort to prove to us how powerful and savage they were, a boast belied by their enchanting woolly, piccaninny looks and the humorous glint in their eyes.

  They had hardly settled down in their new quarters when the nursery was filled again, for, once more, Nandi and N’Pongo, within a few weeks of each other, had their second infants. Once more, we had unfortunately to take them away. Nandi’s second baby was a female, called Zaire, and was the cause of much rejoicing, for in gorilla births in captivity there has been, up to now, a preponderance of males. N’Pongo’s second offspring was a male, Tatu, probably the handsomest baby we have yet had and the image of his father. As I write this, Nandi is pregnant for the third time and I have no doubt that N’Pongo will follow suit. If these two births are successful, it will mean that we have had six gorillas in three years, which cannot be considered bad going by any standards, when you remember that the first gorilla birth was recorded in 1956, just under seventeen years ago and that there have only been seventy-four successful births to date. It is to be hoped that we can keep at least a trio of these or subsequent youngsters, to form a potential breeding group for the future, when Jambo and N’Pongo and Nandi are past breeding age. The object of the exercise is to have our breeding groups self-sustaining, so that not only will it be unnecessary to catch gorilla’s in the wild again, but, from our breeding pool, we will be able to supply other zoos.

  Fables, Facts and Files

  ‘This beast has a stone in its eye, also called a Yena, which is believed to make a person able to foresee the future if he keeps it under his tongue. It is true that if a Yena walks round any animal three times, the animal cannot move. For this reason they affirm that it has some sort of magic skill about it.

  ‘In part of Ethiopia it copulates with a lioness, from whence is born a monster known as a Crotote. This can produce the voices of humans in the same way. It is said not to be able to turn its eyes backwards, owing to its rigid backbone, and to be blind in that direction unless it turns round. It has no gums in its mouth. It had one rigid tooth bone all the way along, which shuts like a little box, so that it cannot be blunted by anything.’

  T.H. White, The Book of Beasts

  ‘In much research wild animals are the raw material of zoology and their continued existence for this reason is essential. We still have much to learn about our own evolution, behaviour, diseases and, above all, our own relation to the natural environment. Man has the power to control nature to a certain extent, but equally he is part of nature and in order to understand himself completely, he can only do so in the context of nature and wild animals.’

  Caroline Jarvis, The Value of Zoos for Science and Conservation

  ‘Pythagoras says: “Serpents are created out of the spinal marrow of corpses” . . . And this, if it is to be credited, is all very appropriate: that just as Man’s death was first brought about by a Snake, so by the death of a man a snake should be brought about.’

  T.H. White, The Book of Beasts

  It is obvious that the human race is still woefully ignorant of how the world works. In many parts of the planet, we are destroying with such ferocious rapidity that there is not even time to give a name to or scientifically to describe what we are destroying, let alone to discover its importance, biologically speaking. It is as well to remember that, when we exterminate a species, we endanger or destroy with it a host of satellite creatures that depend upon it for their existence. When you chop down a tree, you are not just killing a tree, you are destroying the equivalent of a vast and teeming city, because there are so many different forms of creature that live upon it. What we are doing can have far-reaching effects; effects which may not be apparent on the surface; effects which ultimately may rebound upon mankind in an unpleasant way. People comfort themselves with the old saying: ‘You can drive nature out with a pitchfork, but she will return’. The word to note here is ‘pitchfork’. When pitchforks were the most up-to-date weapon in man’s armoury against nature, this was, of course, true; but now you are driving nature out with pesticides, bulldozers, chain-saws, man-made floods and man-made filth – relentlessly, thoroughly and speedily, so she cannot return.

  I get very tired of people asking me what use are the animals I am trying to preserve? What use can some obscure tropical creature be to a man in Sydney, or Chicago, or Stalingrad, or Peking?

  The answer comes in two parts. First, we have no shred of moral right to exterminate a species which has taken millions of years to evolve and which has as much right on this planet as we have. In fact, it has now more right to be here, since it has not tried to step outside its allotted place in nature and is, in most cases, of benefit to its enviromnent in consequence. This cannot be said of so-called civilized mankind, however sanguine your view of your own species. Second, if one must adopt the arrogant and God-like attitude that a thing should only exist if it is of use to man (th
at chapter in Genesis has a lot to answer for), then the reply to ‘what use are they?’ is simply that, as yet, we have not the remotest idea of what is and what is not of benefit to mankind.

  There are thousands of examples which show clearly how, first of all, we have to know how the world functions, before we can manipulate it to our benefit, without destroying it; and how the most obscure and unlikely creature may turn out to be of enormous use to us. Let us take just three.

  In England, the county of Sussex was famous for its white clover and, indeed, large numbers of people depended upon this crop for their livelihood. Then the clover suddenly and mysteriously started to fail and whatever the farmers did was of no avail. In desperation, as a last resort, they turned to a biologist for help – something they should have done in the first place. That they happened to choose a man called Charles Darwin was fortuitous. Having investigated the problem, Darwin informed the worried farmers that what they wanted was more cats; a remark which led the stalwart sons of the soil to believe that the old boy must have taken leave of his senses.

  It appeared that there was only one sort of Bumble bee which had a proboscis long enough to fertilize the rather complex clover flower. This bee built its nests in the banks in the hedgerows. A species of Field mouse lived in the banks; a rodent with a sweet tooth, who would dig out the bees’ nests and eat the honey and the young. It appeared that the Field mice were having a population explosion and the number of natural predators had not risen sufficiently fast to cope with this. The rodents’ depredations on the bees’ nests were becoming so great that the results were showing in the poor clover crops.

  In Brazil, they decided that it was silly to have such an important crop as the Brazil nut scattered about the forest in the untidy way that nature had arranged. It was obviously more sensible to grow them in rows in plantations, like any other crop. This was done, and the trees grew, prospered and flowered, but to the mystification of all they produced no nuts. Belated investigation disclosed a situation somewhat like the Bumble bees and the clover. Apparently the flower of the Brazil nut tree has been adapted so that it can only be pollinized by one species of bee, which has strength enough to raise a kind of trap-door to get into the flower. Now this insect found that on a plantation it had no nectar to feed on when the Brazil nut tree was not in flower, so, not surprisingly, it ignored the unnatural plantations and remained in the forest, where it had a sufficient supply of food all the year round.