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Show Zoo Animals Turn Popular Beliefs to Fables j An elephant's memory is no longer long-er than its tail. Humming birds, so fragile that they seem winged insects, in-sects, are greedier than pigs. Monkeys Mon-keys prefer popcorn to bananas. The house cat is more cruel than a beast of the jungle. In fact, name any popular belief about animals and it's a good two to one bet that it is wrong. That's the conclusion of experts after actual observation at the Chicago Chi-cago Zoological park at Brookfield. Consider the elephant most maligned ma-ligned of the animal kingdom. He is supposed to live the 969 years of Methuselah, but instead lives only the three score and ten of man. The female is said to breed at the age of 40 or 50; in reality, she breeds at six and eight years. Her pregnancy is said to endure seven years- as a matter of fact, it is 19 month's, which is short enough, considering con-sidering the size of her offspring. And the elephant's memory! Legend Leg-end says it is enduring, tenacious. Do an elephant an injury today and he will repay you in kind 15 years later. Brookfield officials say this is applesauce. An elephant's memory probably is not as good as that of other animals ani-mals " Robert Bean, assistant direc tor and curator of mammals, declared. de-clared. "I never heard anyone who worked with them say their memory amounted to anything. Take Honey and Tembo, the baby elephants that Christoph Schulz captured and brought here. "When he found Honey, she was a baby, half starved and wandering in the jungle. He brought her here, feeding her by bottle, and she would follow him everywhere. When he left she tried to trumpet, but when he came back eight months later she didn't remember him at all. Schulz," he added, "was very disappointed." dis-appointed." Elephants, too, are said to b afraid of mice. The truth is, Mr. Bean says, that they ignore them, making the pachyderm house at Brookfield the hardest in the park to free of mice. Elephants like cats, however, and allow them free access to the stalls. The only animal most of them despise, Mr. Bean says, is man. |