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
Serpent Psychology an Unplowed Field. At this date (1922) we know
only the rudiments of serpent intelligence and temperament. In the
wilds, serpents are most elusive and difficult to determine. In
captivity they are passive and undemonstrative. We do not know how
much memory they have, they rarely show what they think, and on
most subjects we do not know where they stand. But the future will
change all this. During the past twenty years the number of
herpetologists in the United States has increased about tenfold.
It is fairly impossible that serpent psychology should much longer
remain unstudied, and unrevealed along the lines of plain common-
sense.
The Ways of Crocodiles. The ways of crocodiles are dark and deep;
their thoughts are few and far between. Their wisdom is above that
of the tortoises and turtles, but below that of the serpents. I
have had field experience with four species of crocodilians in the
New World and three in the Old. With but slight exceptions they
all think alike and act alike.
The great salt-water crocodile of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo
is the only real man-eater I ever met. Except under the most
provocative circumstances, all the others I have met are
practically harmless to man. This includes the Florida species,
the Orinoco crocodile, the little one from Cuba, the alligator,
the Indian gavial and the Indian crocodile (_C. palustris_).
The salt-water crocodile, that I have seen swimming out in the
ocean two miles or more from shore, is in Borneo a voracious man-
eater. It skilfully stalks its prey in the murky rivers where
Malay and Dyak women and children come down to the village bathing
place to dip up water and to bathe. There, unseen in the muddy
water, the monster glides up stealthily, seizes his victim by the
leg, and holding it tightly backs off into deep water and
disappears. The victims are drowned, not bitten to death.
I found in Ceylon that the Indian crocodile is a shameless
cannibal, devouring the skinned carcasses of its relatives
whenever an opportunity offered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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