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The Washington Post: Sunday, April 9, 1939
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Dr. Mann, Off to South American, Seeks New Animals for the Zoo
[[image: top left of page. Photograph of a container with peanuts. A right hand in the photo is holding a cup/glass filled with the peanuts.]]
The lowly peanut, for which bears sit up and beg 
and the elephants solicit with waving trunks, is the 
key to fun at the zoo. Director William M Mann 
and Mrs. Mann (right) are now en route to South 
America to collect more goober-consumers, which 
is good news for enthusiastic visitors like the boys
shown below watching the antics of the hybrid
bear cubs. 
[[image: Photograph of 6 young boys at a curved fence looking into a cage with iron bars. One boy is pointing to something inside the cage.]]
[[image: top right of page. Photograph of Dr. and Mrs. Mann walking arm and arm. He is to the left of the image and has his head turned towards her. She is smiling. Both are wearing hats. He is wearing a long coat and she is wearing a jacket with a white collar.]]
[[image: middle right of page. Photograph of a rhinoceros behind iron bars.]]
[[image: bottom of page. Photograph of rhinoceros at bottom left with mouth open, displaying teeth.  To the right is a seated man in coveralls and sailor's cap.  His right hand is placed on the top of the animals mouth and he is looking directly at the rhino.]]
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He Takes 38 Head
Along--as Barter Bait
Director Crates Up Excess Specimens
And Will Swap Them, He Hopes, for
Beasts the Park Does Not Have
By Gerald. G. Gross.
Dr. William M. Mann, director of National Zoological Park, is usually likened to Noah because he never gets off a boat without a herd of animals following in his wake. Now he's at sea again, bound for South America, but just for variety let's go beyond Noah and consider Adam.
If Mann had been Adam, the world might have been spared much anguish and travail. It is a fairly safe gamble that the breezy little chain-cigarette smoker would have swapped off the serpent for, say, a harmless Japanese deer long before the evil reptile would have had an opportunity to beguile Eve.
Washington's Zoo has reached its transcendent position as the Capital's greatest recreational-educational center and one of the world's best and largest animal collections largely because its chief for the last 14 years is a horse trader at heart, if a scientist in mind. The fact that more than 3,000,000 people visit the Zoo each year is, in part, a tribute to Dr. Mann's predilection for making smart swaps.
Granted favorable weather, 200,000 men, women and children of all colors, sizes and State affiliations will attend Washington's continuous animal fair over the present Easter week-end. No other public attraction in this city can begin to compete with that figure. These people don't go out to the park because there is nowhere else to go. They know that Mannville can always be depended upon for a good show.
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Right now the American Republic liner Uruguay is about 36 hours out of New York, bound for Buenos Aires, with Dr. and Mrs. Mann on deck and 38 head of animals--barter bait--in the hold. All of these beasts are excess specimens which could be spared easily: civet cats, emperor geese, a binterong, Texas red wolves, bison, turtles, lizards, prairie dogs and a couple of bald eagles.
In their stead, you may be sure, National Zoological Park will receive a smart portion of South American animals obtained by swap from zoos in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Perhaps the Zoo director will even swing a deal or two out in the field, after he sets up the expedition's animal-collecting headquarters. It happened more than once when the Manns were in the East Indies two years ago and it will happen gain.
How the Trader
Goes About It
For example, a native will approach the camp bearing a basket which is tightly closed. Shy at first, he soon thaws out after being informed by a guide that he may look about him all he pleases. Presently his attention is attracted to a cunning little prairie dog which is hopping around in its cage. Ah, that's what he'll take for what's in the basket.
The deal was made. A prairie dog from Texas for a baby bushmaster, one of the deadliest of all snakes.  Dr. Mann realizes that the bushmaster is next to impossible to keep in captivity because it usually refuses to feed, but he'll take a chance. And so the hypothetical native trots off happily with his hypothetical prairie dog.
The swaps with other zoos will be on a larger scale. Perhaps the pair of bald eagles for a pair of vicunas. Or four turtles, the binterong and a monitor lizard for a pair of black-necked swans.
Bongo Is
Downright Clever
All this is pure conjecture, of course. Dr. Mann never discusses deals before they are made. In fact, he is silent until the exchange animals are safely quartered here. Anything might happen to the 38 specimens traveling with him before they reach their destination. Beasts get seasick, too! Similarly, there is no assurance that the creatures he picks up below the Equator will survive long enough to be introduced to Washington until they actually arrive.
Before he left, Dr. Mann declined to say what he would bring back, as was to be expected. Under a withering cross-examination, however, he was forced to admit that he would like to return with at least one vicuna, to round out the Zoo's collection of "South American camels," and a pair of handsome black-necked swans whose native habitat is southern Argentina and Patagonia.
There is more than a even chance that when the ivory hunter of N.Z.P. comes home about the middle of June his reception committee in the pachyderm house will include a new hippopotamus. If so, credit another Mann swap.
The Zoo now has four hippopotami, a pair of pygmies and their young one, and the great Bongo, a full-sized 6,000-pound specimen which arrived here for exhibition just 25 years ago last Friday when it was 3 years old and weighed a mere 895. For the last four or five years Bongo has been a widower, his mate having died after giving birth. The hippo has been very lonesome, indeed.
You Never Know
What Comes Back
A week or so ago the representative of a certain circus (not Ringling-Barnum) visited Washington. He and Dr. Mann are reported to have discussed a deal under which the Zoo would swap Gumdrop, the baby pigmy hippo, for Pinky, a buxom female hippo which would make Bongo an ideal wife. The circus isn't tired of her; it's simply that she eats so much.
Bongo, incidentally, is far from being as stupid as he appears. Few quadrupeds look as empty-headed as a hippopotamus but, take it from Bongo's keepers, this particular specimen is downright clever.
"If you don't believe it," said E. L. Johnson, one of the Keepers in the pachyderm house, 'Just watch."
Whereupon he called the big brute's name and Bongo, then on the far side of the tank, turned about in the water and swam up to Johnson.
"Open up," the keeper commanded.
Bongo's tremendous head divided in the front, exposing a cavernous mouth whose tongue quivered expectantly.
"He likes to be petted," said Johnson, massaging his pet's gums and tapping the roof of the oral cavity. "You know, Bongo is a sensitive fellow. For one thing, he is camera shy. He will eat peanuts that are thrown into his mouth but he is too proud to bob for them in the water."
An Ambassador
Of Good Will
Dr. Mann laughed at talk about his being a "goodwill ambassador" to South America, a continent which seems to be the rope of contention in a tug of war between fascism and democracy, and yet such a compliment is not altogether unjustified. While he will deal with officials of zoos, not governments, the director's infectious grin and his fair dealing are bound to make a favorable impression on the Argentines. In this connection, it might be mentioned that many of the specimens in Washington's Zoo were outright gifts by persons, ranging from maharajahs to local school children, whose generosity was drawn out by the Mann personality.
Anyone who entertains more than a fleeting interest in National Zoological Park might profit by reading the transcript of Dr. Mann's remarks to the House subcommittee on District appropriations which was published last Thursday. Called to justify his estimates in the 1940 supply bill, the director pointed out the following salient bits of information:
The present expedition to South American, the one-man expedition to India by Malcolm Davis, keeper of the birdhouse to bring back a rhinoceros, and three trips made to New York by Dr. Mann since last summer--all are being financed by a $2,000 travel appropriation.
The Zoo plant consists of 128 animal houses, shelters and service buildings spread out over 175 acres of land in Rock Creek Park.
Last year 1,374 separate parties of school children from 23 States and the District visited the Zoo as part of their instruction.
During the fiscal year ended June 30, 1938, 1,497 specimens were added to the collections, 879 of which resulted from the National Geographic Society-Smithsonian Institution Expedition.
The feed bill is $35,000 a year which, distributed over a total population of 2,750, means less than $13 per capita.
"We are a nation museum of living animals," Dr. Mann told the subcommittee. "Out sister institution is the United States National Museum. All animals that die in our Zoo that have any value scientifically are sent to the National Museum.
"Some things we contribute to research students. For instance, right now we are sending a professor out in the Middle West a lot of samples of animal dung. He is studying protozoa from types of animal dung. We sometimes send animal eyes to research men; but most animals of any technical value go to the National Museum. Our facilities are used by many research workers; some along very useful lines."
Although Dr. Mann has visited South America before, this will be his first trip to the Argentine. He said he expects to be from one month to six weeks in the field. On the voyage down there will be short stops in Rio de Janeiro, Santos and Montevideo before disembarkation in Buenos Aires, and in each of these cities he hopes to swing animal deals of one kind or another.  
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