The Central Asiatic Expeditions : fauna

Filmed during the AMNH Third Asiatic Expedition to China and Mongolia, 1921-1930. The expedition collected zoological specimens throughout Mongolia, but the main collecting was done in the Gobi Desert. This film shows some of the animals that were collected for scientific purposes, as well as those kept as pets. The animals collected includes swans, nightjars, ruddy shelducks, grebes, ducks, gazelles, wild asses, and jerboas. Next are seen the animals "kept" by members of the expedition: an ass colt; Connie, a young vulture found by Ralph W. Chaney, paleobotanist, which was finally brought to New York and given to the New York Zoological Society; a red-billed chough; juvenile owls and kites; a falcon; a juvenile gazelle; a hedgehog, James Barnes Shackelford's pet, that also was given to the New York Zoological Society; and the dog, Wolf, Roy Chapman Andrews's favorite. The final sequence was filmed at the expedition headquarters in Peking (now Beijing), where live crocodiles are seen and Wang Hao-Ting, a painter, displays his watercolors of fish and reptiles in the courtyard.