Wild Animals of the World [antikvár]

PREFACEMan is not the only animal with curiosity, but he is the only one who writes, publishes and buys books to satisfy his itch for knowing. And among his books, since the very earliest days when there were books, have been books about animals the wild animals that share the world with him.Since the fifteenth century it is probable that millions of copies of books about animals have been bought by people who never saw, never even hoped to see, the animals they were reading about. Pure curiosity about the wild animal life must have prompted a vast amount of that reading through the ages.Wild Animals of the World is an attempt to satisfy the curiosity that is so prevalent today. "Conservation" is a new and important word that we are hearing more and more often; it is, indeed, the most important word in our language. For it has come to mean the saving, and the rebuilding, and the wise usage, of the natural world on which our very lives ultimately depend.Wild animals are a vital part of that natural world. They, like ourselves, are dependent upon it for their lives and well-being; they, like us, modify it and change it by the very fact of their existence. Their good, and ours, sometimes conflict; more often, probably, if we but knew more about the interaction of all natural forces, we would find that animal interest and ours coincide.The point I am making is that today, more than ever before, our human curiosity about the sub-human creatures of the earth is more than pointless curiosity; whether we know it or not, our lives are affected by the wild animal population of the world. Thus it is important for us to know a little more than most of us do about those animal friends and enemies.Wild Animals of the World is not written from the Conservation viewpoint, although there are occasional references to the fact that such and such an animal is of economic importance. It aims at the broader plan of furnishing factual biographies of the representative mammals of the world thereby, we hope, serving that generalized curiosity that is the starting point for more specialized interests.The biographies in this book are concerned with the best-known mammals, the ones that are most likely to be talked about in books of African adventure, or seen in the great zoological gardens.w. B.INTRODUCTIONWHEN I FIRST looked at Mary Lee Baker's superb paintings I wondered how she had been so successful in catching the subtle charm of a wild thing that makes a portrait, a sketch or word picture true and impressive. Then I discovered that she paints to music."I must have complete relaxation," she says, "so I select four or five recordings of symphonies such as Brahms', Mozart's or Beethoven's. I work in absolute quiet except for the music and the emotional and mental balance that results helps me to forget time and place and to almost live with the animal I am painting."That interested me enormously. When I was Director of the American Museum of Natural History we tested the effect of music in the Akeley African Hall where great habitat groups have brought Africa to New York. Recordings of soft music, the throb of tom-toms and native instruments were played over a broadcast system with immediate success. Visitors sat on the benches in front of different groups completely relaxed, seeing Africa, hearing Africa and feeling Africa. Seldom did one move except to walk quietly to the next exhibit.Miss Baker has another interesting work habit. She finds the complete quiet of very early morning most conducive to concentration and repose and begins painting shortly after midnight. For two years she has worked on the illustrations for this book and the results show it has been a labor of love.William Bridges is responsible for the animal biographies. No one could be better equipped to select and tell about the animals most interesting to the public. Newspaper work gave him training in popular writing and taught him how to present facts of natural history in palatable form."While I was working as a reporter on the New York Sun," he says, "I made two or three trips a year to the New York Zoo because I have always loved animals. The place was literally crawling with good feature stories. Eventually the Zoo became my regular Monday assignment. Then I was sent to cover an expedition of the late Dr. Raymond Ditmars to Trinidad to capture a bushmaster, the most deadly of all the great poisonous snakes of the Western Hemisphere. Dr. Ditmars got the snake and I got some wonderful stories, which later became my first book, A Snake Hunters Holiday. I liked newspaper work but animals were my passion and in 1935 I was given a new job, title: Curator of Publications of the New York Zoological Park.11