A shipment of animals destined to zoos arrived in Red Hook's Atlantic Basin in 1922, too good a story for the Evening Telegraph to pass up.

The early 1920s saw the continued progression of an increasingly globalized world that was emerging in the United States. As technology continued to advance culture and people weren’t the only things that traveled, animals did as well. At this point ships, trains, cars, and more recently airplanes were all accepted and improving forms of transportation.

Since the origins of trade animals and plants have been transported all around the world. This trend can be traced back from the hunter-gatherers through the Silk Road and the Columbian exchange, to the industrial revolution in the United States, as well as the present. The Columbian exchange for example brought livestock like horses, sheep, and cattle to the United States as well as foods like grapes and bananas.

While this newspaper article covers an animal that was returned to its native country, mongeese, many species that have been introduced to the United States have brought negative consequences to the environment. Said species with a substantial negative effect on the environment are classified as invasive species.

While this text talks about pythons being welcomed into the United States, the author couldn’t have predicted the Burmese python becoming one of the most invasive species in the United States. First brought to Florida from Southeast Asia as pets in the 1880s, Pythons would go on to overtake alligators’ place as top predators in the Everglades, messing up the balance of the ecosystem. While some animals have a lesser impact on their new environments, others can alter the balance of the world forever.

Because of these forced migrations and much more, the environment looks very different today than it did 200 years ago and big ports like the Atlantic Basin where animals and crops moved in and out of the county played a drastic role in that.

Text of the New York Evening Telegram, May 16, 1922 article

U.S., Welcoming Cobras, Bars Murderous Mongoose

All Sorts of Wild Creatures Booked for Circus and Zoos Are Landed, but Fierce Little Animals That Belie Meek Appearance Must Return to Africa

Pity the poor mongoose! Eighteen of the kitten-like animals are in small cages today aboard the Barber line steamship Dromore Castle, at Pier No. 32, Atlantic Basin, barred from the United States by rigorous laws.

Uncle Sam welcomed with open arms all sorts of queer animals which were in the cargo. Gnus, bush babies, warthogs, night apes, koodoo antelopes and cobras, all placed aboard a ship at Cape Town, Africa, twenty-nine days ago, were permitted to land and were taken to Coney Island to be shown at Hagenback’s circus. But not the mongoose. They are undesirable citizens and must go back to Africa on the first boat.

These meek looking cats like animals, with sharp snouts and just a hint of red in their eyes, they are called “the lion’s providers” in Africa. They will tackle anything, animal men say, and kill it before the animal knows what is happening.

For bird, deer, antelope, cobra, all are part of the mongoose prey. They drink the blood of the animals they kill and leave the carcass for the lions.

About 300 animals in all were aboard the ship, and the ship’s officers decided it was as amiable a cargo as ever they carried.