Zoology Jottings

For common names in chelonians we have a situation in that a common name used in the USA. a bastardised version of an Algonqiuin word, came back to Britain, while that term was then largely dropped in the USA except for a small number of species that live in brackish water. The word of course is ’terrapin’. Every schoolboy of my day knew that tortoises live on land, terrapins in or around freshwa…

In recent articles I described the activities of Alfred St Alban Smith who sent a large number of animals, particularly reptiles, from south-east Asia to London Zoo between 1927 and 1936. The Annual Reports of ZSL listed them all the species by common name. But some of those common names are not ones we may recognise nearly 100 years later. One was Sumpah-Sumpah. I had no idea what a sumpah-sumpa…

AJP spotted this bird in the New Territories at the end of winter there. In our time in 1960s Hong Kong it would have caused a sensation amongst the birdwatchers for the simple reason it remained unrecorded there for at least another two decades. The latest Field Guide to the Birds of Hong Kong and South China (9th edition, 2022) describes it as “mostly an irruptive and uncommon winter visitor in…

A rubber plantation in Malaya in the 1920s What do we know of the life of Alfred St Alban Smith, a rubber planter in the Malay States who generated such praise for his efforts to send animals, particularly reptiles, to London zoo in the 1920s and 30s? By searching genealogical sites, including a family tree, and newspapers available online I have managed to build up a timeline of Alfred St Alban …

In a recent article I described how Reg Lanworn, a keeper at London Zoo, had been sent out to bring back a collection of animals from Singapore that had been assembled by Alfred St Alban Smith, a rubber planter. For his support between 1926 and 1930 St Alban Smith was awarded the rare honour of a Silver Medal by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) in 1931. He continued to send shipments until …

Darwin's bulldog was invited to give an opening address at the opening of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, on 12 September 1876. The address included: I am not in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur; territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs a true sublimity, and the terror overhanging fate is - Wh…

Sometimes birds turn up in unusual places. Birders in Hong Kong were out in force in February--not to some remote parts of the New Territories but to a landscaped building in the heart of Kowloon. There, in the patches of garden around Kowloon Bat Sports Centre, was a crake, a Slaty-legged Crake (Rallina eurizonoides) to be precise, going about the business of searching for food, moving around a …

This male Black-winged Cuckooshrike (Lalage melaschistos) posed for AJP in Hong Hong. A bird of south and southeast Asia it is classified as a scarce winter visitor and passage migrant in Hong Kong. However, we have seen at least one on our stay in and visits to Hong since the 1960s. There are early records of this species breeding in Hong Kong but that no longer seems to be the case. It preys on…

Last November we saw these Pygmy Marmosets in Putomayo, a department in south-west Colombia. We flew to Villagarzon from Bogota, staying at the Portal del Sol, an ecolodge owned by a family rewilding the farmland which runs down to the river. And it was by the river that the troop of marmosets appeared. We had already seen the holes they had gnawed in the trees and which they visit to gather the …

In 1901, a book appeared which is still worth reading or simply for looking up what was known at the time. It is remarkable because the author was not known for his research on reptiles and amphibians but for birds in particular and vertebrates in general. He was Hans Gadow who was born in Prussia in 1855. After working with the big names in German zoology, he arrived in London to take a job at t…

An interesting paper has appeared that shows that a gene present in most vertebrates is absent in snakes. The gene is responsible for the production of the unpronounceable peptide ghrelin. Discovered in 1999, ghrelin is produced by a number of organs in the body and has a multitude of actions, sometimes acting as a true hormone via circulation in the blood and sometimes, it would seem, locally on…

AJP saw this minivet while having a 6-hour walk in the New Territories of Hong Kong last month ‘from Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve up to Leadmine Pass, up to Grassy Hill, then along and up to Needle Hill and down down down to Shing Mun Reservoir’. On a clear day in Hong Kong minivets are a stunning sight. This one is a male Grey-chinned or Grey-throated Minivet, Pericrocotus solaris. The female is ye…

By contrast with Lord Moyne’s expedition cruise of 1934-35 on board his large motor vessel, Rosaura, in which live Tuataras from New Zealand, Komodo Dragons from what was then the Dutch East Indies and Kagus from New Caledonia were brought back to London Zoo, I know who looked after the animals on board during his next expedition in 1935-36. And what’s more as a 16-year old reptile (and amphibian…

The expedition cruise on which Clementine Churchill was a guest of Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne, on board his luxury vessel Rosaura arrived off Komodo on 18 March 1935. The plans to obtain new specimens of Komodo Dragon for London Zoo have been well documented and I have written about that part of the expedition previously HERE. In brief, Moyne was a council member of the Zoological Society…

The most likely introduction to the Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus), that sole living survivor of an ancient reptilian group the Rhynchocephalia, to anybody studying zoology in the last century was by means of its skull. The reason why zoology departments had a tuatara skull was because it exhibits two holes on either side—the diapsid or ‘two arches’ condition—that was used as a key feature in the …

In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again…

General Hardwicke’s Dabb Lizard (Saara hardwickii) has recently contributed significantly to understanding of how dietary intake and retention of key nutrients change according to the needs of an animal at a particular time and according to the availability of food of different composition. The whole approach is that pioneered by Steve Simpson and David Raubenheimer first at Oxford and more recen…

AJP was walking on Lamma Island on the morning of Christmas Eve. In a semi-abandoned village he spotted this rat snake on a patio. He estimated it was a good 1.4 metres in length. These snakes will eat any land vertebrate they can catch. They are constructors but only applying sufficient coils, contraction or body-weight to kill their prey. In other words they do not go all in such that the whole…

This Shining Sunbeam hummingbird shows why its name is appropriate. The iridescence from those feathers on its back have to be seen to be believed. We were at Hacienda El Bosque, a popular birding lodge at an altitude 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) almost at the highest point of a pass over the Cordillera Central of the northern Andes. There are feeders to attract all sorts of birds and this hummingb…

Willoughby Lowe (1872-1949) was a highly-praised collector for the Natural History Museum in London as well as an all-round naturalist. Counting just birds he added over 10,000 specimens to the Museum. Lowe wrote two books on the various expeditions of which he had been part and there are summaries available online on what he did and where he went. However there is little of his life and backgrou…