Читать книгу Life at the Zoo: Notes and Traditions of the Regent's Park Gardens онлайн

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The rough-and-ready expedient of exposing the great cats to all the changes of an English climate had a greater measure of success than might have been expected. One is apt to forget that though the tropics are the main home of the tiger and the leopard, both wander far into the northern mountains, and that the former, if brought originally from Turkestan or China, can stand an English winter as well as the Chinese monkeys. During the year after the removal of the animals to their new house there was not a single death, and the system promised so well that artificial heat was for a time discontinued, both in the Monkey House and the Giraffe House, except that given by open fires. That the health of all the animals improved is shown by the list of creatures which lived in the Gardens, including brown and black bears, leopards, and ocelots.

The present Lion House, with its fine outdoor summer palaces, and its indoor winter cages, in a house warmed with hot water, is a combination of the two previous systems, and so far as health goes it seems to leave nothing to be desired. The Zoo of the future will probably contain lion houses of vast size, in which the creatures are allowed to live together in large numbers. This is the system adopted by the largest owner of wild animals in the world, Mr. Carl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg and New York. In his gardens at Hamburg, six lions, two Bengal tigers, and one from Siberia, live harmoniously in society with a polar bear, a Thibetan bear, and a number of leopards. The chance of a battle royal at meal time seems too great to be risked; but Mr. Hagenbeck says, that provided the animals are associated when quite young, and that each addition to the family is a young one, there is no danger. Meantime the space and freedom of the great cages, and the absence of that ennui to which animals are subject when confined separately, or even in pairs, have the best effect on their growth and vivacity. In the Hamburg cage the polar bear will play and romp with the tigers for hours, and most wonderful exhibitions of strength may be seen daily in these wrestling matches between such gigantic and dissimilar creatures.