"But what makes a given hunter focus on a particular species is a deeply individual matter. 'Big-game hunters have their inexplicable whims,' Yebes admitted. 'Ernest Hemingway felt the same toward the kudu; Major Maydon's attraction was the addax.' For him, the handful of differences that set the giant sable apart from other antelopes, other sables, made it into a magic beast."
- John Frederick Walker, A Certain Curve of Horn
What holds true for hunters, it seems, can also apply to zookeepers. This was brought to my mind earlier this week when I read some news from Czechia. The Prague Zoo announced the captive breeding of five Bornean earless lizards, a secretive jungle lizard related to the more-famous monitor lizards, such as the Komodo dragon. It's a species that I hadn't given a single thought to for almost a decade. Which is crazy, because there was a time when I feel like I heard about the damned things non-stop every day...
A zookeeper holds a newly born earless monitor lizard in Prague Zoo, Czech Republic. October 16, 2018. REUTERS/David W Cerny
My curator had a passion for monitors. We had over a dozen species in our reptile house, including at least two that, at the time, were housed nowhere else in the country. He wasn't satisfied. He wanted more monitors, to be sure, as to him they represented the peak of lizardom, to coin a word. But more than that, he wanted what no one else had. His dream was to display Bornean earless lizards, which he always referred to by their genus name, Lanthanotus. Display them, yes... and perhaps breed them. That there was no source available for these animals didn't bother him. He could dream... and he did.
I think most zookeepers and curators have an idealized animal - not just their favorite, so to speak. The one that they dream of having. The traits that attract them to a particular animal may vary from keeper to keeper. For some, it might be physical appearance and beauty; to go back to the quote above, a big bull sable antelope is a magnificent animal, and it is easy to imagine that zookeepers might desire one in their herd as badly as a hunter might want one above his fireplace. For others, uniqueness is an appealing trait, something that makes the animal different from all others. A carnivore keeper I knew had worked with several cat species, but had a special passion the jaguarondi, a sleek, uncatlike cat from the Neotropics. She never worked with one, as far as I know, but she was determined until her last day at the zoo that she would get a pair somehow. Which brings us to another trait that can inspire a passion for a species - rarity. As every lovelorn teenager can attest to, it's easy to idealize what you can't have,
Of course, having an animal obsession has much different consequences if you are a curator or collection manager or (especially) the director. Then, you might actually be able to actually make it happen. There are a lot of zoo collection plans which seem to get steered just as much by the passions and preferences of one of the decision-makers as they are by science and conservation.
Not long after I left my monitor-obsessed curator, I took a trip to New York City, my first ever. I took a stroll around the Central Park Zoo that morning, then spent the afternoon at the nearby American Museum of Natural History. There, in a plain glass display case, was the first - and so far only - Lanthanotus I've ever seen. It was deceased of course, small and looking faintly like a piece of beef jerky. It was as close as I'd ever gotten to one, however, and (seeing as the Prague lizards aren't on public display) perhaps as close as I'm likely to get.
I wonder if my old boss will ever see one. I suppose a man can always dream...
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