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Taming Lions with Drugs

CAN a roaring, raging lion be permanently transformed into a tame and docile animal, by an amazing new drug treatment? Working under the supervision of Dr. Knight Dunlap and Dr. Howard Gilhousen, psychologists of the University of California at Los Angeles, Joseph Cooper is preparing to try the fascinating experiment. One of his subjects will be the most vicious of 155 lions and cubs that roam a five-acre enclosure at Gay’s Lion Farm, El Monte, Calif.

About two years ago, Cooper explains, a Hungarian anatomy professor discovered that some human mental disorders responded favorably to repeated injections of a drug called metrazol. After an initial shock to the nervous system, complete cures frequently resulted. Dr. C. C. Speidel, professor of anatomy at the University of Virginia, recently learned how such cures take place. Treating tadpoles under the microscope, he found that metrazol attacked certain nerve endings and junctions in the brain, so that they literally disappeared. New-ones soon grew in their places, and the sick brain became well once more. It was like breaking a poor telephone connection, and substituting a good one.
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FUR PAINTING by M. J. Laroche of Sir Anthony Eden is believed to be first portrait made from wild animal pelts.

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Amazing Snapshots of Animals

Bring Fame to Desert Photographer

IN A desert shack that cost less than fifty cents to build, Fred V. Sampson, of Barstow, Calif., has found not only contentment but a curious road to fame. Three years ago, he left his job as a commercial artist in Los Angeles and built the low, one-room hut on the edge of the Mohave Desert. Three wails are made of mud and stones, the fourth is formed of the gold-bearing rock of a steep hillside. Here, Sampson spends his days doing what he wants most to do, making friends with curious creatures of the desert and snapping pictures of the animals in action. These photographs—some of the most remarkable wildlife pictures ever made—are attracting wide attention.
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Walking Cage Protects Lion-Farm Guards

It looks as though the lion were the keeper, and the man the caged animal, in the photograph above, but the scene was really snapped on the world’s only commercial lion farm, at El Monte, Calif., to picture the mobile cage designed to protect trainers who may have to track down and kill any untamable beast that escapes from the confines of its pen. The floorless, three-wheeled cage has heavy wire protective netting mounted over a strong wood frame, with a gun slot to permit firing in any direction.

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Bifocals Blackout Bulls. Farmers know a bull won’t charge when he can’t see. The Masbruch halter above, produced by the Russell Mfg. Co., Platteville, Wis., lets a bull walk and graze, but when he lowers his head to charge, his vision is blocked.

Horse Specs. Now come goggles to protect the eyes of race horses from mud clots and dust kicked up by their running mates. The specs are made by setting two Plexiglas bubbles into a regular set of blinkers. Showing off a pair, above, is Royal Hustle, first thoroughbred to wear them.

Kindly Weaner. Consisting of metal tabs that close over a calf’s mouth when it raises its head to nurse, the Shur-Way weaner, left, prevents injury to the mother cow and breaks the calf of its habit without punishment. Yet in no other way does it curb the calf’s freedom or keep it from feeding.

Rump Strap for Dairy Cow Stops Switching of Tail
Even though the barn is thoroughly sprayed twice daily to eliminate flies, dairy cows accustomed to switching their tails during the day in order to keep off the pests frequently continue this habit during milking. To prevent it, one dairyman attaches a loop of rope or webbing to the milking-machine strap and places the loop in the position pictured to keep “Bossy’s” switching tail under control.

Mine Detector Diagnoses Cows
The man in the white coat above doesn’t think that Bossy has a Tellermine in her cud, but he is checking to see if she’s munched a nail, screw, or bit of barbed wire. Because cows sometimes eat metal objects that cause sickness, British vets use mine detectors along with their stethoscopes. Other uses for surplus detectors are to locate metal embedded in logs that might shatter saw blades, and to spot the hairpins that women workers tend to shed into food-package assembly lines.

ELECTROCUTING WHALES
BIRGER HOLM-HANSEN, a Norwegian engineer, has invented a device for the instantaneous electrocution of whales. It consists of a small but powerful generator which is carried in the whaleboat, and a flexible, insulated line conveying a current of high voltage to the harpoon. At the in-slant the harpoon hits the whale the current is thrown on and the electric charge shot into the monster. Read the rest of this entry »

How To Gather Fleas from a Grizzly Bear

How to get fleas from a grizzly bear might puzzle a less resourceful man than Walt Sutter of Tacoma, Wash. From a radio program he learned that a wealthy Englishwoman was in the market for grizzly-bear fleas, to complete a collection taken from various wild animals. So he went to a zoo with a long-nozzled vacuum cleaner, and soon the coveted specimens were in the bag, ready for a purchaser.

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Guinea Pigs Test New Beauty Aids

GUINEA PIGS are partly responsible for the beauty of many of the glamorous faces that flash across the screen of your neighborhood movie theater. Tests with these patient little rodents have even saved the film careers of actors and actresses whose skin reacted unfavorably to ordinary studio make-up. Now applied to the manufacture of cosmetics for the general public, similar tests are guarding the beauty and health of millions.
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Electric Chicken Plucker
Lay a scalded chicken or turkey against the whirling 4-1/2-inch rubber fingers of this electric machine, and in a jiffy the bird will be stripped of feathers. Half a minute per chicken is average. Machine is made by Mercury Company, Los Angeles, Calif.

This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Beaver paratroopers!

Airborne Beavers Fight Floods
OUT in Idaho, the Department of Fish and Game is teaching eager beavers to yell “Geronimo!” These busy little creatures are being dropped by parachute to terrain where they can do their bit in the conservation battle.
Idaho state caretakers trap unwanted beavers which may be a nuisance in certain areas, round them up at central points and pack them in pairs in specially constructed wooden crates. After they are dropped, the boxes remain closed as long as there’s some tension on the parachute shrouds but pull open as soon as the chute collapses on the ground. Then, out crawl Mama and Papa beaver, ready to start work.
After they’re settled, the 40-pound, web-footed rodents multiply and become outpost agents of flood control and soil conservation. Fur supervisor John Smith reports that in carefully observed early operations,
the beavers headed straight for water and started building a new dam within a couple of days.
However, one problem still remains to be solved—a question of ethics more than conservation. Are these eager beavers bona fide members of the Caterpillar Club?