The Stationary Ark Page 3

  A cage which constitutes a territory seeming suitable to the animal and providing an area of security to which he can retreat when under stress.

  A mate, or mates, considered suitable by the animal.

  An adequate diet, which is considered interesting by the animal and nutritional by you.

  As much freedom from boredom as possible, i.e. plenty of ‘furniture’ in the cages and, if possible, a neighbour or two to have exciting, acrimonious, but unsanguinary battles and disputes with.

  But, because of the public’s anthropomorphic attitude, we still get these terrible animal houses, the modem equivalent to the Hindu monkey temples, so beloved of the zoos in the nineteen hundreds and in which so many unfortunate and ungrateful Rhesus monkeys shivered their way to death.

  The public’s concern for captive animals is laudable, but, for the most part, misguided. They scarcely ever, in fact, complain about the things in zoos that they should complain about, but they get vociferously hysterical about the things that do not matter a damn to the animal.

  People say that it is wrong to cage animals; it is wrong to imprison them; it is wrong to deprive them of their freedom. They seldom, if ever, criticize the cage; it is only the idea of the cage that they are against. The discovery that different animals have territories of different sorts and sizes, ranging from a few square feet to a few square miles, depending on the species, in the same way that human beings have back gardens, estates, counties and countries, is a comparatively new one, and we still have an enormous amount to learn about it. But it is this fact which must be borne in mind at all times when designing a cage or an enclosure for an animal. You are not necessarily depriving him of his liberty for territory in a form of natural cage and the word ‘liberty’ does not have the same connotation for an animal as it does for a chest-beating liberal homo sapiens, who can afford the luxury of abstract ideas. What you are, in fact, doing is much more important; you are taking away his territory, so you must take great care to provide him with an adequate substitute, or you will have a bored, sick or dead animal on your hands.

  The thing that turns a cage into a territory may be something quite slight, but it need not be the size. It might be the shape of the cage, the number of branches or the lack of them, the absence or presence of a pond, a patch of sand, a chunk of log, which could make all the difference. Such a detail, trivial to the uninformed visitor, can help the animal consider this area his territory, rather than simply a place where he ekes out his existence. As I say, it is not necessarily the size which is of prime importance. This is where the people who criticize zoos go wrong, for they generally have little idea of what circumscribed lives most animals lead. The monotony of the daily round of a great many wild animals would make the average Streatham bank-clerk’s everyday existence seem like the first five volumes of The Thousand and One Nights. The minuscule area in which some animals spend their entire lives is something which is not generally understood. In many cases, animals live, mate and die in an area that is relatively tiny, only moving outside it if some important ingredient is missing.

  On the edge of a camp-site which I had in the West African rain forests there grew three trees, heavily covered with epiphytes and lianas. These trees, each about thirty feet high, standing cheek by jowl, represented the whole known world to a medium-sized pair of squirrels. In this tiny area they had everything they wanted. They had fruit and shoots and insects to eat, they had water supplies in the shape of small pools of dew and rain, which had collected where the branches joined the main trunks of the trees. Lastly, not to be overlooked, they had each other. I occupied that camp-site for four months. The squirrels were very much in evidence, from first dawn till sunset, and at no time did I see them leave the three trees, except to chase off intruders of their own species.

  The three essentials that these little rodents had were the same three as most probably govern the lives of all animals, the desire to reproduce their kind and the need for food and for water. Out of these things spring the claim to territory, and territory is a form of natural cage. I am not attempting to say that the critics of captive animals are wrong to criticize, I am merely saying that they are criticizing for the wrong reasons. It is the anthropomorphic approach that is so deadly.

  Going on an animal-collecting expedition teaches you a lot about territory and also about the flight distance of animals. The flight distance is a term used to describe the distance that an animal allows between himself and an enemy before taking flight. Though it varies, all animals have this, even man. If you don’t believe me, try going into a field with a bull and find out your flight distance for yourself. When you have got a newly-caught wild animal, the most formidable task facing you is to persuade it to cut down its flight distance (you are the enemy, don’t forget, and in constant close contact with it). You also have to provide it with a new territory.

  Take, for example, a squirrel. Put a newly-caught squirrel in a simple wooden box (which is what most travelling crates are) with a wire front and you will have an animal that leaps and scrabbles in terror every time you go near him. This will go on for months, perhaps forever, for the simple reason that he is being deprived, at one stroke, of his flight distance and his territory. He cannot get away from your monstrous hand when it enters his Lilliputian world to clean and feed him.

  Now put the same squirrel in the same box, but with a bedroom at one end, reached by a small hole just big enough to allow him to enter. Immediately the whole picture changes. He now has a secure area to which he can retreat when you invade his territory. From the calm of his bedroom, he can watch you clean out his cage and put in and take out his fruit and water pots, if not with equanimity then at least without too much alarm. It is important, of course, to leave the bedroom area as inviolate as possible to begin with, thus building up the animal’s confidence. This is sometimes easier said than done, for some animals, like humans, are terrible hoarders and will carefully pile up in their bedroom that food which their stomachs cannot accommodate but which they feel sure will come in useful one day. When the scent of rotting leftovers becomes too all-pervading, you are forced to invade the bedroom area and clean it out, but the longer you can delay doing this, the better.

  Once the animal is fully established, he will even come to look forward to your periodic invasion of his bedroom, for it means a fresh supply of banana leaves or grass, bringing with them tiny insects and seeds to be eaten, smells from the outside world to be snuffed and mused upon and then all the feverish excitement and activity that bed-making involves.

  I have found that this bedroom technique works excellently with most small mammals. I have had a wild squirrel settle down so well that, after three days, when I was forced to clean out his bedroom, he actually came into it and started to tear at the banana leaves and make his bed while I was still pushing them in. In the case of an extremely pugnacious and vociferous Pygmy mongoose, he was not only convinced, within a couple of hours, that his bedroom should be inviolate, but that his whole cage area should be as well. He accepted instantly that the cage was his territory and defended it with the ferocity of a wounded tiger. It took endless and exhausting subterfuges to get him to one end of the cage so that I could put his food and water in at the other, without risking a severed artery.

  The size of the average travelling crate is governed by the fact that it is safer to transport animals in small, rather than large cages, for, should the cages be moved by unskilled labour (which, unfortunately, they frequently are) and carelessly handled or dropped in consequence, the animal stands much less chance of being injured. However, in spite of its modest dimensions, you will generally find that an animal, having occupied a cage for some months, gains so strong a feeling of security from it that, in many cases, on arrival at zoo it refuses to leave the travelling crate for more spacious quarters. The travelling box has successfully become its territory and the boundaries it knows and feels
safe in, where it is assured of food and water.

  The new cage, be it fifty times as big, does not, at first glance, offer these things. It merely holds out the promise of that thing about which human beings get so excited, greater freedom. But this is the last thing that the animal wants; he wants security and this he has already in his small travelling crate. In many cases, the crate has to be left inside the more spacious zoo cage for several days, sometimes for weeks, until the conservative and cautious creature decides to include the large cage in his territory. Even when he has accepted the larger cage, should he feel frightened he will make a bee-line for the smaller one, for it is there that he feels at home.

  When collecting in West Africa once, we were brought some Demidoff’s bushbabies. They were brought in by a hunter, at the very last moment, as we were moving down country to catch our ship and although I purchased them, I had nothing to keep them in except a rather ancient native wickerwork fish-trap, measuring some two feet long by six inches in diameter. Fortunately, the Demidoff’s bushbaby is the smallest of the bushbabies (being about the size of a Golden hamster that has been on a strict diet) and so these three specimens fitted very well into the fishtrap, which I had filled with dried banana leaves. The Demidoff’s are one of the loveliest of the bushbabies; enchanting little creatures, with huge dark eyes, delicate ears, soft greeny-grey fur and the swift, dainty movements of thistledown blown by the wind.

  When we reached the coast (only three days later) I built a proper cage for my Demidoff’s and transferred them to it. Mercifully, I had not thrown away the fish-trap, for as soon as they were in their new cage the bushbabies went into a decline. They refused all food and huddled miserably in their bedroom, staring at me with great soulful eyes, like a trio of banished fairies. In desperation I returned them to the fish-trap, whereupon they revived instantly and started to feed and behave normally. On the voyage to England, the fish-trap (not having been designed for this sort of thing) started to disintegrate and had to be patched up with bits of string to prevent it from falling apart. On arrival, the Demidoff’s were united in their disapproval of the zoo cage, which was approximately fifty times bigger than the fish-trap, and resisted, being evicted from their wicker home with great stubbornness. The fish-trap had to be hung on the wall of the new cage and the Demidoff’s lived in it for a year before venturing out into the more spacious cage. Even then, they still spent most of their time in the remains of the fish-trap and resisted all attempts to wean them on to a better-built, more spacious and hygienic basket. Eventually, after two years, the fish-trap, that had only taken the Demidoff’s three days to decide was home, finally fell to pieces, but by this time the enchantingly stubborn little creatures had become used to their new quarters.

  It was an animal called the Pouched rat that drew my attention to what, I suppose, could be called ‘travelling territory’ and, at the same time, gave me an insight into the equanimity with which some animals accept captivity. Pouched rats are large grey rodents, about the size of a half-grown cat, found in profusion in parts of West Africa. They are, for the most part, rather phlegmatic creatures, but, like all animals, they have their little quirks and foibles. One of these is what appears to be a complete absence of fear, for I have never yet met a Pouched rat who would not bite you savagely, though in an off-hand, rather absent-minded manner. The French term, en passant, fits the action very well.

  Their other curious, but most irritating, habit (of which I was, in those days, unaware) is to collect in their giant cheek pouches any food which they cannot conveniently finish in one sitting and carry it away into their bedrooms. Thus, when I got my first Pouched rat (accompanied by my first Pouched rat bite) I was only too happy to leave his bedroom inviolate, but I immediately noticed that I was apparently not giving him enough to eat. His dish was always immaculately clean and he would peer soulfully out of his bedroom, through a web of trembling whiskers, looking like a rodent reincarnation of Oliver Twist.

  Desperately, I piled more and more food into his cage, until one day I found him sitting outside his bedroom. Investigating this phenomenon, I found that his bedroom was so full of stored food that he could not get into it. I was young and inexperienced in those days and though I had mastered the technique of leaving the bed-room area inviolate, I had not yet realized that this course generally brought on a rotting food syndrome as well. Now I cut down on the Pouched rat’s food and made an assault on his bedroom about once every ten days. The second time I cleaned it out, I found that, in spite of my rationing, there was a large quantity of food being stored, which meant that I was still over-feeding him. So I cut down on the perishable, soft food, like banana and paw-paw, which rotted so quickly, and increased such things as sweet potato and peanuts, which could be stored with impunity in a bedroom. That seemed to solve the problem.

  Then the Pouched rat took a step which, to say the least, gave me pause for thought. I went to clean out his bedroom one evening and found it empty, except for the store of food on the banana leaf bed. In the back wall of the bedroom a neat hole had been gnawed in the wood and, to use the immortal words of my African animal boy, ‘da bloody ting done go for bush’. Consoling myself for my stupidity with the well-worn saw that you learn by experience, I made a mental note to line all Pouched rats’ cages with metal in future. Next morning I went to fetch the cage so that the carpenter could do just this, and there, lying curled up in his bedroom, was the Pouched rat.

  At first I could not believe my eyes. It went against everything that most misguided animal lovers preach, an animal returning to hated captivity. It was unheard of. So I left my Pouched rat alone and observed him. Each evening, he came out of his bedroom into his cage area, ate and drank his fill and then solemnly carried what he couldn’t eat into his bedroom, his cheek pouches bulging like somebody with mumps. When he had stashed it all away, he then (with much rustling and fuss) made his bed. He appeared at the hole at the back of his bedroom and sniffed the air and then went back and did a little more bed-making before reappearing and trotting off into the night. Within two and a half hours he was back. He made his way unerringly into his bedroom, had a light snack, curled up and slept peacefully for the rest of the night.

  This was the pattern of his behaviour for the next two months. Then I had to move some 150 miles down country and wondered how my rat would take to this change of territory. I nailed a piece of tin over his hole for the journey, but as soon as we were established at the new camp, I removed it. The Pouched rat, with all the sang froid of a jet-set top executive, took the journey in his stride and, without hesitation, continued to make his bed, store his food and go for nightly walks in the forest. This continued until we got on the ship for Europe, when I had, albeit reluctantly, to line his cage with metal, since I felt that the captain of the ship, sympathetic though he was, would not take kindly to my rat’s nightly perambulations. The rat seemed to realize that this part of his life had come to an end. He settled down very happily and I am glad to recall that he lived for ten years in the zoo to which he was sent.

  Years later, while collecting in Paraguay, a revolution broke out. Paraguay is one of those South American countries which have revolutions instead of football as the national game. As neither side appeared to be winning, the game was lasting for an unconscionable length of time and since I could not get out of the country and take my animals with me, I had to let them go. The bulk of these creatures had been in captivity for some three months and they had learnt to like it. So they refused to go. They hung around the camp, waiting to be fed, and some of the more energetic and strong-beaked parrots actually ate their way through the wood and wire, back into the cages. The more recently captured animals, of course, departed into the wilderness when released, but the ones who had developed a taste for captivity had to be forcibly removed a sufficient distance from camp, before they realized what was wanted of them.

  It is experiences like these that make me impatie
nt of the ill-informed strictures of zoo critics. They say it is wrong to take away the ‘liberty’ of an animal. If they knew anything at all about the animal’s life, I would not mind, but they do not. What they are implying is that by putting an animal in a cage you are depriving him of the chance of taking a package deal holiday on the Costa Brava, of going to a concert at the Albert Hall or skiing in the Alps. To these well-intentioned people, animals are small furry human beings; Uncle Fred and Aunty Freda in a fur coat. But they are not; they are individuals with their own ways of looking at things, their own likes and dislikes. So it is important, especially when criticizing, to look at things from the animal’s point of view and not your own. After all, you would not necessarily like to mate with a female hippo, but there are lots of male hippos who would.

  It is because of this approach to captivity that anthropomorphic architecture has come into being: people may not know what the animal wants, but they think they do and it is exactly what they want. Lovely big cages is the slogan. As long as the cage is big, they can bear it. They are happily oblivious to the fact that the animal may be a terrestrial beast who requires plenty of ground space, but is incarcerated in a cage shaped like a grandfather clock, or that a frenetically arboreal beast is eking out an existence in a cage that only allows it to get two feet off the ground. They remain oblivious of the fact that the lovely big cage is a hygienic but dull square of concrete, devoid of anything to occupy the animal, without the hundred and one busy, important things animals like to do — to climb, to jump, to swing, to display, to mark their territories.