Gerald Durrell's African Golden Cat

Something I started pondering this morning, for no good reason other than it popped into my head, is what happened to the African Golden Cat that Gerald Durrell collected in Cameroon in 1949?

In his book The Bafut Beagles about his collecting trip of that year, he recounts how the Fon of Bafut sent a hunter out specifically to catch an African Golden Cat for Gerald. This task the hunter successfully accomplished - I just re-read the relevant chapter of the book to make sure of that - but what happened after that?

I don't really expect anyone to have the answer, but you never know on Zoochat! Anyway, none of the dates on Zootierliste match up, so did the cat die before reaching England? Did it survive and go to one of the usual zoos to which he sold animals like Bristol or Manchester? (Presumably it wouldn't be London because their records are too complete and hence would probably be on Zootierliste already).

And related: I've always thought it would be interesting if someone went through all his records of the old trips he made and compiled lists of all the species he collected and to which zoos they went.

 

An interesting question; if it *did* survive and end up in a UK collection, it might well have been Edinburgh Zoo - the Scottish National Museum in Edinburgh contains a particularly fine-looking mounted specimen of this species, and as several of the mounted specimens at the museum are former residents of the zoo, the possibility is there....

Whether said specimen is connected to Durrell or not, the museum is certainly worth a visit for any animal enthusiast with an interest in extinct and critically endangered taxa; it contains dozens of onshow specimens belonging to taxa such as the Eskimo and Slenderbilled Curlew, the Javan and Sumatran Rhinoceros, Quagga, Pink-headed Duck, Bush Wren, Huia and Thylacine to name but a few.

 

I think if it did survive it would have had to have gone to one of the big mainstream zoos (like London, Edinburgh, Chester, Manchester, etc) simply because they would be the only ones who would have had the interest combined with enough cash to pay for it.

Here (unrelated to the Golden Cat) is a collection of photos from Gerald's 1956/57 trip to Cameroon which resulted in A Zoo In My Luggage: Animal Collecting With Gerald Durrell | Animals, Africa and other secrets?

I've been to the site before, and linked to it on here in relation to black caracals (on the section for the Idabadan Zoo), but it's too interesting to not repeat. Check out the photos of Gerald surrounded by calabashes full of animals, and also photo 31 with the way the animal cages are stacked inside the truck for transport to the coast.

 

it's an interesting little site, isn't it? In connection with gorillas and water, I always remember photos of wild gorillas in the bais of West Africa, wading through the swamps (I think it must have been in a BBC Wildlife magazine).

And back to Gerald Durrell related matters, in The Bafut Beagles (from which book the African Golden Cat comes) there is a story about how a woman brought him a calabash containing what he thought was a harmless Typhlops, but as he was casually handling it he suddenly realised the snake had eyes, and then it bit him. I always thought the story was left a little lacking - I wanted to know what that unknown snake was! But looking at the reptile page of the Idabadan Zoo section, there is picture of a Burrowing Viper Atractaspis (which was actually photographed in Bafut) and I think that might be what it was.

 

yes he says in the captions or article that although the photos make it look like they are swimming they are really just holding their arms out in front while using their feet to push themselves along because the water was only shallow.

 

Indeed; the only known individual to have been photographed alive.

Any idea of the source of the Thylacine there?

 

Whilst we're discussing old London Zoo residents at the museum, it is worth noting there are quite a few others on-display, including Ching-Ching the Giant Panda - an individual who, disappointingly, no one has uploaded photographs of into the Zoochat gallery despite there being images of her contemporaries and predecessors - and one of the final Partula turgida from the dying days of the last population.

There are also animals from collections such as Marwell, Bristol, Heidelberg, Woburn and Wilhelma - many of which are recent enough that Zoochatters probably saw them when alive!

Gratifyingly, although not *everything* is online at present, a large portion of the museum collection is visible online using this search tool - often with accompanying photographs and provenance information:

Search our collections

Unfortunately, the African Golden Cat I proposed as a possible candidate for Durrell's cat has no provenance listed.....

 

Using the above-linked search tool I've found the provenance of the Thylacine displayed in the museum; it was collected at Piper's River, Tasmania in 1862 and is in pretty good condition for its age!

 

ha, I was just thinking yesterday I wonder if any Americans are reading this thread and asking "who is Gerald Durrell, and why are all these people so intimately familiar with his books from sixty years ago??"

In answer, yes. Yes they are all fantastic books, and yes they all still hold up fantastically well today. He wrote books about collecting expeditions to Africa and South America, about the early days of his zoo in Jersey, about his childhood in Corfu, and also a few fictional stories.

Here's The Bafut Beagles to get you started: http://www.durrell.ru/books/bafut.pdf

To give an idea of just how popular his books are, from that pdf (which is a scan of the entire book, 1979 reprint) it says " Reprinted 1959, 1961 (twice), 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971 (twice), 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979"

 

They also give a great insight into an important aspect of zoo history which a lot of zoological collections would rather like to forget, pretend did not happen, or at best discuss with great distaste; expeditions for the purpose of collecting stock.

 

ooh yeah, that just reminds me of David Attenborough who was collecting animals from Asia and South America for the London Zoo at the same time as Gerald Durrell was collecting in Africa and South America, but now he seems to act in interviews as if this was such a terrible thing and "we know better nowadays". It's almost like trying to hide from the past when there is just no need to do so. I remember (vaguely) a post from a younger member on here a few years back being disbelieving and shocked that Attenborough would ever have done such a thing in his past.

Something I always particularly like with Durrell's books and Attenborough's Zoo Quest books was their attention to so many small animals, like Durrell's hairy frogs and "flying mice".