The Stationary Ark

by Gerald Durrell

  Sometimes you have to face the fact that the only pair at your disposal are incompatible. Then you have to do the best you can. Our White-eared pheasants were a case in point. We acquired two pairs of this handsome and exceedingly rare pheasant via a Dutch dealer from Peking Zoo. The exact status of this species in the wild is uncertain; it has never been common and may, indeed, be extinct or seriously depleted throughout its range. These birds were the first to come out of China since 1936. At the time we received them, there were only fifteen specimens in captivity and most of these were either past breeding age or non-breeders for some reason or another. So it was of the utmost urgency that we bred from our two pairs and firmly established a breeding pool of these lovely birds.

  On arrival, one of the cock birds was suspiciously tame, almost lethargic. Within twenty-four hours he was dead. The post-mortem finding was aspergillosis, a fungus disease of the lungs for which there is at present no cure. This left us with one cock bird and two hens, and the cock only took a real interest in one of the hens. Naturally, as always happens, this hen got egg-bound with her first egg and, in spite of all we could do, she died. This left us with only one pair of birds and an incompatible pair at that. Our chances of establishing the White-eared pheasant in captivity seemed so slim as to be non-existent.

  Then came what we were convinced as the final disaster: the cock bird was frightened by something during the night, caught his leg in the wire and severely wrenched it. He could only just walk and we thought gloomily that, in such a condition, he would be unable to tread the hen, even if she displayed hitherto hidden charm for him. To our astonishment, however, he suddenly found the female attractive and, by some prodigious acrobatic feat, succeeded in treading her. From this happy experience she produced her first clutch of eggs, nineteen in all, out of which we successfully reared thirteen youngsters under a foster bantam, which had undergone a course of wide spectrum antibiotic to ensure that she had no disease she could pass on to her foster babies. Gradually our numbers increased. Our first job, in order to ensure the perpetuation of the species under controlled conditions, was to establish – on loan – breeding pairs at the Washington, Antwerp and West Berlin Zoos, The Pheasant Trust and C1 éres Zoo. Since then, we have bred and reared a total of 112 birds and now feel we can afford to sell pairs to selected zoos and aviculturalists. The money from these sales is paid into a special account to be used for the purpose of purchasing rare creatures for the Trust’s collection or to help with providing accommodation for such creatures. Thus the White-eared pheasants are now helping other species that are in a similar plight.

  Marriage and the begetting of young is (among animals other than man) an infinitely complex problem. Quite apart from the personal likes and dislikes of the creatures involved, there are many other aspects to be considered. Are the animals solitary in the wild state, except for the breeding season? If so, this presents special problems. For example, with our West African civets, who are solitary except during the mating season, we have to judge when the female is in oestrus. Only when she is, do we let the male in with her. Now the male civet bites the neck of a female when mating with her, as tigers do, so it is only by the wounds on the neck of the female that we can tell that mating has been successful. We then quickly remove the male before really vicious fighting can break out between the two sexes.

  When we have a perfectly compatible pair, living happily together and not breeding, we ask ourselves what we are doing wrong, for unless the animal is physically incapable for some reason, the fault lies with us, in the diet or the accommodation that we are providing. In the past, too many animals have been labelled difficult or non-breeders, as if the fault lay with the animal and not with the human who was controlling its life. At one time it was considered ‘impossible’ to breed such things as rhino and hippo for example, but at last the trick was found and now they are bred with comparative ease. I must explain what I mean by trick, in case it sounds too facile. I have always maintained that, allowing for the solving of the basic difficulties (food supply and accommodation for a Blue whale, for example), there is no animal species one cannot keep and breed successfully under controlled conditions, once one has discovered the trick. The trick might be anything ranging from the obvious one of finding the right mate, to providing the right area for the young to be born in, the right food, the right increase in nourishment when the female is pregnant, down to simple things such as the right number of ropes to swing on. The trick is always there; it’s up to one’s ingenuity to discover it and the animal generally gives one precious little help.

  It is very gratifying when one finally discovers the trick, gets every detail correct and sees one’s efforts crowned with instant success. It happened in the case of two very dissimilar animals with a rapidity that was quite astonishing and provided one of our big success stories. The first was the Waldrapp, or Bare-faced ibis and the second the Jamaican Hutia, a small rodent endemic to that West Indian island. Both these creatures are in danger of extinction in the wild state and so it was essential that breeding colonies should be set up in captivity.

  In the case of the Waldrapp, its future in the wilds is, to say the least, grim and there seems little chance of its survival. It is a medium-sized ibis, with a long curved beak, sombre black plumage that flashes iridescent purple and green when the light strikes it, a bare reddish-coloured face and a strange crest of long feathers on the back of its head, which makes it look as though it is wearing a feather wig that has slipped back, revealing its bald forehead. They are colonially-minded birds who congregate on cliff ledges to construct their nests and rear their young. At one time, they spread from the Middle East via North Africa to as far into Europe as Switzerland.

  Harassment of their nest sites (for the young were considered a culinary delicacy) and, later, poisoning of both adult and young birds by DDT and other pesticides, greatly reduced their range and numbers, so that now there are only some 500 pairs left. There are only two known nesting sites: one in North Africa, which is rapidly dwindling (presumably owing to pesticides) and whose whole future is threatened by the construction of a dam, and another, which has the misfortune to be situated right in the middle of the village of Birecek, on the Euphrates. In the old days in this town, the birds received a measure of protection, since their arrival at the nesting site was heralded by a great festival.

  As the town of Birecek grew, however, and the inhabitants became more ‘civilized’ and ‘sophisticated’, the festival was dropped. The birds turned, almost overnight, from being a reason for rejoicing to being a pest – birds who were unmannerly enough to bespatter the inhabitants of Birecek when they slept on the roofs of their houses. Small boys stoned the young on their rocky nesting sites while in the local fields (where the adult ibis assisted man by eating insect larvae) the land is being smothered with a massive coating of insecticides. Although both the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund are attempting to get the local people to protect the birds again, the chance of this – the biggest colony of 250 pairs – surviving, seems remote. The only hope for the future of these birds seems to lie in a captive breeding programme and then, possibly, reintroduction into some parts of its former range, perhaps in Switzerland or North Africa.

  In 1972 we acquired two pairs of Waldrapp from Basle Zoo. They were young birds, but as soon as they became adult, they made one unsuccessful attempt at nesting. The nest itself was not a particularly brilliant construction and the eggs that they laid turned out to be infertile. Shortly afterwards, when the full plight of this ibis in the wild became known, we decided to embark on a breeding programme; first to try to establish the bird firmly in captivity and second to aim at a reintroduction programme sometime in the future. To this end, we acquired two more pairs from Tel Aviv University in 1975.

  It became apparent fairly soon that the aviary in which we housed the birds was – from their point of view at any rate �
�� in some way inadequate. We felt that in order to achieve success we must do two things: raise the height of the aviary and supply the birds with a cliff face on which to nest. Lacking funds for this project, we presented our plan to our sister organization in America and they gave us a generous grant. Our first step was to write to every zoo in the world that possessed, or had possessed, Waldrapp, to find out what breeding successes they had had and to get the designs of the aviaries in which they had kept their specimens. To a large extent, this information was unhelpful and contradictory, since no two zoos kept their Waldrapp in identical accommodation. In some instances, the birds had bred in what appeared to be unsatisfactory circumstances, while in other, apparently more attractive, surroundings, they had refused to nest. All we could do was to construct what we considered to be the best accommodation and hope that it was right for the birds.

  The ibis breeding site, when completed, consisted of an aviary 40 feet by 20 feet by 12 feet high. It had 6 feet by 3 feet glass panels let into the wire at intervals and its back was constructed in the form of a cliff face out of rough granite slabs. At intervals, nesting sites of different sorts had been built into the cliff. Since the type of nesting site used by these birds in other zoos had varied so enormously, we felt we should supply as many different varieties as possible. In some cases we constructed natural ledges (sloping backwards towards the cliff face, so that the eggs and young would not fall off); other nest sites consisted of wooden containers (like wooden boxes, with no top and one side missing) let into the granite fascia.

  When this complex was completed, with its large pond, cliff and ample flight area, it seemed to us to be ideal. The only thing that remained was to find out whether the ibis agreed. From the way they flew to and fro, landing on the cliff face and inspecting the nesting sites, mumbling to each other in their strange, guttural language, it seemed as though they approved. Then, almost before they had learnt the geography of the new cage, they started carrying nesting material up to the wooden boxes, inset into the cliff for this purpose. We watched with bated breath as two nests were built and seven eggs were laid. As these were all laid by young birds, we thought we would be lucky to hatch and rear two out of seven, so when all seven eggs hatched and when the parents successfully reared six chicks out of the seven (the seventh was a weakling that rapidly succumbed), to say that we were delighted would be to put it mildly. It meant that we had almost doubled our colony in one fell swoop and made the possibility of a reintroduction programme seem infinitely less remote.

  In the case of the Jamaican Hutias, we had the same sort of good luck; success, due to finding the right formula, which, in this case again, was suitable caging. We had acquired our Hutias in a rather strange and round-about way. Every zoo director worth his salt keeps up a correspondence with a wide variety of people in remote parts of the world, in the hopes that one day they may be able to procure some rare and desirable animal for him. In my case (since people read my books and write to me in consequence) my correspondence is a widespread daisy chain, reaching from Peking to Penambuko. Among my correspondents was a Mrs Nell Bourke, who one day wrote from the lovely island of Jamaica to say that she had enjoyed my books and added – most unwisely – that she would be happy to try to procure for me any Jamaican creature that took my fancy. She made the offer in a spirit of bonhomie and I am sure that she was filled with grave misgivings when, by return of post, she received a letter from me, asking if it would be possible to obtain some Jamaican Hutias. Having made the offer, however, Nell Bourke stuck to it and, with the aid of her friend, Mary MacFarlane, set about the task of Hutia hunting.

  First, of course, official blessing had to be obtained, since Hutias are one of the few remaining endemic mammals in Jamaica and, although regularly hunted and eaten when found, are strictly protected as an endangered species – an anomalous state of affairs not found in Jamaica alone, unfortunately. They then enlisted the services of a Hutia hunter, with the euphoniously alliterative if unlikely name of Ferdinand Frator. In due course, to everyone’s surprise (including Ferdinand Frator’s) he managed to procure three live Hutias; a mother, father and their offspring. Nell Bourke had already received a massive list of instructions from me, preparing her for this unlikely (as I thought) eventuality, together with detailed drawings of travelling boxes that looked like the plans of the Russian missile bases in Cuba and would undoubtedly have had Mrs Bourke arrested had they been found in her luggage. After much trial and tribulation, the Hutias were crated and despatched on an aircraft. Nell Bourke sent me the following telegram: ‘Hutias arriving London Airport flight BEA xxx. Pray. Nell.’

  To our delight, all three Hutias arrived in perfect condition, unalarmed, it appeared, by their long flight. They resembled large greeny-brown Guinea pigs and had a most endearing way of waddling around, hind legs spread widely apart, as though they had just wet their pants. On sexing them, we discovered, to our annoyance, that the baby was a male, which gave us two males to one female. Writing to Nell Bourke to tell her of their safe arrival, I pointed out that, while in no way wishing to appear as if I was looking gift Hutias in the mouth, the ratio of one female to two males was one which, to say the least, formed a somewhat risky basis for a breeding programme of any seriousness. Could she, I enquired delicately, press the valiant Mr Frator into service once more and try to procure more families? To her eternal credit, in spite of all the traumatic experiences she had undergone in obtaining the first Hutias, Nell Bourke undertook to try to get some more. To our amazement and delight she succeeded triumphantly. So, in a relatively short space of time, we had four pairs.

  From our experience with the first trio, we had decided that, to undertake a serious breeding project, we needed new and improved accommodation. Once again, our sister organization in the United States provided us with a grant and with it we constructed a spacious series of glass-fronted cages in the Mammal House, each one equipped with wooden tunnels and bedrooms, furnished with large logs and lit by red light that allowed one to see the animals, while, from their point of view, they were in complete darkness. We reversed their day and night cycle, turning lights on at night and switching them off during the day when only the red light was left burning. Within a very short time, the Hutias were sleeping peacefully during our artificial night which we had created, so that visitors could see them going about their affairs.

  As in the case of the ibis, the Hutias took only a short time to show their approval of the new surroundings and within three months the first family gave birth to twins. The babies, a little bigger than a Golden hamster, were fully mobile from the moment of birth and, indeed, were observed eating solid food when only twenty-four hours old. In rapid succession, two other pairs of Hutias set their seal of approval on the new accommodation by breeding, producing twins and a set of triplets. It was enchanting to watch the three sets of parents with their offspring. The babies were full of character, rushing to and fro around their apartments, bouncing up and down like rubber balls and uttering shrill piping cries, while they played hide and seek in the straw and around the logs. They would rush up to their patient and long-suffering parents, sit up on their fat little behinds and begin to box their father’s or mother’s face. When the parents became bored with this, they would roll the baby over on its back and gently bite its stomach, while the infant kicked and wriggled convulsively, uttering loud giggling squeaks of pleasure. It gave us great pleasure to see the tubby babies playing so exuberantly with their parents, but it was sobering to remember that, from the day I first wrote to Nell Bourke on the subjects of Hutias, it had taken us three years to achieve this wonderful breeding success.

  Of course, on occasions, one may not be doing anything wrong. It might well be that the species in question takes a long time to settle down and consider its new quarters home territory. Our collection of lemurs, six species in all, have given us endless trouble and we are only just beginning to feel that we are doing the right thing and pro
gressing in the right direction. Basically the problem lay, I feel, with the fact that the animals took an inordinately long time to adjust themselves to their new surroundings.

  The situation facing the Madagascan fauna generally, the lemurs in particular, is pretty grim. Pressure of human population, culminating as always in the thoughtless elimination of forests, both by destruction to provide farmland and overgrazing by domestic livestock, has created a situation where the whole of that enormous and zoologically fascinating island (in its own way as interesting as Australia) is in grave biological danger. Some species can cope with the threat of man’s numerical superiority, his relentless destruction of habitat and the depredations of his domestic stock, but other species, many of them lemurs, will probably vanish within the next fifty years.

  Our lemur collection had been spread, higgledy-piggledy, round the grounds and, although lively and healthy, had never shown any signs of wanting to breed. We felt that if we were going to make a serious contribution to the establishment of breeding colonies, our lemurs would have to be provided with new quarters.

  Our new lemur range, when we had completed it, consisted of six units. The roofed-in area, which included a public corridor, gave the lemurs heated indoor accommodation, measuring 2.4 by 1.5 x 2.7 m. high. This led into outdoor cages, measuring 6 long by 2.4 wide by 3 m. high. The end of each bedroom and outdoor cage consisted of a large glass panel, which allowed the lemurs to have an uninterrupted view of the public and the public of the lemurs.