The Wild Cattle of Cambodia

Color documentary film, "The Wild Cattle of Cambodia" sponsored by the Coolidge Foundation, and produced by Dr. Charles Heizer Wharton. "The forest cattle survey expedition to southeast Asia" is the first documentary film to show banting (wild red oxen), water buffalo, gaur, and kouprey (wild forest ox) in their wild habitat. This film was made during a 1951 field study of wild cattle in Cambodia conducted by Dr. Charles H. Wharton of Cornell University under the offices of the Coolidge Foundation. The film includes geographical and geological information of Cambodia and references the publication "Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College Vol. LIV No. 6, The Indo-Chinese Forest Ox or Kouprey" by Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Jr. Locals are seen wearing ceremonial costumes and performing a choreographed dance to music. The film's narrator provides a brief history lesson with accompanying images of Khmer Empire ruins, statues, and carvings. Following the footage of Phnom Penh, the remainder of this film contains images shot in rural areas of Cambodia and includes an agitated spectacled cobra, giant trees, gibbons swinging through trees, Wharton in the field, sambar deer, Eld's deer, a mynah bird riding on the back of a wild hog, jabiru stork, Asiatic crane (known as Siberian crane today), and a man holding a Pangolin curled up into a ball (scaly ant eater). Images of field guides testing the constantly shifting winds of the dry season with cigarette smoke are described as the "careful approach taken when wild cattle are spotted". According to the narrator, "Wharton, a non-smoker, happily provided pack after pack of strong native cigarettes for this purpose". The camera follows Wharton's two-month expedition in the Choam Ksan and Koh Ke areas of Preah Vihear and Siem Reap provinces with his crew of 90 men, including 60 government soldiers of the Cambodian Royal Army. The group is seen traveling through villages toward base camp in jeeps, ox carts, and on elephants. In addition to banting, water buffalo and gaur, Wharton caught on film six separate groups of kouprey. [In 1951, the United States conservationist, Dr. Charles H. Wharton, led a group expedition to northern Cambodia that sought to document the country's wild cattle in a series of ecological surveys which often penetrated areas frequently raided and patrolled by bands of armed communists. The only significant scientific observation of the kouprey was made by Wharton during this filming, and almost everything known about kouprey behavior stems from Wharton's visits and this resulting 1957 documentary film. The kouprey have not been seen alive since 1988, and a 2008 International Union for Conservation of Nature report lists the kouprey as critically endangered and possibly extinct.], The original film reel was digitized by Universal Information Services in 2015., UNO Libraries' Archives & Special Collections' Archives & Special Collections, 00:37:04
View this Object: https://library.unomaha.edu/_video/MSS0046_00X_m_vi_000025.html
Abstract/Description: Color documentary film, "The Wild Cattle of Cambodia" sponsored by the Coolidge Foundation, and produced by Dr. Charles Heizer Wharton. "The forest cattle survey expedition to southeast Asia" is the first documentary film to show banting (wild red oxen), water buffalo, gaur, and kouprey (wild forest ox) in their wild habitat. This film was made during a 1951 field study of wild cattle in Cambodia conducted by Dr. Charles H. Wharton of Cornell University under the offices of the Coolidge Foundation. The film includes geographical and geological information of Cambodia and references the publication "Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College Vol. LIV No. 6, The Indo-Chinese Forest Ox or Kouprey" by Harold Jefferson Coolidge, Jr. Locals are seen wearing ceremonial costumes and performing a choreographed dance to music. The film's narrator provides a brief history lesson with accompanying images of Khmer Empire ruins, statues, and carvings. Following the footage of Phnom Penh, the remainder of this film contains images shot in rural areas of Cambodia and includes an agitated spectacled cobra, giant trees, gibbons swinging through trees, Wharton in the field, sambar deer, Eld's deer, a mynah bird riding on the back of a wild hog, jabiru stork, Asiatic crane (known as Siberian crane today), and a man holding a Pangolin curled up into a ball (scaly ant eater). Images of field guides testing the constantly shifting winds of the dry season with cigarette smoke are described as the "careful approach taken when wild cattle are spotted". According to the narrator, "Wharton, a non-smoker, happily provided pack after pack of strong native cigarettes for this purpose". The camera follows Wharton's two-month expedition in the Choam Ksan and Koh Ke areas of Preah Vihear and Siem Reap provinces with his crew of 90 men, including 60 government soldiers of the Cambodian Royal Army. The group is seen traveling through villages toward base camp in jeeps, ox carts, and on elephants. In addition to banting, water buffalo and gaur, Wharton caught on film six separate groups of kouprey. [In 1951, the United States conservationist, Dr. Charles H. Wharton, led a group expedition to northern Cambodia that sought to document the country's wild cattle in a series of ecological surveys which often penetrated areas frequently raided and patrolled by bands of armed communists. The only significant scientific observation of the kouprey was made by Wharton during this filming, and almost everything known about kouprey behavior stems from Wharton's visits and this resulting 1957 documentary film. The kouprey have not been seen alive since 1988, and a 2008 International Union for Conservation of Nature report lists the kouprey as critically endangered and possibly extinct.]
Subject(s): Nebraska
Omaha (Neb.)
Zoos
Animals
Motion pictures
Visual works
Films
Videos
Digital moving image formats
Date Created: 1957

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