INDIA 181 
north. One of the most interesting birds in the Zoo was a solitary 
Pink-headed Duck, a peculiar long-necked species with a choco- 
late-brown body and rosy-pink head and neck. Formerly these 
birds were found in the vicinity of the Ganges and Brahmaputra 
Rivers wherever there were small ponds surrounded by plenty of 
cover in the way of long grass or reeds, but they are now almost 
extinct, or occur only in remote inaccessible places. 
It was here that I met Herbert Fooks, who was the Hon. Secre- 
tary of the Zoo. He was very keen on wild-life—birds in particular 
—and had a fund of knowledge concerning almost anything 
Indian. His stories of a pair of Pygmy Hippos that were in the 
Alipore Zoo are worth quoting. I had come across many instances 
of animals changing their feeding habits under captive or semi- 
captive conditions—for instance, wolves eating ice-cream, otters 
bread, and llamas paper bags—but who ever heard of a hippo 
eating monkeys? That is Fooks’s story. 
“A pair of Pgymy Hippos, purchased from the London Zoo, 
were introduced to an enclosure in the Alipore Zoo that was 
originally intended for chimps and orangs. This consisted of a cir- 
cular moat about ten feet wide enclosing an island about eighteen 
yards in diameter, on which was a raised shelter (for the apes). 
As the hippos spent most of the day in the moat showing only 
the tops of their heads, they were considered a dull show, and so 
to liven things up about twenty rhesus monkeys were put on the 
island. The experiment at first sight seemed a great success as the 
food given to the hippos were shared by the monkeys, and vce 
versa. It was not until several months had elapsed that it was 
noticed that the monkey population seemed to be decreasing. I 
was now on the alert and discovered that monkeys were definitely 
disappearing, and later witnessed, on two occasions, the female 
hippos snatch at and catch an unsuspecting monkey while they 
were feeding together. I then watched the hippos’ food and found 
that very little of it was eaten. 
“The female at about this time became very bad-tempered and 
savagely attacked the male, who had to be separated from her. As 
I couldn’t afford to feed them on monkeys, I decided to turn 
them into a larger lake of about five acres in area. For some days 
they were not seen nor did they come ashore for food, but they 
