Wild Life

ANIMALS LOOKING AT YOU--Paul Eipper--Viking ($3).

"To go to the animals is to go home."

That is the answer which Author Eipper gives to Berliners who ask him, "Why do you go to the Zoo every morning?"

Pessek was an orang-outang who closed her shutters when visitors bored her, who politely returned Author Eipper the peels and pips of a gift-orange. Mr. Eipper next looked at the pale faery eyes of a Bengal tigress, fixed on distance like those of some Eastern image. He watched the pelican gulp fish. He sat down and let four orang-outang infants clamber over him and played with them as an equal. From the rear he looked at the young elephants-- "like forlorn village children in the Sunday pants of a corpulent parent." Only the chimpanzees disturbed him. Said he: "If I see them riding . . . the animal atmosphere is dispelled for me for ever."

The animals loved variously. With the emu, the Australian ostrich, it was the males who cared for the children, guarding them against their morose mothers. The leopardess flirted by flicking her tail in the face of her mate until he sprang with fang and claw, snarling, whirling. The giraffes, a bull and two cows loved daintily, with acute tremblings. Lions "laughed and kissed in their delight." Then "I heard the song of the ape-man . . . [it] resounded in powerful alternations, Aw--Aw--Aw--H-u-u-uh, as tremendous as the lions' roar. It was the song of primitive life, the thunderous speech of nature."

Author Eipper's special plea is that animals in zoos be given space. Like Noah, he also insists there should be two at least of every kind. He concludes: "I have written this book to show, not why or what, but how animals really are. . . . You will find . . . documents of reality, just as are the photographs that reflect life in its pages. . . . Brothers of Life, great and small--the animals look at you!"