On this idle, rainy Sunday I decided to take a trip to the zoo in Ueno Park. I had nothing else to do and figured (correctly) that in the rain I would have the park pretty much to myself. So ( sans broken-and-not-yet-replaced-camera) I set off.
The first sight that greeted me as I walked through the gates was this:
Interestingly, it was only in English. I guess they assumed that no Japanese person would have missed the national outpouring of grief (and subsequently, bemusement that although Ling Ling had been a gift from the Chinese government, her replacement will have to be rented at a cost of 1 million US dollars per year, with the stipulation that any subsequent baby pandas remain the property of the PRC).
But actually, it was another endangered animal I had come to see. Ueno Zoo, together with Duke University in the States and London Zoo are launching a worldwide program to save another strange, endangered creature: the aye aye. It was a rare chance to see this animal, outside of its native Madagascar. I wanted to take a look.
The aye-aye is a victim of human psychology. It has been hunted to the brink of exctinction not for food, but purely from fear. This harmless creature, which lives in trees and forages on fruits and grubs, has such a strange, creepy appearance that people have come to hate it. Malagasy villagers believe the animal is bad luck, and kill it when it stumbles into their villages. Its haunting nightime cry, “aye aye”, is said to be a harbinger of death. So what does this maligned beast look like?
As I watched it in ther darkened nocturnal house, scuttling through a spidery arrangement of tree logs and branches I felt myself shiver. It really IS creepy-looking and alien, (and, at the size of a small dirty fox, larger than I had expected).
The animal’s most unusual feature is its freakishly long and bony third finger, sometimes twice as long as its other fingers. Some Malagasy believe that if the aye aye points this witch-like finger at you, you will die. Others even believe that the animal creeps into houses at night and murders people sleeping by plunging the claw into their eyes, or heart.
Biologists say though that the finger is only used to tap on dead logs and listen for hollow areas, rich in grubs. But again, the easily-spooked human psyche has imagined a monster…
Happily, recent studies have found though that the aye aye population is more robust that was previously thought, and hopefully this international conservation effort will help. I was glad to have seen it.
After the ayes-ayes, the highlight of the zoo was (improbably) the sloth cage, where a pair of oddly athletic sloths (do they put speed in the water?) were racing around on ropes. In an innovative display, the ropes actually lead out of their cage through a circular hole in the plexiglass wall, and out above the heads of zoo visitors to nearby trees. So the sloths swing by above you, thrilling children and necessitating these warning signs:
It was a welcome touch of showmanship benfiting both animlas and visitors, in a zoo that generally “could do better” I thought. Many of the displays seemed rather oldfashioned and lacking in imagination, and certainly didn’tt hold up to the beautifully landscaped and thoughtfully designed (and newer) Yokohama Zoo.
