WILD ANIMALS AS A SOURCE OF FOOD 
Lee M. Talbot 
(Office of Ecology, Museum of Natural History, 
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.G., U.S.A.) 
Previous papers in this Symposium have discussed the problems 
involved in animal production under adverse climatic conditions using 
conventional domestic livestock. This paper discusses the possibility 
of accomplishing this purpose by using unconventional livestock - the 
indigenous wild animals. 
Climatic conditions adverse to optimum domestic livestock produc¬ 
tion exist over large parts of the world. They range from arctic condi¬ 
tions to tropical, and from desert to rain forest. Within this spectrum 
of environments the range of conditions optimum for most domestic live¬ 
stock is relatively narrow. Attempts to improve livestock production 
under adverse conditions have been confined to finding the domestic 
species most closely suited to the conditions involved and attempting 
to improve conditions to meet the animals' requirements. This improve¬ 
ment may involve provision of water, supplementary food, and fencing; 
bush control; stringent grazing control; disease control; and reseeding 
or other forms of vegetation management. Such practices are normally 
expensive. Often they are not feasible economically since under truly 
adverse conditions, even with intensive management, the yield of domestic 
livestock is relatively low. In such cases rather than attempt to adapt 
the range to conventional livestock it may be better to look for live¬ 
stock better adapted to the existing conditions. Over much of the world 
such livestock exists in the form of the indigenous wild animals. 
Although the principles discussed below apply to many parts of the 
world, the discussion is primarily concerned with the semi-arid tropics 
of East and Central Africa. Many of the data are drawn from wildlife 
research in the area conducted by the author from 1956 through 1962. 
The major part of this research was carried out jointly with his wife, 
under the sponsorship of the Foreign Field Research Program of the 
United States National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, 
the New York Zoological Society, the Government of Kenya, and Rocke¬ 
feller Foundation. Included in this research were cooperative studies 
