The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-06-28
BY WILLIAM ENGLE
Times stan Writer


Copyright, 1892. by The New York World
Telegram Corp
New York, June %.
DR. RAYMOND L. DITMARS,
- curator, was rated as wise
in the ways Of beavers; so was
Peter Romanoff, Bronx Park keep
er for twenty-six years. But to
the beavers that was the seasons
merriest jest.
Ditmars and RomancE wanted
to make a motion picture of a
major beaver engineering feat
from start to end-something
Heretofore never accomplished
and they set up their camera
down by the stream that winds
along the parks bearhouse.
They trained it upon the spot
where they believed a beaver
apartment dwelling was to be
reared, and they waited for ma
neuvers.
And that was all" as Ditmars
told it today. THE minute those
beavers poked their heads into
sight and saw us they tipped over.
We heard their tails smack and
they disappeared. They didn't
even peek"
DUT Ditmars was not giving up.
- He was absorbed in the am
bilious enterprise of making more
than a quarter of million feet of
motion picture film showing hun
dreds of wild creatures at their
workaday affairs in natural sur
roundings, and he was determined
to present beaver life as one of
his features.
so Peter Romanoff and I be-
gan dropping around at noon and
eating lunch near the beaver
colony. At first, smack went their
tails as they had before,
Down went the beavers out of
sight the second they caught a
glimpse of us. Then, gradually
they began to ge used to us.
1T was slow plodding. For two
months they we're leery. But at
the end of the third month they
adopted US"
Then the picture camera was
trained on them and one of them
was so affable that he chewed an
end off an extra tripod; none of
them seemed afraid.
DEFORE the cameras lens they
- went ahead with a multitude
of operations; built a mud island
in midstream; put together a
house made of tWigs and sticks
and mud; bored a tunnel entrance
to be submerged later against the
possibility of entry by enemies.
They cut down trees as big as
two feet in diameter at the base,
gnawed a crevice around the trunk
at an angle so that the great
branches would fall precisely
where they wanted them to fall
across the stream.
Then, with sticks and twigs and
roots and mud, they erected a
dam to a height just sufficient to
inundate their home entrance but
not great enough to put their liv-
ing ledge under water.
II shot 10000 feet of film" DR..
Ditmars said, land got so much
detail that had to cut it down to
a single reel"
He set about then to produce
animal films designed to correct
popular misconceptions Of the
traits of wild creatures.
He showed that monkeys do not
pick feaS off one another, but
merely seem to be up to that.
They're really almost free from
parasites in captivity because of
the dry air here. They scratch
one another because they're cour-
teous. IT is just their friendly ges-
ture-like handshake.
One of the films shows a young
lady visiting us. She wore fur,
and one of the monkeys, to hint
his goodwill, began trying to find
feaS on her. She was little up
set, but it proved the point"
n 4
NEITHER, despite general be-
IN lief, do all monkeys hang by
their tails, the pictures demon
Strated.
I'VE showed more than twenty
species of Simians. The truth is
the pictures revealed-only the
New World monkeys have prehen-
sile tails and hang by them from
branches; and only the Old World
monkeys have cheek pouches"
Buddy, the 16-months-ol Chin
panzee presented last September
to the park by Captain Wauchope,
whose freighter plies between New
York and West Africa, will be the
next prize subject for the scien-
lists camera.
For under the care of DR..
Charles V. Noback, in the depart
ment of comparative medicine, he
IS developing indications of in
telligence far faster than human
children of the same age.
On a diet of dried milk, diluted
and irradiated with vitanin n IN