Capture

[Music] [Music] morning [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Music] hi I'm Bill Wilson I'll be back in just a moment with Arthur Jones and another exciting Adventure on capture my week is never complete without a new adventure of capture with Arthur Jones and I'm sure you look forward to it just as I do and Arthur has promised us a great new adventure this week Arthur where are we going bill in the last half of last week's episode as you know we had moved to Surinam or Dutch Guana in the North Western portion of South America actually more the north central portion of South America and this week we take you back to Surinam for a completely different type of episode on this series now on this particular trip we were looking for and did encounter and capture an extremely large number of adult spectacled C among other very interesting Wildlife well that sounds like one we won't want to miss let's join Arthur Jones right now on [Music] caption our business at this time Bill in Surinam or Dutch Iana as it's more commonly called here in this country actually was a search for an area where we could locate capture and remove a large number of adult spectacle Cam and a type of crocodilian but while researching the area looking for a good spot to catch the C during the first few days we also had a number of interesting encounters with other types of local Wildlife now one of the Indian boys and when I say Indian I mean a person descended from people coming from India rather than an American Indian and Liza simultaneously encountered a couple of local types of snakes the Indian boy was involved at this time with a rather large adult redtail South American Boy constrictor and Liza was involved simultaneously with a medium-sized specimen of of rather Yellow Tail to crebo the South American indigo snake now the crebo of course is harmless as is the boa and although the boa has bigger teeth more of them and a bigger mouth the Creo actually will give a much worse bite now on this particular occasion Roy was more or less overseeing the project here actually at that point I think he was more concerned with trying to assist elizza and the Indian boy not being as experienced or not being as capable perhaps as he thought he was with the boa momentarily found himself a slight bit outclassed now one thing I'd like to make very clear about this bill is the fact that this man was attacking the snake the snake was not attacking him under no circumstances except in very rare cases will a snake of any kind attack a human being in this particular instance the snake was merely defending himself the man attacked the snake and the snake did the natural thing and attempted to get loose and in so doing being a constrictor of course and due to the fact that the man was restraining him by the head he had no other choice than to throw coils around the man's neck now this could lead to a person being killed in fact here in this country in Florida within the last 3 or 4 years A friend of mine was killed by a python but it was more or less a similar type of situation he had the snake in a cage he was taking it out the snake became alarmed he attempted to restrain it the snake was too big and he simply couldn't handle it and being him being by himself he was overcome and killed by the snake you may recall uh sometime back we showed you some films of Liza's hands at a time when she was handling monkeys and was bitten by a maret now at the time not having a doctor in attendance she did a little practical surgery on herself here and put about 30 stitches in her finger although these stitches were rather small and five or six properly spaced and properly sized stitches would probably have done the job the end result worked out quite well and the finger has now healed up almost completely without a scar now in this particular area of course we and the natives also collect babies but at the time we were concerned with adults and while the true alligator the black with yellow marking American alligator attains quite a large size on occasion a length of even more than 12 feet the spectacle camon is a much smaller animal their maximum size seems to be about 7 and 1/2 or 8 ft and a typical adult is about 4 and 1/2 or 5 ft at the time we were primarily concerned with the adults wishing to bring about 3 or 400 of these back to this country as a basic supply for the start of an exhibit in Florida now locating cman is no great problem these are found in large numbers in any number of places in South America but locating them under circumstances where they can readily be taken out of a swamp and brought back to this country that's some other problem now the advantage in this section of Surinam was that we were staying at this time on a large Plantation operated by a company from Holland where they are producing rice in tremendous quantity by the way lies father is operating the dusting service and the planting service using aircraft there the farm is operated almost completely by aircraft and we were able because of the connection therefore afforded or thereby afforded we were able to obtain Local transportation to make it possible to remove these animals to this country and as I mentioned in the past many times the whole secret to the animal business of course is transportation there are many plac places in the world that you can go and easily or otherwise capture animals of various kinds but then it becomes completely impossible to remove those animals from the country and bring them back to this country or at least it's impossible to do so with any degree of economic feasibility the advantage in Northwestern Surinam especially because of our connections there was that the animals were not only locally available but they were rather readily located close to suitable Transportation now one of the people viewing this film the first time it was ever edited remarked that we were harassing the animals at this point and this of course is a natural misunderstanding we were not harassing the animals we were attempting to get them into a position to make it possible to lay hands on them now all types of crocodilians are extremely fast moving and this is especially so of mediumsized specimens and the camman falls in a range of size among crocodilians it makes him one of the most difficult to lay hands upon although he is found in such numbers that he's rather easily locatable and therefore they are captured in larger numbers than any other type of crocodilian nevertheless once you locate him he's one of the most difficult types to actually lay hands on the problem here of course that Roy was having was attempting to get the animal to look in the other direction so that he could reach down and grasp him by the back of the neck and the use of the Stick Of course if you'll notice very carefully as he and the native boys assisting him here we doing the use of the stick is an attempt to get the cman to turn and look in the opposite direction long enough that he can pounce upon him and grab him by the back of the neck an animal of this size is not difficult to handle if you're able to get a hold of him but reaching down with your bare hands and grabbing him is a good way to lose a hand eventually having succeeded with their own of course there were two of the Native boys involved in the actual catch and several others standing by ready to give assistance and once they had succeeded in sacking their own First Catch then one of the boys came over and momentarily detracted the camman that Roy was working with for a length of time sufficient to make it possible for him to grab the animal while its attention was in another direction as I mentioned a moment ago once you lay hands on them it's rather easy to Hound one of the interesting things by the way that turned up in this particular hunt was the fact that a great number of these cmen had regenerated Tails any number of different types of reptiles especially lizards have the ability to grow back or to regenerate a portion of their tail if it's broken off and although it is not commonly known even some of the crocodilians have this ability now they do not have this ability to the degree that the lizards or certain other types of reptiles do c certain of your reptiles uh certain of the lizards I should say can break their tail off and almost completely regrow a new tail there will be a difference in color there will be a difference in consistency of the skin and of the scales but for all practical purposes they will regrow about 60 to 80% of the original tail and do so efficiently enough that the average person looking at the tail will not even be aware that it has ever been broken off and regrown now it is not commonly known but certain Ty types of crocodilians have this ability as well or perhaps I should say all crocodilians have this ability and one of the unusual things about the cam from this particular section was the fact that a great number in fact practically all of the adults that we captured had regenerated tails in the past in the course of handling some few thousand alligators I have seen only about three with regenerated tails and yet more than 50% of the adult cmen that we caught in this particular section had lost part of their tail which is common most crocodilians do not attain adulthood with all of their tail they lose part of it before they grow up but most cases they lose the end of the tail it heals over and they have a Stumpy or a short tail the unusual thing about these particular members was the fact that they had regrown the tail in a high percentage of cases now one of the specimens that we caught here had lost a leg and apparently only very recently this particular specimen by the way was released he was put back into a sack momentarily and a few hours later Taken back and released into the swamp although he would recover he was not a useful specimen as far as we were concerned now upon the day that we encountered this Bo here rather that the native encountered him and became involved with him we brought him back to the little air strip that's being used as the operations headquarters for the dusting and the planting of the crops the rice that's grown on this particular Plantation and Roy dumped the boa out in order to look him over a little better here incidentally this was one of the largest boas that I have ever encountered anywhere in Latin America although the great majority of these boys were not willing to lay hands on a snake most of them were not afraid of the C and the success of this operation depended in a great to a great extent upon the cooperation that we received from [Music] it I the first half of capture was just great this week and I can't wait till the second half and I know you can't either we'll be back in just a moment with Arthur Jones and more of capture well after seeing the first portion of the program today I'm sure you're looking forward just as I am to the second half and Arthur you promis us an exciting conclusion where are we going in the second half of this week's film in Surinam Bill we take you into another part of the country into the northeastern section near the village of Albina and I believe that on this trip we made films of what are probably the most unusual native people or perhaps I should call them semi native people now living anywhere on the South American continent the bush Negroes they are the more or less uh remnants or survivors of slaves that were brought into this area of the world several hundred years ago and upon being liberated they went back into the bush and reverted completely to a wild tribal African life and to this day they live exactly as they did hundreds or perhaps even thousands of years in the past I think that's wonderful and I'm sure it will be just great let's join Arthur Jones again on [Music] capture once our project and catching and housebreaking more or less the in the area of wagan suram was well underway the menion bill we were interested in obtaining several hundred of these adults from which we would select anywhere between 150 and 300 to be brought to this country to sell in Florida and once this project was well underway then we set out to more or less look over the rest of the country from Paramaribo east west and south the idea being to discover other types of animals that could be economically feasibly removed from other sections of the country now one of the advantages in the country of Surinam or Dutch Gana is the fact that most of the transportation there is either by boat or by airplane they do have an unusually large number of usable air strips scattered pretty well all over the country this is due to the fact that the roads in the country because of the rainy season and the more or less consistency of the soil and the resulting mud that makes it almost impossible to drive during the rainy season this by the way was a dry season but in the rainy season the roads are so bad that it's almost impossible to move around on land and therefore the only way to get around is by airplane or by boat well in our case this is a great Advantage because it has resulted in a large number of airports being established in areas that otherwise probably wouldn't have airports now North or rather south of the little town of Alina on the northeastern Corner near the coast and along the river separating Dutch Guana from French Guana we visited the village of a bush negro tribe these are people that originally were brought over from Africa some few hundred years ago as slaves then were liberated and immediately went back to their native life exactly as they lived it in Africa a period of centuries ago these people are completely primitive in every word in fact it's difficult today to find people living in Africa under the conditions as primitive as those practiced by the South American Bush Negroes and upon this occasion we were fortunate enough to be able to film for the first time to my knowledge for television or for any other reason for that matter a ceremony practiced by these people called the fire dance now some of these Customs have come over from Africa and some have been developed in South America among the bush Negroes living here today and frankly I'm not familiar enough with their history to tell you whether or not this practice is demonstrated here in a moment is a carryover from Africa or if it is something learned by The American or by the bush Negroes from the American Indians living in the same region incidentally this man at the moment is eating a glass drinking glass and when I say eating he is not swallowing it but he will take a glass a beer bottle or any reasonably thin and fairly easily broken piece of glass bite it off and chew it up and then grind the pieces down almost to the consistency of sand in his mouth and then spit these out into his hand and apparently without any damage you'll notice this semi closeup of his tongue here there's no blood at all evident in his hand the real purpose of this is frankly Beyond me but the fire dance is a demonstration probably for the purpose of controlling other members of the tribe as is usually the case for most of these primitive ceremonies they use not only the eating of glass and the applying of hot swords to the base of their feet but the real height of the fire dance of course is just exactly that dancing into and among and on hot Cals now by the way if you think that there is any trick involved in this I would be more than glad to have you try to demonstrate it to me but as we were there We examined the people we saw the fire and never having done this and of course I don't want to do it I really have no idea exactly how they're able to do it because the fire is hot the coals are literally glowing red hot they do place them next to their skin and apparently no damage is done I cannot offer an explanation for it obviously there is one but at the time we went rather into great detail here attempting to find a easily explainable answer to the ability these people demonstrate and we encountered nothing that we could satisfactorily explain their ability to withstand damage from [Music] fire this is by the way much more impressive when done at night [Music] n [Music] [Music] one of the largest and certainly the most beautiful animals that I have personally ever encountered in South America was this Jaguar we caught in central Surinam now at a later date we will have a film in this series showing the hunt for and the capture of this particular animal and by the way because of the length of this episode Bill we will not have a promo of next week's show but I do promise that next week's show will be one you will not forget Arthur that was a great climax to a wonderful Adventure on capture this week wasn't it but don't go away in just a few moments we'll be back with Arthur and our Live guest on capture once in a while and I say once in a while because it is once in a great while Arthur brings one of our live guests in that which I will immediately take into my hand and trustingly say I'll hold it I've done it so far I'm satisfied Arthur but they are beautiful specimens but they're oddl looking what are they these are Mexican or Southern Texas actually collored lizards are found from the extreme southern part of the Rio Grande Valley section of Texas from Laredo to Brownsville and then that section and Southward for a couple hundred miles into Mexico these are collected uh in quite large numbers incidentally by Raymond Johnson of Laredo one of our Associates in that section of the country and although this particular type of so-called collared lizard is rather unique the collared lizard in one form or another is found pretty well through throughout the Southwest as a child I collected these in Oklahoma and Northern Texas and or rather I collected the collared lizard of that area which was uh greatly different from these particular ones and at the present time Bill these are being sold in 5 and 10 cent stores and Pet Shops throughout the United States in rather large numbers in fact about 3 or 4,000 a week at the present moment incidentally these are collected in largest numbers in the cold weather time of the year they find these in rather large groups huddled up to get away from the cold when they have a Norther in that section of Texas they go out and in a day's time sometimes a good Hunter can collect two or three hundred of these what what would I feed this lizard if I had him as a pet well if you had that one as a pet which I've already promised you I recall you can feed him meal worms or any type of insect or for that matter small chunks of meat in the wild state of course they feed primarily upon other small animals of course mainly insects that they're able to capture well they are beautiful art and uh very unique and very spiny feeling they are spiny you're run your finger the wrong way up his back there you'll notice that the definely scales are extremely sharp all right our show is running a little long this week so I know we won't have time for the usual preview of next week's Adventure but I know from what you've said we can all look forward to our next appearance of capture [Music] [Music] a n [Music]