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
Leaving out of account the carnivorous animals who must kill or
die, _all the wild vertebrate species of the earth have learned
the logic that peace promotes happiness, prosperity and long
life._ This fundamentally useful knowledge governs not only the
wild animal individual, but also the tribe, the species, and
contiguous species.
Do the brown bears and grizzlies of Alaska wage war upon each
other, species against species? By no means. It seems reasonably
certain that those species occasionally intermarry. Do the big
sea-lions and the walruses seek to drive away or exterminate the
neighboring fur seals or the helpless hair seals? Such warfare is
absolutely unknown. Do the moose and caribou of Alaska and Yukon
Territory attack the mountain sheep and goats? Never. Does the
Indian elephant attack the gaur, the sambar, the axis deer or the
muntjac? The idea is preposterous. Does any species of giraffe,
zebra, antelope or buffalo attack any other species on the same
crowded plains of British East Africa? If so, we have yet to learn
of it.
If the races and nations of men were as peace-loving, honest and
sensible in avoiding wars as all the wild animal species are, then
would we indeed have a social heaven upon earth.
Now, tell me, ye winged winds that blow from the four corners of
the earth and over the seven seas, whence came the Philosophy of
Peace to the world's wild animals? Did they learn it by observing
the ways of man? "It is to laugh," says the innkeeper. Man has not
yet learned it himself; and therefore do we find the beasts of
the field a lap ahead of the quarrelsome biped who has assumed
dominion over them.
Day by day we read in our newspapers of men and women who are
moral lepers and utterly unfit to associate with horses, dogs,
cats, deer and elephants. Our big male chimpanzee, Father Boma,
who knows no wife but Suzette, and firmly repels the blandishments
of his neighbor Fanny, is a more moral individual than many a
pretty gentleman whose name we see heading columns of divorce
proceedings in the newspapers.
Said the Count to Julia in "The Hunchback," "Dost thou like the
picture, dearest?" As a natural historian, it is our task to hew
to the line, and let the chips fall where they will.
Among the wild animals there are but few degenerate and unmoral
species. In some very upright species there are occasionally
individual lapses from virtue. A famous case in point is the rogue
elephant, who goes from meanness to meanness until he becomes
unbearable. Then he is driven out of the herd; he becomes an
outcast and a bandit, and he upsets carts, maims bullocks, tears
down huts and finally murders natives until the nearest local
sahib gets after him, and ends his career with a bullet through
his wicked brain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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