The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal ObservationsHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Science
The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Animal behavior
In areas of absolute protection it becomes very bold, and breeds
rapidly. Around our bungalow in the wilds of Putman County, New
York, the deer come and stamp under our windows, tramp through our
garden, feed in broad daylight with our neighbor's cattle, and
jauntily jump across the roads almost anywhere. They are beautiful
objects, in those wild wooded landscapes of lake and hill.
But in the Adirondacks, what a change! If you are keen you may see
a few deer in the closed season, but to see in the hunting season
a buck with good horns you must be a real hunter. As a skulker and
hider, and a detector of hunters, I know no deer equal to the
white-tail. In making a safe get-away when found, I will back a
buck of this species against all other deer on earth. He has no
fatal curiosity. He will not halt and pose for a bullet in order
to have a look at you. What the startled buck wants is more space
and more green bushes between the Man and himself.
The Moose is a weird-looking and uncanny monster, but he knows one
line of strategy that is startling in its logic. Often when a bull
moose is fleeing from a long stern chase,--always through wooded
country,--he will turn aside, swing a wide semicircle backward,
and then lie down for a rest close up to leeward of his trail.
There he lies motionless and waits for man-made noises, or man
scent; and when he senses either sign of his pursuer, he silently
moves away in a new direction.
The Antelopes of the Old World. The antelopes, gazelles, gnus and
hartebeests of Africa and Asia almost without exception live in
herds, some of them very large. Owing to this fact their minds are
as little developed, individually, as the minds of herd animals
generally are. The herd animal, relying as it does upon its
leaders, and the security that large numbers always seem to
afford, is a creature of few independent ideas. It is not like the
deer, elk, sheep or goat that has learned things in the hard
school of solitude, danger and adversity, with no one on whom to
rely for safety save itself. The basic intelligence of the average
herd animal can be summed up in one line:
"Post your sentinels, then follow your leader."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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