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

Sudden and severe cold, however trying to human constitutions, seems almost harmless to animal health, provided the weather be dry, frosty, and undimmed by fog. On the last Friday of November 1893, the thermometer fell so rapidly that in a few hours it registered sixteen degrees below freezing-point. On the following morning, though the sun was shining brightly, every pool and pond was sheeted with ice, and the gravel walks were as hard as granite. Yet at the Zoological Gardens, birds and beasts from tropical or semi-tropical regions, such as Burmah, Assam, Malacca, and Brazil, were abroad and enjoying the keen air; and others, which are usually invisible and curled up in their sleeping apartments till late in the day, were already abroad, sniffing at the frost and icicles, and as indifferent to the cold as Mr. Samuel Weller’s polar bear “ven he was a-practising his skating.” A visit to the Gardens in such weather suggests a modification of too rigid ideas of the limitation of certain types of animals to warm or torrid climates, and illustrates the gradual and reluctant character of the retreat of species before the advance of the glacial cold in remote ages. No creatures are, as a rule, more sensitive to cold than the whole monkey tribe. Yet there is at least one species of monkey which habitually endures the rigours of a northern winter. One of the cleverest antique Japanese drawings at South Kensington represents a troop of monkeys caught in an avalanche of snow. The grotesque discomfiture of these pink-faced monkeys rolling down the hillside, helplessly clutching at each other’s bodies and limbs, grinning and grimacing as their heads emerge from the powdery snow, is something more than the fancy of a Japanese painter. The incident is probably drawn from an actual scene, and one of the creatures, the Tcheli monkey from the mountains of Pekin, was in an open cage in the gardens, and in far better health and spirits than in the height of summer. Its fur had grown thick and close, and the naked face had assumed the dark madder-pink with which it was adorned in the drawing. When presented with sticks crusted with frozen ice, it sucked the chilly dainty with great relish, and only showed signs of sensitiveness to cold by putting its fingers in its mouth, and then sitting on its hands to warm them. The behaviour of this northern monkey is only strange by contrast with the general habits of its kind. But the indifference to cold of the capybara, a gigantic water guinea-pig from the warm rivers of Brazil, is not easy to explain. Two of these quaint creatures had left their snug sleeping apartments, and were stepping gaily among pools of half-frozen water and broken ice. One had gained an extra coat by burrowing in its straw and then emerging with a pile upon its back; and, when this fell off, retired and shuffled on another pile; but the other seemed quite content to sit without protection in the sunniest corner of its enclosure. The whole colony of porcupines (six in number), which, like most semi-nocturnal animals, are very loath to appear in public during the day unless enticed by food of a more than usually tempting character, were abroad and in the highest spirits, erecting and rattling their quills, and sitting up to inspect their visitors like gigantic rabbits. It is difficult to conceive that a coat of quills can impart much warmth to its wearer; but towards Christmas the quaint black-and-white garment of the porcupine has almost the appearance of a mantle of stiff feathers; and the crest on the head and shoulders, sloping backwards along the spine, combines, with the black face and Roman nose, to suggest a comical resemblance between the fully-fledged porcupine and one of Buffalo Bill’s Sioux warriors in full costume of eagles’ plumes.