The Hunt for the Golden Mole Read Online Free Page A

this time it adds an intriguing – not long ago I would have said unbelievable – detail. Under ‘taxonomic notes’, it remarks that the Somali golden mole, Calcochloris tytonis , is ‘known only from a partially complete specimen in an owl-pellet’.
    And that’s it. Not only has no one ever seen a live example, no one has even seen a whole dead one. All that exists is some crumpled fragments coughed up by an owl. But exists where? It comes back to me in sleepless nights. First I am interested,then fascinated, then obsessed. Somewhere in a drawer, in a museum somewhere in the world, the owl pellet must be kept. And I want to see it. My naivety at that stage was still intact, so I thought it would be easy. I called the IUCN to ask where the specimen might be found. They didn’t know. Was there not some compendious work of reference that listed all holotypes and their locations? There was not. Next I tried the Natural History Museum, then the Zoological Society of London. No one knew.
    So here began both a mystery and a quest. There were several reasons why I resolved to try to find the Somali golden mole. There was the sheer exhilaration of the chase, the unravelling of a mystery, the bizarre improbability of a species catalogued from such minimal remains. But there was something deeper, something not quite thought through but naggingly insistent. At a time when one species, my own, was being forced to reconsider its relationship with every other, what was the moral of the story? How could I answer the question, put to me with some belligerence by a neighbour at a dinner party: Why should I care about a species so obscure that no one has ever seen one? Why do we need spiny mice, bearded pigs, groove-toothed trumpet-eared bats, glacier rats, or any of the dozens of other mammals that the IUCN tells us are on the downward slope?
    Already I had half an answer, but I wanted to find a whole one.

CHAPTER TWO
    Rhinoceros Pie
    S ir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore and discoverer of the clouded leopard, was the unstoppable force behind the establishment of the Zoological Society of London in 1826. He lived only long enough to chair its first two meetings before a stroke – ‘apoplexy’ in the language of the time – killed him on the eve of his forty-fifth birthday. But he had taken the crucial first step. Sir Humphry Davy and the Marquis of Lansdowne continued what he had begun, and the world’s first scientific zoo opened at Regent’s Park in 1828. Initially, the word ‘scientific’ was rigidly interpreted. Only fellows of the society were permitted to enter – a situation that would last until 1847. Even then, visitors needed a letter of recommendation and were barred on Sundays. It was undemocratic, and the science was rough round the edges, but it was progress. People began to think more carefully about animals – their physiology, their self-awareness, their behaviour – and zookeepers set out on the rocky road to enlightenment. It was an example that soon would be followed in other new zoos throughout Europe and America.
    On a warm August day 163 years later, the Broadwalk in Regent’s Park is a dawdling caravan of parents and children, all heading towards the zoo. Those bored or exhausted by the long trek from the bus or underground are kept moving by a promisewhich in all the years has never lost its potency. Shall we go and see the gorillas? I hear it time and again. The children will be disappointed only by the inert disinterest of the animals on the other side of the glass. My own hope – to see a living example of one of the surviving species of golden mole – has already been dashed. The zoo has told me it doesn’t have one. And it gets worse. According to the online International Species Information System (ISIS), neither does any other zoo in the world. Golden moles may be ‘vulnerable’, ‘endangered’,