Mutual Aid: A Factor of EvolutionKropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Science
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Cooperation; Social groups; Social institutions
18. In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the quagga
zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra, nevertheless
lives on excellent terms, not only with ostriches, which are very good
sentries, but also with gazelles, several species of antelopes, and
gnus. We thus have a case of mutual dislike between the quagga and the
dauw which cannot be explained by competition for food. The fact that
the quagga lives together with ruminants feeding on the same grass as
itself excludes that hypothesis, and we must look for some
incompatibility of character, as in the case of the hare and the rabbit.
Cf., among others, Clive Phillips-Wolley's Big Game Shooting (Badminton
Library), which contains excellent illustrations of various species
living together in East Africa.
19. Our Tungus hunter, who was going to marry, and therefore was
prompted by the desire of getting as many furs as he possibly could, was
beating the hill-sides all day long on horseback in search of deer. His
efforts were not rewarded by even so much as one fallow deer killed
every day; and he was an excellent hunter.
20. According to Samuel W. Baker, elephants combine in larger groups
than the "compound family." "I have frequently observed," he wrote, "in
the portion of Ceylon known as the Park Country, the tracks of elephants
in great numbers which have evidently been considerable herds that have
joined together in a general retreat from a ground which they considered
insecure" (Wild Beasts and their Ways, vol. i. p. 102).
21. Pigs, attacked by wolves, do the same (Hudson, l.c.).
22. Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 472.
23. Brehm, i. 82; Darwin's Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff
expedition of 1899-1901 have also had to sustain in Northern Thibet a
similar fight.
24. The more strange was it to read in the previously-mentioned article
by Huxley the following paraphrase of a well-known sentence of Rousseau:
"The first men who substituted mutual peace for that of mutual
war--whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step--created
society" (Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165). Society has not been
created by man; it is anterior to man.
25. Such monographs as the chapter on "Music and Dancing in Nature"
which we have in Hudson's Naturalist on the La Plata, and Carl Gross'
Play of Animals, have already thrown a considerable light upon an
instinct which is absolutely universal in Nature.
26. Not only numerous species of birds possess the habit of assembling
together--in many cases always at the same spot--to indulge in antics
and dancing performances, but W.H. Hudson's experience is that nearly
all mammals and birds ("probably there are really no exceptions")
indulge frequently in more or less regular or set performances with or
without sound, or composed of sound exclusively (p. 264).
27. For the choruses of monkeys, see Brehm.
28. Haygarth, Bush Life in Australia, p. 58.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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