Experiments at New York Zoo New York.—Humans may like jazz but animals don't.
This was the conclusion reached by a group of scientists who recently assembled in the Central Park zoo to see what a saxophone and traps would do to the emotions of monkeys, lions, leopards, elephants and other jungle beasts.
A quintet of musicians guaranteed to rag anything from Wagner down was massed in front of the monkey cages for the first laboratory test to determine whether the line "music hath charms to sooth the savage breast" was, after all, only poetic licence.
According to a corps of unscientific reporters who journeyed to the zoo with scientists from Columbia University, American Museum of Natural History and New York Zoological Park, the monkeys registered emotion all right—but of a rather savage kind.
Then the latest jazz was banged into the ears of lions and their mates. All hoped to their feet, with fur bristling.
As for Mrs. Murphy. hippopota-~ mus, she merely wrecked the experiment by diving into her tank and shutting out the racket. The elephants seemed to tremble with rage.
Only one beast was found that apparently was able to endure. if not enjoy. jazz. That was Rag heeta, the leopardess. But when a hymn was played. she started a six-day race around her cage, spit~ ting sparks. The scientists, however, put a question mark after Ragheeta's test, for attention was called to the fact that, at the moment, a keeper whom she chose to relish only as a potential meal, had just passed her cage.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.