How Diana climbed the ratings at the zoo

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Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998
8
climb is only half that managed by the royal
python — and indeed only on a par with the
performance of the pallid gerbil.
Claire Carvell
143 Bouverie Avenue South, Salisbury SP2 8EB, UK
Nicholas F. J. Inglis
Dept of Mathematics, Sultan Qaboos University, PO
Box 36, Al-Khod, Post Code 123, Sultanate of Oman
Georgina M. Mace
Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London,
Regent’s Park, London NW1 4RY, UK
Andy Purvis
Department of Biology, Imperial College,
Silwood Park, Ascot SL5 7PY, UK
the top five. Polynesian tree snails were a
fixture in last place.
In contrast, the name had a marked effect
on the positions of several species (Table 1).
Names including words with obvious
negative connotations (such as poison,
spider, bat) seemed to affect species’ rankings
adversely. Inspection of species whose
rankings moved the other way suggests
unexpected insights into the national psyche
— the highest climber was also the only
species whose name indicated it to be British.
And the Diana monkey rose by 12 places into
the top ten when named. Interestingly, this
Table 1 Species showing most difference in rankings between the two surveys
correspondence
Sir — Redmond et al. have described in
Scientific Correspondence1new evidence for
a covert German attempt to attack
Norwegian reindeer with biological weapons
to interfere with their use as draught animals
to ferry British supplies across northern
Norway to Russia during the First World
War. These events were not an isolated
incident but were part of an ambitious
programme of biological warfare directed
against animals in neutral trading partners
of the Allied forces from 1915 to 1918.
Secret agents were sent to at least five
countries (Romania, Spain, Norway, the
United States and Argentina) with microbial
cultures and instructions to infect
shipments to the Allies of horses, mules,
cattle and sheep. The bacteria used were
those that cause anthrax and glanders2–4.
Germany’s programme of biological
sabotage began in 1915, with a series of
attacks on animals on the eastern seaboard of
the United States (neutral until 1917),
whence were shipped large amounts of
material, including horses and mules, to the
Allies. The central player in the US biological
sabotage programme, and possibly its
architect, was Anton Dilger, an American
raised in Germany and trained as a physician
there. He returned to the United States in
early 1915 and set up a basement laboratory
in Washington DC, where he grew cultures
of anthrax and glanders. The microbes were
suspended in liquid in test-tubes, and a crew
of longshoremen recruited by the Germans
wandered among the stockades where
animals were collected for trans-shipment,
jabbing them with needles dipped into the
microbial cultures. This went on for about a
year, until a few months after Dilger returned
to Germany early in 1916.
In mid-1915, Captain Rudolf Nadolny
of the general staff ’s Berlin headquarters
(probably Dilger’s boss) shipped anthrax
and glanders cultures to the German
embassy in Bucharest for Bulgarian agents
collaborating with the Germans, targeting
the Romanian animal trade with Russia.
The programme came to a halt in August
1916, when Romania broke its neutrality
and declared war on Austria–Hungary.
After the Central Powers’ diplomats were
expelled, the Romanian police searched the
grounds of the German legation,
discovering anthrax and glanders cultures.
No-one at the time suspected that it was
evidence not merely of intent to commit
biological warfare, but rather of a
continuing operation.
Biological sabotage began in neutral
Spain a bit later, although the details are
much less well documented. It appears that
Spanish horses to be shipped to France were
the main targets, although other targets in
the French Pyrenees and in Portugal were
probably also involved. The Spanish
programme, and its offspring in Argentina,
shared with the Norwegian programme the
use of ampoules of bacteria concealed in
sugar cubes to be fed to intended victims.
Spain was the staging point for shipment
of cultures and agents to neutral Argentina,
a major supplier of cattle, horses and mules
to the Allies. A German secret agent,
Herman Wuppermann, travelled by U-boat
(probably carrying cultures) from Croatia
to neutral Spain, then by commercial
steamship to Argentina. He apparently did
not establish his own culture lab in Buenos
Aires, and was dependent on replenishment
with microbes in sugar cubes from Berlin.
The Argentinian programme appears to
have ended in 1918, a victim of the
increasing difficulty of international
transport of microbes and agents. So ended
the first modern use of microbes as
weapons, and the only documented
instance of deliberate attack on neutral
countries with microbial agents. Its effect
has yet to be adequately evaluated.
Mark Wheelis
Section of Microbiology, University of California,
1 Shields Avenue, Davis, California 95616, USA
1. Redmond, C. et al. Nature 393, 747–748 (1998).
2. Wheelis, M. in Biological Warfare From the Middle Ages to 1945
(eds Geissler, E. & Moon, J. E. v. C.) (Oxford Univ. Press, New
York, in the press).
3. Geissler, E. Militargeschichtliche Mitteilungen 56, 107–155 (1997).
4. Geissler, E. Biologische Waffen — nicht in Hitlers Arsenalen:
Biologische und Toxinkampfmittel in Deutschland 1915–1945
(LIT, Munster, 1998).
NATURE
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VOL 395
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17 SEPTEMBER 1998 213
First shots fired in biological war fare
How Diana climbed the
ratings at the zoo
Sir — “That which we call a rose by any
other name would smell as sweet”, but it
seems that our perceptions of animals are
affected by their names in interesting ways.
Visitors to London Zoo were asked to
rank eight photographs of animals in the
order that they would choose to help their
conservation. The study included 57 taxa
and was designed so that, after 57
respondents, each picture had been
displayed with every other exactly once,
and had appeared once in each position on
the display. The design was repeated, with
different visitors, but with common names
added as captions to the pictures.
The two sets of rankings showed good
agreement in general (r¤0.8), with the
‘named’ and ‘unnamed’ ranks of most
species being within six places. In common
with other surveys, we found that big cats
were extremely popular choices: the
Sumatran tiger and Persian leopard topped
both charts, with the Asiatic lion always in
Highest climbers
Species Rank without Rank with
names names
Diana monkey 18464
Rothschild’s mynah/Bali 28484
starling
Royal python 48... 244
British wartbiter cricket 534264
Red-bellied piranha 49.... 304
Pallid gerbil 43... 304
Biggest fallers
Species Rank without Rank with
names names
Fennec fox 7.. 214
Red-faced black spider 104264
monkey
Strawberry poison frog 234394
Southern tomato frog 32.... 45.....
Hyacinth macaw 21446.....
Rodrigues fruit bat 36450.....
Green imperial pigeon 34.... 514
Red-back black widow 35.... 56.....
spider