The Stationary Ark by Gerald Durrell

  From the outset, the lemurs, Ruffed, Mayotte, Mongoose and Ring-tailed, approved of their new abode which gave them plenty of fresh air and sunshine. The cages face south-east and have ample space for movement. The lemurs’ diet had been meticulously worked out from our own observations and experience, with additional know-how from ten other lemur collections scattered round the world. Now we felt that all we had to do was to sit back benignly and wait the flood of babies.

  To our chagrin and astonishment, no babies were forthcoming. In spite of bitter experiences with a host of different species, one is always shocked and hurt when, after one has taken infinite pains to ensure the well-being of one’s animals, it turns out one is not doing the right thing. Although the lemurs ate prodigiously, sang lustily both day and night and copulated with all the joyous abandon of participants in a Roman orgy, nothing came of it for some considerable time.

  Our first breakthrough was with the Ring-tailed lemur. Polly, our youngest female, gave birth to a lovely male baby, but unfortunately it was dead on the floor of the cage when we found it. X-rays showed there was no air in the lungs, which proved that it had been born dead and had not died from neglect, and post mortem findings proved that there was nothing internally wrong with it. It was just one of those inexplicable things; half-expected, because we had noticed on many occasions that the first babies of most animals are more liable than not to be failures. It is almost as though a young female’s body and her maternal instincts are not fully aroused at the time of the first baby and it takes one such birth to get her into training, as it were, for the future. The affair had at least proved to us that Polly was fertile and that she hid some maternal instincts, for the baby had been carefully cleaned, the umbilical cord severed and the afterbirth eaten. With her second baby, the following year, she had no difficulty and successfully reared it to maturity. We hope that now she has done this once, she will have no further trouble.

  Once Polly had started the ball rolling, the other lemurs followed suit. Our next birth was with the Mayotte Brown lemur, one of the rarer species. Here again, the first birth was a failure. However, we have now had three successful births. But, from the moment of completing the new lemur accommodation to the first breeding, it took three years, which goes to show the time and patience involved in trying to set up an intelligent and viable breeding programme. This is of particular relevance when one is dealing with a species that is decreasing in numbers in the wild state at a ferocious speed.

  In any breeding programme, one’s difficulties seem to proliferate as one progresses. Once one has the right mate and has learnt when to introduce him, if the animals are solitary, or how to stimulate him by the production of more than one wife or rival, if these are available (a more difficult problem to solve), then one gets to the point when the female in question becomes pregnant. Now comes the thorny problem – does one leave the male with the female? To do so can be a disaster, where the father commits – or his presence forces the mother to commit – infanticide, yet it can also sometimes be essential for the well-being of the offspring.

  Two problems we had among our primates give some idea of the difficulties in the animal marriage market. Among the South American marmosets and tamarins a type of Women’s Lib has been unobtrusively, unvulgarly and very successfully practised for some considerable time. The female, when she gives birth (almost invariably to twins), hands them over immediately to the father for cleaning and supervising. From that moment on, the male plays a large part in the rearing of the young, taking his share of carrying around the ever-increasing weight of the babies, slung on his hips like panniers on a donkey, or on his back like a furry, misshapen knapsack.

  In order to find out just how important the fathers were in the rearing process, we did a study of the movements of twin Red-handed tamarins. The results were fascinating, showing how the physical labour of carrying the young was divided. It is a very important factor, for, as the young develop and get heavier, though they tend to move about on their own, they still return to the parents for attention and in moments of stress. In this instance, the father unexpectedly died when the young were three days old, and so the mother had to rear the two babies single-handed. This she did successfully, but towards the end, when the young were half as big as she was and still demanding to be carried on occasions, it was obviously a very exhausting and exacting process for her. However, she faced up to her task and the two babies grew into healthy adults.

  It was particularly interesting that, in spite of the difficulties facing the female, this was the first time that the Red-handed tamarins had been successfully reared to maturity in captivity. It was apparent from this that, in the case of the tamarins and marmosets, the male played an extremely important role, even though the female, if determined and a good mother, could rear the young without him. It obviously followed that the father in this case must be left with the female and not separated when the young were born.

  We once had a visit from an exalted member of the hierarchy of a very well-known zoo indeed who, while admiring our marmoset babies, confessed that they had had little success with this group. They had bred, but the young had died. However, he went on, obviously in total ignorance of marmoset behaviour, they hoped for better luck next time as they intended to remove the male.

  The question, ‘Shall we remove the male?’ is one that excites, among zoo people, the same sort of controversy as was once aroused in ecclesiastical circles by the question of whether or not Adam and Eve had navels, and with much the same inconclusive results. Of course, it depends not only on the species but on the individual in question. But however well you think you know your male, and even if it is biologically valid to leave him with the young, you may still end up with dead offspring. The rarer the animal, of course, the greater the risk and the more difficult the decision becomes.

  Orangutans are probably the rarest of the great apes and are the most threatened by extinction in the wild state. It has been estimated that if the drain on the wild stocks of the Bornean orangs and the Sumatran sub-species is not rigidly controlled, this fascinating red primate will be extinct in the wild state within the next twenty years. If this prognostication is true – as, alarmingly, it seems to be – it is of vital importance that zoos should build up breeding colonies of these animals, not only to prevent the drain on wild populations, but to ensure that the species survives, if only in captivity.

  We are lucky enough to have acquired both the Bornean and the Sumatran sub-species and to have successfully bred both of them. When the female Bornean, Bali, was pregnant, we had her separated from the male, Oscar, since it was the unanimous opinion that, magnificent as Oscar was and bursting with character though he might be, he was a real devil. No one wanted to predict what his reactions to a baby would be. So he lived a bachelor life while Bali was undergoing the last stages of her pregnancy. Then, finally, she gave birth to a fine healthy baby, a female called Surabaja.

  Bali was of a temperament so sweet and gentle and idiotic that we were inclined to think of her as feeble-minded. It was fortunate for us that we had this view, for, although immensely proud and enamoured of the baby, she had not the faintest idea of how to deal with it. It is universally accepted now that, among the apes, the babies get their basic sex education from watching adults; thus a young male learns how to mate by watching his father and a young female learns how to look after a baby from her mother. We do it with celluloid dolls; apes do it with real babies. But if an ape is taken into captivity at a very early age, it does not have a chance of learning these techniques and this can cause great difficulties when it comes to breeding.

  Bali had come to us when about two years old and so she should have had the opportunity to watch some crèche habits in the wild. Perhaps she had but had forgotten about it, for, as I say, she was sweet-natured but not overburdened with brain-power. Be that as it may, she was delighted with her daughter, cleaned her up very nicely
, then clasped her firmly in her arms. And that, as far as she was concerned, was all you had to do with babies. The poor infant, now on her hip, now on her back, now draped over her head, searched desperately and unsuccessfully for a nipple with which to assuage its thirst, while Bali just sat there, beaming benignly.

  Eventually we were forced to go into the cage with her and show her how to hold the baby so it could feed. This took several days, but in the end she got the hang of it and seemed enchanted with so novel an approach to baby rearing. It was unfortunate that while Bali was rearing Surabaja, the male, Oscar, died, a loss which I shall deal with later. When it was time to remove Surabaja from her mother, we mixed Bali with a young male orang whom we had called Giles. Although Giles was much younger than Bali, they settled down well together and we hoped they would soon mate successfully.

  Unfortunately, Giles is a really Machiavellian character and takes a delight in frustrating everything we do. When we tried to get urine samples from Bali to send to the laboratory so as to see if she was pregnant, Giles did all he could to prevent it and to considerable effect. We continued trying, of course, but were lulled into a sense of false security by the fact that Bali did not look pregnant. Orangs are generally fairly pot-bellied, which makes it difficult to tell, but with her first pregnancy Bali had been enormous, whereas now she looked only slightly bloated. We felt sure she was not pregnant. Then, while we were still trying to defeat Giles and get a urine sample off her, she gave birth. It was very early in the morning and, by the time the staff came on duty, Giles had stolen the baby from Bali and killed it. The only good thing to be said about this was that at least we now definitely knew that Giles would have to be removed before Bali gave birth again, but this knowledge was hard won and the incident put our whole orang breeding programme back a year.

  With our Sumatran orangs, Gambar and Gina, we had a different situation. Gina was a somewhat sour and untrustworthy character while Gambar was one of the most intelligent apes I have ever had the privilege of meeting. The moment you met him and looked into his alert and observant eyes, you were aware of a powerful intellect. He had come to us on loan from the Zoological Society of London and, while he had been with them, he had actually sired a baby and remained in the cage when it was born, so we knew that he would not be murderously inclined. Nevertheless, he was such a powerful, exuberant animal (he brachiated more than all our other orangs put together) that we felt he might well unwittingly kill or damage the fragile baby during his boisterous perambulations around the cage. We had divided Gambar’s and Gina’s den in the same way as the gorilla dens, with a removable, barred partition. We felt that if Gambar was on one side and Gina and the offspring on the other, he would be able to see and even to touch his baby if Gina allowed it, but there would be no risk of him sitting on it by accident, while performing his circus acts round the cage.

  The Sunday morning when, according to our records, Gina was about due to give birth, Philip Coffey, who is in charge of our ape colony, saw her trying to make a nest out of sawdust and wandering about in a restless fashion. She was given half a bale of straw, with which she immediately constructed a nest. This done, she lay on her back in it with her legs wide apart. Very soon and with no complications, the baby, a fine male specimen, was born. Gambar, at this point, was allowed to see Gina and the baby through the bars and evinced a certain amount of interest.

  After about forty-seven days, when the baby, christened Tunku, had developed and grown strong, Gina regularly played with him, holding him away from her body with her feet and hands and dangling him in the air. After this, she frequently left the baby climbing on the barred partition of the den and there Gambar would play with him, putting his hands through the bars to touch him. Gambar was at all times remarkably gentle for such a large and boisterous animal. Sometimes he would squat on the floor and push his hands through the bars. Tunku would sit in his father’s cupped hands and be lifted up and down, a form of exercise which appeared to afford both father and son immense gratification. Once the baby was strong and agile enough, Gambar was reintroduced to Gina and the baby. He behaved impeccably. Tunku would, at times, climb all over his father, and Gambar, with enormous patience, would allow his hair to be pulled, every bit of his anatomy examined, fingers poked into his eye and even bits of food removed from his mouth, without complaint.

  Most apes can walk upright like human beings, but only for short distances and with their legs bent at the knees. Gambar, however, could walk with his legs absolutely straight and with his feet flat on the ground; the swaggering, corpulent walk of a retired Brigadier-General on the sea front at Brighton. Moreover, he does not do this for short lengths of time but on occasions walks round and round the cage for a considerable period, with a militant look on his face as though inspecting a guard of honour. This is amusing enough to watch under any circumstances, but when Gambar walked round and round like that, carefully carrying his infant son in his huge hands, the sight was irresistibly comic.

  The complexities of successful marriage among animals is shown by the difficulties we had with our gorilla group, for, in trying to establish these creatures we ran the gamut of practically everything that could happen. As I said earlier, we acquired the female, N’Pongo, when she was an estimated two and a half years old. We then obtained Nandi, another female, slightly younger. N’Pongo, from the first, was a charming extrovert, with great gaiety of disposition and firm ideas about her own importance. Though she liked Nandi from the moment of introduction, N’Pongo made it quite clear that it was her zoo that they were living in, the staff were her friends and Nandi would do well to remember it. She was too charming and good-natured an ape to develop into a sadistic bully, as many animals would have done in the circumstances, and she treated Nandi with great affection but considerable firmness. Thus, for five years the relationship was one of mutual affection and regard, with N’Pongo in many ways taking the place of the male. The relationship, in fact, was one which, in a girls’ school, might have been described as unhealthy.

  It was at this point that we were having so much trouble getting a male. It began to look as though N’Pongo and Nandi would have to end their days as virgin spinsters, a thought that was naturally abhorrent to us. It was then that Ernst Lang offered us Jambo. This was an enormous piece of luck from many points of view. Lang had been the first person in Europe to breed and successfully rear a gorilla, the famous Goma, and since that remarkable breakthrough (for gorillas were one of those difficult beasts that it was said could not be bred in captivity), his gorilla family had gone from strength to strength. Jambo was one of the males born into the family. Not only was he zoo bred, but he himself was the father of a young male, the mother of which was his sister. This meant that Jambo was no callow teenager whose knowledge of sex was confined to perverted peeps at the health and strength magazines; he was a fertile male who knew how to mate.

  This is very important, for there are many things in the apes’ world that are learnt by example and successful copulation seems to be one of them. An ape reared without contact with a herd seems to be singularly inept and, in some cases, a totally unsuccessful lover, simply because he was never shown. Jambo had not only been shown by his enormous father, Achilla, but had proved that he had paid proper attention to the demonstration. His final qualification was that he was just the right age to become N’Pongo’s and Nandi’s husband. Lang had extolled his virtues in letters and, rather in the manner of the early royal marriages, photographs had been exchanged. We were told that Jambo was exceptionally powerful and exceedingly handsome, black but comely and with a rather humorous expression. We all thought he was perfect. Now we had to wait to see if the two females agreed.

  Introducing animals is a heart-stopping business. Will they attack each other and, if so, will the hose pipes, the buckets of water, the pitchforks, be of the least avail? If not, will they simply ignore each other, or will they ignore each other to begin with and then at
tack each other later, when one has been lulled into a sense of false security? If they do ignore each other, does this mean that they might grow to like each other later on, or were all one’s trouble and expense in vain? Anybody who cherishes the idea that all individuals of the species are bound to be alike in given circumstances, should have been there to watch the introduction of Jambo to N’Pongo and Nandi. It was a classic in every sense of the word.

  We had confined the females in one of the three sections of the bedroom so that, through the barred divisions, they could look into the third bedroom into which we were going to release Jambo. Between the male and the females would lie a section of the bedrooms and two sets of bars. This would, we felt, act as a buffer-state, until we got some idea of all three participants’ reactions to the whole idea. N’Pongo and Nandi could tell something curious was going on by all the untoward activity but they had no idea what, since Jambo was still invisible in his travelling crate.

  The moment arrived, the slide on Jambo’s crate was lifted, the door to the bedroom slid open and Jambo, massive and black as coal, reeking with the garlic-like smell of gorilla sweat, swaggered, hunching his shoulders like a professional heavyweight, into the cage. He gave one swift, all-embracing glance around him, saw the females, but made no sign. He squatted for a moment to gaze around him in a lordly fashion before starting a slow perambulation around the bedroom, examining every nook and cranny with interest, but still totally ignoring the two females. The effect of all this on the females was fascinating. Both of them, when they heard the slide, had come forward and peered, but when Jambo sauntered, dark and handsome, into their line of vision, the reaction of each one was totally unexpected by us.