Choking Ducks

When great numbers of dead & dying wild ducks were found drifting forlornly on the lakes of Alberta, the Calgary Fish & Game Association was inclined to blame alkaline water, summoned the University of Alberta's Professor William Rowan and two other naturalists to investigate. Professor Rowan & associates quickly exculpated the water. They described, in a report made public last week through a U. S. game protection association, an uglier cause--leeches. The Rowan report implied that food scarcity this year interferes with the duck's good sense: "Undoubted catfee of the enormous mortality is the hungry duck greedily attempting to feed on the leeches when they are in their buglike [deflated] resting shape. When the worms are disturbed they clamp onto anything within reach--in this instance the inside of the duck's mouth or throat. By distention when filled with blood they then either choke the bird to death ... or work into the nostrils and prolong the agony. The reeds are full of choking birds. "At Stobart Lake we chased lightly afflicted birds in a boat over the bodies of thousands . . . floating upon the water in all stages of decomposition. . . . Captured birds, removed to the Inglewood government bird sanctuary . . . have recovered rapidly after removal of the leeches from throat or nostril." Canadian fisheries officials were promptly implored to suggest and provide a species of fish that could save the ducks by gobbling up the leeches.

Sanguivore

An employe of New York City's Bronx Zoo went about a curious task last week. He took blood obtained from an abattoir, whipped it up until the fibrin (coagulating substance) was precipitated in a spongy mass, popped the thin maroon residue into an icebox. Every night, when all was dark and comparatively quiet, three tablespoons of the defibrinated blood were fed to a tiny, scared, hideous creature --the only vampire bat alive in a zoo. The specimen was brought back last week from the wilds of Panama by famed Raymond Lee Ditmars, the Zoo's curator of mamma's & reptiles. Other trophies of his expedition, on which he was accompanied by the University of Michigan's Arthur M. Greenhall, were 18 carnivorous bats with bodies the size of large rats; a bird-killing spider, cousin of the tarantula, with a leg-spread of 8 in.; miscellaneous snakes, turtles and insects; a number of basilisk lizards, blasphemously nicknamed "Jesus lizards" because they can run on water. Dr. Ditmars brought back no bushmaster, the extremely deadly snake in search of which he has journeyed to Panama before, but he considers this trip eminently worthwhile for the bats alone. The big carnivorous bats are also new to the Zoo. These he fed with chopped mice during the return voyage. The bat is of the species Desmodus rotundus, found only in Panama. A few other kinds of true vampires (subsisting solely on blood) are scattered over Central and South America. The first record of a sanguivorous bat caught in its horrid act was written by Charles Darwin, whose servant surprised one feeding from a horse's withers in Chile. Desmodus rotundus is smallish (7 in. wing-spread), has a face like a miniature bulldog's, sharp incisor teeth with which it gouges a neat hole in the hides of its donors, preferably horses and cattle. Its gullet is so narrow that no solid matter can pass. The vampire's life-span is not known; nor does Dr. Ditmars know his specimen's age. Although naturalists have only recently discovered that vampires can be kept alive with defibrinated blood. Dr. Ditmars thinks they are rare in captivity simply because they are hard to catch.-- They are much more skittish and agile than other bats, emerge from their lairs only in the dead of night, evidently have remarkably acute hearing and sight. It was no picnic for Dr. Ditmars and Mr. Greenhall to get their Desmodus. Armed with flashlights, nets, a lighted candle to warn them of "dead air," they plunged into Panama's sinister Chilibrillo caves, waded through subterranean streams, teetered precariously along narrow ledges, clung to stalag mites. The place was alive with assorted bats, including the big carnivores. They came to an aperture which Dr. Ditmars could not squeeze through. Small Mr. Greenhall went on ahead, was so excited when he bagged a male vampire that he toppled into four feet of icy water. Fear ful that his prize would not survive its ducking (it did not), he persevered until he caught the female.

Late last week the Zoo was fluttered by an announcement that the vampire, which visitors saw as an unimposing, tightly curled wad of greyish-brown fur but which had become friendly enough with Dr. Ditmars to take tentative nips at his hand, was apparently pregnant. The vampire has one young at a time, which, like any other mammal, it nurses.

--The Gorgas Memorial Laboratory (medical research) in Panama City has a few live vampires. Bronx Zoo officials know of no others.

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