Lord Moyne’s Expedition Cruise of 1935-36: Reg Lanworn of London Zoo was on board

Reg Lanworn

By contrast with Lord Moyne’s expedition cruise of 1934-35 on board his large motor vessel, Rosaura, in which live Tuataras from New Zealand, Komodo Dragons from what was then the Dutch East Indies and Kagus from New Caledonia were brought back to London Zoo, I know who looked after the animals on board during his next expedition in 1935-36. And what’s more as a 16-year old reptile (and amphibian)-mad schoolboy I spoke at length to the man himself.

I found an account by Nick Stanley which focused on the ethnographic aspects of the 1935-36 cruise through south-east Asia to southern New Guinea. Ethnography was another of Moyne’s abiding interests. Those on board Rosaura spent some time in the Asmat region of New Guinea, part of the western half of the island, West Papua, now controlled by Indonesia. Nick Stanley also included information on who accompanied Lord Moyne on his expeditions:

The trip in 1935/6 was more ambitious in scope, with zoological exploration as a further objective, for which amateur zoologists Anthony and Alvi[l]da Chaplin were responsible, assisted by Keeper Reg Lanworn of the reptile house at London Zoo who took Komodo dragons back to London with him.

However, here I think he is mistaken. The Komodo Dragons were collected on the 1934-35 trip, not the 1935-36 one.

This cutting on Keeper Lanworn’s exploits is from Reynolds News, a  now defunct Sunday newspaper owned by the Co-operative Party, of 26 April 1936:

The list of animals received at the Zoo, the gift of course of Lord Moyne, is shown in the Annual Report for 1936: 1 Matschie's Tree Kangaroo, 1 Australian Crane, 7 Keeled Papuan Boas, 7 Fierce Papuan Boas, 5 Common Asiatic Toads, 1 Indian Bull Frog, 3 Greater Indian Rat Snakes, 3 Death Adders, 1 Nicobar Pit Viper, 2 Brown-spottedPit Vipers, 6 Amethystine Pythons, 6 Papuan Cat Snakes, 2 Bocourt's Water Snakes, 2 Broad-headed Water Snakes, 2 Indian Cobras, 1 Indian Python, 1 Moon Snake, 1 Estuarine Crocodile, 1 Parachute Gecko, 1 Peron's House Gecko, 1 Lace Monitor, 4 Helmed Lizards, 4 Fin-tailed Lizards, 8 Indian Monitors, 2 Two-banded Monitors, 5 Great House Geckos, 1 Banded Soft-shelled Terrapin, 4 Ceylon Terrapins, 5 Amboina Box Tortoises, 2 Phayre's Tortoises, 4 Siamese Terrapins, 1 Starred Tortoise, 5 White's Tree Frogs.

The 1935-36 trip was not the first time Reg Lanworn had been sent abroad by the Zoo. On 29 March 1930 he sailed from Liverpool on board the Blue Funnel Line’s passenger/cargo ship Teiresias bound for Singapore. He was aged 22 and travelling first class. 

The China Express and Telegraph of 3 July 1930 reported why had been to Singapore:

ARRIVALS AT THE ZOO

GIFTS FROM SINGAPORE

Keeper Lanworn has returned to London from Singapore in charge of a large collection of mammals, birds and reptiles for the Zoo. Through Messrs. Alfred Holt and Co., the consignment, which included 99 crates and cages, was conveyed freight-free. The collection is due to Mr. A. St. Alban Smith, managing director of the Seletar Plantations, who persuaded friends to make gifts, superintended the purchases from dealers, and himself obtained and presented most of the reptiles.

The largest animals are a pair of tigers and a bear, the former presented by Mr. and Mrs. A. G. Glenister and the latter by Mrs. Glenister and Mrs, E. L. D. Evans, of Ipoh, Perak. Two young orang-utans, four tree-kangaroos, four crowned pigeons, and two young cassowaries are additions which were very much wished for. The assortment of reptiles is a very fine one.

The list of animals in this shipment donated by Alfred St. Alban Smith (1880-1940) takes more than a whole page in the Annual Report for 1930. The reptile collection was indeed a fine one and Smith, a rubber planter in Johore who also sent collections of reptiles to zoos in the USA, was awarded the Society’s silver medal in 1931.

Reg Lanworn, in charge of the 99 crates, had shown that he could be ‘let out’.

Arthur Reginald Lanworn† was born in Kentish Town on 13 March 1908. I do not know when he became a keeper at the Zoo but  most likely on or shortly after his leaving school in 1922 (the school-leaving age was 14). Several tragedies can be found in the records of Lanworn’s life. In 1939 his sister and her boyfriend were found dead in a gas-filled room. Her parents had refused consent to their marriage. Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the famous forensic pathologist reported to the also famous coroner, Bentley Purchase, most recently seen portrayed in the film Operation Mincemeat, who recorded a verdict of suicide while of unsound mind. Reg Lanworn appeared as a witness at the inquest and stated ‘it would have been satisfactory to both parties if they had got married. They were very fond of each other’.

Personal tragedy again struck in 1942. Having married in 1933 and with a daughter, his new-born son and his wife died. He married again in 1948. Then, in 1960, tragedy struck the Reptile House. Workmen returned to the Reptile House after Christmas to continue servicing the artesian well which supplied both the Reptile House and the Aquarium via a pit in the floor. On removing the cover a natural accumulation of carbon dioxide gushed forth. The workmen employed by an outside contractor were immediately overcome and fell into the narrow pit. Two keepers trying to rescue the men were also rendered unconscious; one died immediately, the other eleven months later. The first was Lanworn’s Head Keeper, Frederick Dexter, aged 46, who had worked at the Zoo for 32 years. The other was Anthony Hodgson, 22, only recently returned from National Service. Keepers made heroic efforts to save the men earning commendations from the coroner. Ten employees of the Zoo were recognised by the Royal Humane Society for their prompt and gallant efforts in both the rescue and the attempts at resuscitation.

As he rose through the ranks in the Reptile House, Reg Lanworn often found himself in newspaper reports and on the cinema newsreels. Anything to do with snakes or crocodiles is always good for column inches and Keeper Lanworn being bitten by a newly-hatched python was good a story in the Daily Express as was the Common Boa arriving in cargo as a stowaway at London docks not turning out to be the as reported to the Zoo a feared Fer-de-Lance. Two ’22 ft’ pythons made the newspapers in 1949 when they both grabbed a chicken at feeding time and fought tenaciously. Lanworn, then Head Keeper, and Jack Lester, Curator of Reptiles, pulled at either end of the tangle.

A newspaper report quoted  in an article by Nick Thompson suggests Reg Lanworn was called up to serve in the forces during the Second World War.

London Zoo like most institutions had a strict hierarchy. Keepers were one class and curators and above were the other. In military terms, keepers were private soldiers and non-commissioned officers; curators were the officers. Keepers could make it up the promotion ladder to reach the pinnacle of Overseer, of which London Zoo had around five. They were the sergeant-majors—and they had a uniform to match their status. Keepers had short jackets but overseers had long coats similar to those worn by the guards regiments in winter. When on public duty, keepers wore their uniforms including summer when they must have broiled. I had a long talk one summer with Reg Lanworn who was keen to move out of the Reptile House to stand by the old reptiliary. His uniform in the heat of the Reptile House in summer must have been rather uncomfortable.

I do not know when he was promoted to Overseer of Reptiles but I have found a record showing him in that grade by 1955.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s the Reptile House had the reputation of being a place friendly to amateur herpetologists as I reported HERE. At that time Jack Lester was curator and Margaret Southwick was also on the staff. Margaret married Reg Bloom, then also employed at Regents Park having been an animal collector withJohn Seago in East Africa, in 1953. The newly married Blooms then left for East Africa before returning to UK where he was involved in starting and/or running a  number of zoos. Lester, Lanworn and Southwick were founder or early members of the British Herpetological Society after it was formed in 1947.

 Reg Lanworn retired after more than 40 years at the Zoo in 1968, aged 60. By then he was listed as ‘Herpetologist’. I seem to recall he  was given that title in recognition of his work and the simple fact that at the time he was the only member of the Zoo staff, apart from his own juniors, who knew anything about reptiles after the death of  Jack Lester in 1956. In his new role he must have been sitting on that cusp between ‘keeper’ and ‘curator’. A year earlier he was awarded the Society’s Bronze Medal ‘for outstanding service in the Reptile House’.

On occasion I have come across articles written by Reg Lanworn but did not make a note of them. One turned up recently on eBay. It was on the care of terrapins and seems to have been cut from a Zoo publication, possibly the magazine of the XYZ Club. He was described as the Zoo’s herpetologist so must date from the mid-1960s.

After retirement he wrote a popular book on reptiles and was co-author of a series on animal life in different parts of the world. 

In retirement Reg and his wife moved out of London, to the village of Barton Mills near Mildenhall in Suffolk, and later into Mildenhall. He died on 29 January 2005, aged 96.

Reg Lanworn served in the Reptile House from the regime of Joan Proctor as Curator of Reptiles, through the periods when Burgess Barnett and Jack Lester were in charge to a time in the 1950s and 60s when he effectively ran the whole show. He also witnessed the periodic upheavals that the Zoological Society still brings upon itself, including the unfortunate removal of Burgess Barnett, the Cansdale affair plus of course the untimely death of Jack Lester. He operated during the period when the London Zoo’s Reptile House, despite its many problems that became more apparent over the years, and the reptile collection was in its heyday. I am pleased to have met him  and to recognise the success the Zoo had in taking boys from north London and producing the devoted, highly capable and knowledgable members of staff who stayed at Regents Park until they retired.

BRITISH PATHÉ NEWSREEL  FILMS

Baby Alligators 1949

Snakes 1950

Mrs Olive Parton Dutta (1915-1994) was the wife of Reginald Sirdar Mohammed Dutta (1914-1989), a well-known owner of an aquarium shop on Blandford Street, Marylebone. He wrote a number of books on aquaria and fish keeping.

Cobras 1953

Alligator Scrubbing  1953

In this film Ted Dexter, the Head Keeper killed in 1960 when trying to rescue two workers from the well pit in the Reptile House, is seen working with Reg Lanworn.

*Anthony Freskyn Charles Hamby Chaplin, 3rd Viscount Chaplin (1906-1981) was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1952 to 1955. He was married to Alvilde Bridges (1909–1994) from 1933 until divorce in 1950.

†At birth he was registered as Arthur Reginald but in other official records he is Reginald Arthur.

Cooper A, Ellis M, Guggisberg CAW, Lanworn R. 1968. Animals of the World. Europe. London: Hamlyn.

Lanworn RA 1972. The Book of Reptiles. London: Hamlyn.

Stanley N. 2016. 'Some Friends Came to See Us’: Lord Moyne's 1936 Expedition to the Asmat. London: British Museum ISBN 978 086159 206 7 ISSN 1747 3640.

Wheeler A, Christie D, Cohen E, Jarman C, Lanworn R. 1970. Animals of the World. Europe. London: Hamlyn.

Daily Mirror 4 May 1948

Mrs Churchill and the Komodo Dragon

Komodo Dragon on the island of Rinca
September 2016

The expedition cruise on which Clementine Churchill was a guest of Walter Edward Guinness, Lord Moyne, on board his luxury vessel Rosaura arrived off Komodo on 18 March 1935. The  plans to obtain new specimens of Komodo Dragon for London Zoo have been well documented and I have written about that part of the expedition previously HERE. In brief, Moyne was a council member of the Zoological Society and a trap to use on Komodo was made in the Zoo’s workshop to take to Komodo.

Mrs Churchill wrote to Winston about the time spent there:

This has been an enchanting bewildering & exciting week - I meant to keep this letter in the form of a diary adding to it day by day but failed to do it - In this way I could have made you feel the excitement the suspense the heat the repeated disappointments the fearful smell of the decaying baits - (which of course had always to be approached and watched with the wind blowing towards one). Side by side with all this "big game' 'Boys Own Annual' world is the enchantment of this island which is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen & is perhaps one of the loveliest wildest strangest spots in the world. It is deeply indented with bays and lagoons. It has innumerable paradise beaches - some of the finest sand (there is a pink one of powdered coral) some of wild rocks with coral gardens far lovelier than at Nassau, & accessible. That is if you are not afraid of being observed by a giant polyp or tickled by a sea snake 12 foot long.

Three of the lizards captured were selected to take home. They were around 4 feet long. On board, one disappeared, presumed lost overboard, after the carpenter lightened the lids of their crates by adding a wire-netting panel—which proved to be no great barrier to a dragon on the move.

Rosaura off Cape Brett, New Zealand,

photographed by Lady Vera Broughton.

From Lord Moyne's book

Walkabout: A Journey in the Lands Between the Pacific

and Indian Oceans, Heinemann, 1936

Winston Churchill sent a car and a lorry to Southampton to collect Clementine from Rosaura after she docked on 30 April 1936. Along with her luggage (by now swollen with souvenirs) there was her pet pigeon from Bali (a Zebra Dove possibly) and. I read, a pair of Black Swans for the Chartwell estate, presumably to add to the ones already there. The Black Swans caused Winston considerable anguish as he tried to protect them from the local foxes. Some of her ethnographic souvenirs were later given to the British Museum.

The Society’s Report for 1935 shows that the two lorries sent by the Zoo a day after Rosaura docked brought back with them: 1 Highland's Long-tailed Tree Mouse, 1 Ceylon Pit Viper, 4 Green Pit Vipers, 3 Brown Spotted Pit Vipers, 9 Helmed Lizards, 1 Indian Changeable Lizard, 3 Fan-footed Geckos, 1 Delande's Gecko, 4 Ceylon Terrapins, 5 Blue-rumped Parrots, 2 Tuatara [then spelt Tuatera as was common at the time], 2 Komodo Dragons, 2 Kagus. In zoo asset terms the last three species were the crown jewels.

What has puzzled me since first reading about this trip is: who looked after the animals on the Rosaura? I still do not know but I suspect it was not an ideal arrangement because on the next trip in 1935-36—as we shall see in the next article—there was an expert on board.

Newspaper recorded the problems of housing Komodo Dragons in wartime. The London Evening News reported in July 1941 that the dragons had an egg each for the first time since eggs were rationed. A visitor to the Zoo provided them. In 1944 the glass was blown out of half their cage in the Reptile House. Permission was granted by the Ministry of Works, which controlled the use of building materials, and the Zoo’s own workmen did the repairs. By contrast, repairs to houses damaged on nearby Prince Albert Road had to wait. 

The two—a pair—Komodo Dragons lived until 1946. Accounts differ as to their size when they died: 6 to even 8 or 9 feet according to which newspaper you read, compared with 4 feet on arrival 10 years earlier. The female was recorded of having died from retained necrotic ova, so her size matched her obvious sexual maturity. I wonder if she had access to soft earth in which to lay her eggs?

Soames M. 2002. Clementine Churchill. Revised and updated edition. London: Doubleday.

Stanley N. 2016. 'Some Friends Came to See Us’: Lord Moyne's 1936 Expedition to the Asmat. London: British Museum ISBN 978 086159 206 7 ISSN 1747 3640.

Thompson N. 2022. How London Zoo acquired its second pair of Komodo Dragons. Bartlett Society Journal 30, 19-32.

Mrs Churchill and the Tuatara

Drawing of Tuataras by Mary Edith Durham (1863-1944) for Hans Gadow's volume Amphibia and Reptiles
in the Cambridge Natural History series of 1901

The most likely introduction to the Tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus), that sole living survivor of an ancient reptilian group the Rhynchocephalia, to anybody studying zoology in the last century was by means of its skull. The reason why zoology departments had a tuatara skull was because it exhibits two holes on either side—the diapsid or ‘two arches’ condition—that was used as a key feature in the classification of reptiles. The skull would have to do. The chances of seeing a live tuatara in the wild, or for that matter in a zoo, were remote. Indeed, after searching for them on islands off New Zealand where they are known to occur but without success, I still regard the chances as remote. However, one person who did encounter one in the wild while lost in a forest was Clementine Churchill (1885-1977). Yes, that Mrs Churchill, ‘Clemmie’ wife of Winston.

In a previous article HERE I wrote a little of Lord Moyne, Walter Edward Guinness, (1880-1944) and the expedition cruises with his mistress, Vera Delves-Broughton, and guests on his diesel-powered yacht, Rosaura. In December 1934 the yacht set off for the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Clementine Churchill, then aged 49, was one of the guests. Winston had been invited but had been unable or perhaps less than willing to go for such a long voyage. The aspect of the voyage that has excited most interest is the relationship between Mrs Churchill and another guest, the art dealer Terence Philip. My reading is that Moyne had chosen him carefully. A charming but ‘confirmed bachelor’ Philip seems to have been regarded as a homosexual and therefore safe with lady guests. However, it is well recorded that Mrs Churchill did fall for him on the voyage. That ‘fall’ though appears to have been unreciprocated.

Back to more important, i.e. zoological, matters. Clementine’s biographer who was also her daughter quoted from one of the long and frequent letters she had written to Winston. Rosaura was anchored off a small island and the whole party had gone ashore by dinghy to search for tuataras in the hope of taking some back to London. Clementine loved rock climbing but tired easily. Having climbed the steep cliff and scrambled on hands and knees through thick bush, she was done in and decided to head back. It was then that she realised she was lost. She tried to retrace her steps but failed. Exhausted by scrambling through thick undergrowth, soaked by a passing shower and her shouts for help unheard she spotted, what she called in her letters home to Winston, a ‘lizard:

Suddenly I saw one of the lizards, quite close looking at me with his agate eyes. He was motionless. I sat down near him & we watched each other—Then I started shouting again & thought, Now the lizard will scuttle off but he did not move. They are stone deaf. But my voice did not carry far...—Presently the lizard moved off and left me. Suddenly I heard Walter's voice far away... I called back but I felt he could not hear - Still I felt comforted—Presently I heard a loud crackling of branches & there was the second officer—I almost kissed him. He blew a whistle which was the signal Walter had arranged for whichever found me first. There were about 8 looking for me by now. Presently Walter appeared white with anxiety—I was really lost for only 1 hour, but it felt like much more in that dense enchanted wood—Of course there was no danger really I suppose but I thought of lying there & dying of hunger as far away from you as I can be on this earth.

Only one of the ‘several’ Tuataras captured by the Moyne Expedition made it back to London alive. At London Zoo it survived for only ‘5-6 months’.

Having seen Clementine Churchill in newspapers and on the television I have difficulty in imagining her other than as an old lady and that she had a long and active life before and after she reached that stage in life. And her adventures zoological on Rosaura in 1935 were not over. There was—and is—more to come.

Soames M. 2002. Clementine Churchill. Revised and updated edition. London: Doubleday.

Green-faced Parrotfinch: a colour plate from 1937. The ‘Curious Thing’ and the Shogun Connection

In the days when colour printing was extremely expensive, the Avicultural Society had special appeals for funds to support the appearance in Avicultural Magazine of the occasional colour plate. A well-known bird artist was then commissioned. Although the whole run of the Society’s magazines can be found online, the plates rarely see the light of day. Therefore I decided to show one, now and again, on this site. This is the 23rd in the series.

– – – – – – – – – –

The plate seems to be unsigned and there is no mention of the artist in the text.

The authors of the accompanying text began:

It is, indeed, a curious thing that an entirely new species of bird should have been made known to science through a mass importation of captive specimens, while it had remained undiscovered in its native country, which, at the same time, is one of the best known, ornithologically speaking.

None of the numerous collectors who had visited the Philippine Islands had ever obtained there a Parrot Finch. The first record of such a bird from the Archipelago was by Mr. L. H. Taft, of the Forestry Service, at Los Bagnos, near Manila in 1920. Several young Parrot Finches were found dead near a wire netting fence, against which they had flown. The four specimens sent to Washington for identification were in poor conditions, and Dr. Richmond could only say that they belonged to the genus Erythrura.

No more was heard of these mysterious birds till 1935, when we heard that a large number of Parrot Finches, sent from Manila, were sold in California as "Luzon Finches". One of us acquired some at once in Los Angeles and began to study them. Others were examined in 1936 in the New York Zoological Park. Many American ornithologists had obtained specimens; on the whole, they did badly and most of them died in the bird shops. However, some survived and even nested, as it happened, in Mr. W. J. Sheffler's aviary in Los Angeles in 1936.

At the same time, this bird was noticed by ornithologists in Manila, where they were sold in great numbers in the streets. But they were thought to be either imported birds that had become naturalized, or migrants. Both assumptions sound most improbable.

The close study that we made of dead and live specimens in California made us conclude that it was a new and distinct species of the genus Erythrura, and we described it in the Bulletin of the B.O.C. for January, 1937, under the name of Erythrura viridifacies…There is a specimen now in the London Zoological Gardens, which was kindly presented to us by Dr. R. A. Woods of Los Angeles.

The authors of this article and the one in the Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club were Jean Delacour (1890-1985), the well-known and wealthy ornithologist and aviculturist who had an extensive collection of birds at his estate in France, and Marquess Hachisuka.

Masauji Hachisuka in 1927

Masauji Hachisuka was born in 1903 in Tokyo. In the 1920s and 30s he became a well-known and highly active ornithologist. He arrived in UK in 1919. At Magdalene College, Cambridge, he fell in with local ornithological worthies. He went on expeditions to Iceland and North Africa. Like many aristocrats at Cambridge in that time there is no record that he graduated. In 1927 he travelled through the USA with Jean Delacour while on his way back to Japan. From Japan he made extensive studies in the Philippines. He brought the collection to London which he worked on himself at the Natural History Museum in London and at Tring. A two-volume and then a four-volume series on the birds (with mention of mammals) of the Philippines appeared in 1929-30 and 1931-35 respectively. He travelled to many other places, writing extensively on living and extinct birds. After his father’s death in 1932 he was due to return home to head the family. However, I read that he fell ill in Los Angeles causing him to stayed in California until late 1937. While in California he met his Japanese wife-to-be and they married in Japan in 1939 where he continued his interests ornithological.

I do not now how Hachisuka fared as an anglophile in the Second World War. I read that he lost much of his fortune. However, he had a house built and kept birds, mainly pheasants. He died in 1953, aged 50. His now-rare book on the Dodo and the birds of the Mascarenes was published posthumously. Delacour wrote of his experiences of, and with, Hachisuka in his autobiography ‘The Living Air’ published in 1966.

In their paper in Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club containing a description of the new species, Hachisuka and Delacour had an expanded version of the discovery:

Mr. E. H. Taylor, a resident of Los Baños, Laguna Province, a town not greatly distant from Manila, found in his garden on June 26, 1920, ten Parrot-Finches which had flown into the tennis-court wire-netting with suicidal results. A few of these species came into the hands of [Richard Crittenden] McGregor*, but could not be identified. Thereafter, for fifteen years, the bird escaped observation, and nothing further was known about it until 1935, when Dr. Canuto Manuel noticed venders in Manila peddling great numbers of them from April to July. MeGregor and Manuel, in the Philippine Journal of Science, lix. no. 3, March 1936, p. 325, identify them erroneously as Erythrura trichroa, and thought the birds were either of a migratory or of an introduced origin.

Early in 1936 several hundreds of these unidentified Erythrura were imported from Manila to San Francisco.

It is, however, evident from the very distinct characters of the birds that they represent an entirely new species which had so far been overlooked owing to its habitat.

Nearly 90 years on, the Green-faced Parrotfinch is said to be an irruptive, nomadic species, visiting bamboos even in the lowlands from its normal altitude of over 1,000 metres to eat the seeds. During the sporadic flowering of bamboo flocks of up to a hundred or a thousand birds (the number varies by source) have been seen. The range now appears to include Cebu and Mindoro in addition to its stronghold of Luzon.

And the Shogun connection? Masauji Hachisuka was the nephew of Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837-1915), the 15th and last shogun. Supporters of the imperial court forced the overthrow of the shogunate, the resignation of Hachisuka’s uncle and the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

Jean Delacour and his mother in 1950

*1871-1936. McGregor was employed in the Philippines as a collector and also wrote widely on the birds of the island. Born to an Australian father and an American mother in Australia, mother and son moved to the USA.

NOTE: An account of Japan’s aristocratic zoologists of which Masauji Hachisuka was one has appeared in a book I have not read: Culver, AA. 2022, Japan's empire of birds: aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and transwar ornithology. London & New York: Bloomsbury.

Delacour J. 1966. The Living Air. London: Country Life

Hachisuka M, Delacour J. 1937. Erythrura viridifacies sp. nov. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club 57, 66-67.

Delacour J, Hachisuka M. 1937. The Green-faced Parrot-finch or Luzon Finch (Erythrura viridifacies). Avicultural Magazine 5th series 2, 301-302.

General Hardwicke’s Dabb Lizard. Matching food intake for its own requirements to supply in a seasonally variable desert

General Hardwicke’s Dabb Lizard (Saara hardwickii) has recently contributed significantly to understanding of how dietary intake and retention of key nutrients change according to the needs of an animal at a particular time and according to the availability of food of different composition.

The whole approach is that pioneered by Steve Simpson and David Raubenheimer first at Oxford and more recently in Sydney: what are animals attempting to achieve when they eat and how they cope with food that differs significantly in composition from that required for survival, growth and reproduction? For example, when animals need protein for growth but have available only a foodstuff high in carbohydrate but low in protein they overeat in order to obtain the protein they need.

David Raubenheimer has extended these elegant studies into looking at what drives food intake in animals in their natural environment, Orang-utans being one example. This time he has teamed up with Indian and Israeli scientists to see how General Hardwicke’s Dabb Lizard manages its diet and digestion during its reproductive cycle and the changing seasons in the Thar desert of northwestern India.

I should say at this stage that the authors of the paper do not call this lizard General Hardwicke’s Dabb Lizard. The common name I have used is that which the Zoological Society of London used consistently in its lists and cage labels in the now closed old Reptile House. The present authors use Indian Spiny-tailed Lizards, Saara hardwickii. Such lizards have gone by a variety of names: mastigures, dabbs, dabs, dhubs, spinytails, spiny-tailed agamas, spiny-tailed lizards or thorny-tailed lizards. I have taken that list from an excellent article on what he (and I) call mastigures by Darren Naish on his Tetrapod Zoology blog  (HERE). I will not cover the same ground other than to point out the salient feature: they are mainly herbivorous. Articles on mastigures also state they will sometimes take insects. As we shall see there is much more to the story than that.

The Thar desert has extremes of temperature. In April to June it is very hot and arid; temperatures may reach 51°C. By contrast, the temperature can drop to 0°C in November to February. The monsoon brings sporadic rain during July and August. The few species of plant that live on the sandy plain therefore vary in absolute and relative abundance throughout the year.

From Joshi et al 2026  - see below

The research, done between the months of April and October, involved intense observation of the lizards in the field over long periods, coupled with measurements and simple analyses. It does not get sidetracked into the over-molecular and over-modelling approaches of too much modern biological research. In essence they observed what lizards ate, estimated how much of what plant or animal was eaten, analysed the food material and calculated the intake of key components of the diet. To that end—and here is the hard work—they counted the number of bites taken from each plant species each day and also counted the number of insects consumed. Assuming bite size was pretty constant, they calculated how much of what was eaten each day.

The contribution of the four main plants species that the lizards eat varied with season but not according to how abundant each plant was at the time. In other words food preferences changed with season. One example is that one food plant species constituted about 55% of the available biomass in April and 40 of the diet. In October that plant had fallen to around 40% of available biomass but then constituted nearly 80% of the diet.

The amounts of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in the foodstuffs were used as proxies for carbohydrate and protein respectively. The total intakes of C and N varied with season as did the ingested C:N ratio. Collectively the analyses showed that in June the consumption of N was at its highest at the time increased demand for protein would be expected, i.e. the breeding season. The increase in N intake in June was accounted for by the consumption of insects (a surprise it seems for the authors who had expected that the lizards to be virtually completely herbivorous). In contrast to June, the lizards during October were eating and retaining more C as would be expected from an animal building up body fat reserves before hibernation. Incidentally, it must be those fat reserves which have made mastigures an important source of human food in parts of the world where they occur.

What I found particularly interesting is that the lizards showed not only differences in dietary preferences with changing season but also in differences in the retention of ingested nutrients. That knowledge was obtained by collecting faecal pellets dropped by the animals being observed. In June faecal matter contained less C and N than at other times of year while the shift in the faecal C:N ratio suggested N was being retained to a greater extent than carbohydrate. In October that was reversed: faecal N was at its highest while C was being retained.

The changes in faecal excretion are difficult to interpret in terms of physiological mechanisms since the faecal matter of reptiles and birds is not just faeces, i.e. material leaving the intestinal tract. It is mixed with material coming from the kidneys and therefore contains urates, the products of nitrogenous excretion. In studies like these we do not know if the nitrogen is that unabsorbed by the intestine or that absorbed but with any excess metabolised to supply energy with the waste product exported by the kidneys. I suspect that what the authors recorded were changes in the latter not the former. With carbon it seems more likely that the true faecal route is involved. If, for example, faecal carbon decreases it would seem either that carbohydrates are not being fully digested or that there is some physiological control on the amount absorbed by the intestine.

In herbivorous lizards as in herbivorous mammals it is generally thought, with some supporting evidence in some species, that intestinal flora (i.e. the grossly over-hyped microbiome) are responsible for breaking down the complex carbohydrates into simple molecules that can be absorbed. Any future research needs to investigate this aspect. The authors point out the possibility that the quantity of digestive enzymes released into the alimentary canal may also play a part in determining what is absorbed. Such questions of whether, for example, the intestine absorbs virtually all of the final products of digestion or whether there is, under particular circumstances like oversupply, control of the amount absorbed is of wide relevance, not least in terms of what is happening in human obesity.

It is also worth pointing out that these studies were done on adult lizards. Do the growing young depend on the relatively low nitrogen supply from plants or do they eat insects until they reach adult size? Similarly, do females which have to build protein-rich eggs, eat more insects during the breeding season than males?

As always with good research, more and more questions while answering others.

Joshi M, A Tatu A, Hawlena D, Raubenheimer D,  Thaker M. 2026. Desert lizards modulate nutritional responses to match seasonal biological needs. Royal Society Open Science 13: 251690 doi.org/10.1098/rsos.251690

Christmas Eve in Hong Kong: A Common or Oriental Rat Snake

AJP was walking on Lamma Island on the morning of Christmas Eve. In a semi-abandoned village he spotted this rat snake on a patio. He estimated it was a good 1.4 metres in length.

These snakes will eat any land vertebrate they can catch. They are constructors but only applying sufficient coils, contraction or body-weight to kill their prey. In other words they do not go all in such that the whole body engulfs the animal in their mouth as in some other snakes They are powerful snakes and object mightily being caught by biting, thrashing and emptying the contents of its alimentary canal on the captor.

They are said to be diurnal. One of this species lived beneath our flats in the University of Hong Kong in 1965-66. We saw it occasionally sunning itself but we did not tell anybody lest the gardeners were told to kill it.

Our most memorable sighting was in Sri Lanka. One was high on a tree being mobbed by Rose-ringed Parakeets. They nipped its tail as it retreated to the ground.

A common snake throughout south and south-east Asia, this species was known as Ptyas mucosus from the mid-1800s. It had  been named as Coluber mucosus by Linnaeus in 1758. Then in 2004 two people published a paper saying that since Ptyas is of the feminine gender, the specific name must be changed according to the ICZN rules to the feminine, i.e. mucosa. And mucosa is now what you see, creating even more confusion for indexing and searching, for scientists in other disciplines and for anybody interested in natural history. This is the sort of trivial nonsense that confuses rather than clarifies and gives taxonomy and its practitioners such a bad name in the mainline biological sciences. 

Back to Christmas Eve in Hong Kong. a sunlit patio must be an attractive spot for a snake to warm up on a chilly morning.

The Shining Sunbeam—a hummingbird of the Colombian Andes

 

This Shining Sunbeam hummingbird shows why its name is appropriate. The iridescence from those feathers on its back have to be seen to be believed. We were at Hacienda El Bosque, a popular birding lodge at an altitude 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) almost at the highest point of a pass over the Cordillera Central of the northern Andes. There are feeders to attract all sorts of birds and this hummingbird is just one example. It is difficult to imagine the whole lodge and its series of bird arenas was built as diversification by the owners from being reliant on dairy farming (now moving over to beef).

The Shining Sunbeam (Aglaeactis cupripennis) is a montane species. It occurs at altitudes between approximately 6,000 and 14,000 feet or 2,500 to 4,300 metres along the Andes from Colombia, through Ecuador to Peru.

A seemingly monotonously coloured hummingbird in flight it only displays its colours when its back is facing the observer. But even then I saw occasions when one of them was sitting on a twig without the feathers on the back being raised. I have found no reference as to whether this incredible display can be turned on and off by altering the angle of the feathers. The direction of the sun of course affects the iridescent colours that are seen. The sexes are alike.

Very defensive of their food source they are constantly seeing off other hummingbirds but yielding to larger species.

What a bird! — was heard more than once.