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
It is fairly common for the members of a vast assemblage of
animals, like the bison, barren-ground caribou, fur seal, and sea
birds on their nesting cliffs, to assume such security from their
numbers as to ignore man; and all such cases are highly
interesting manifestations of the influence of the fourth law when
carried out to six decimal places.
The Eighth and Last Law. _Whenever in a given spot all men cease
to kill us, there may we accept sanctuary and dwell in peace._
This law comes as Amendment 1 to the original Constitution of the
Animal Kingdom. The quick intelligence of wild animals in
recognizing a new sanctuary, and in adopting it unreservedly and
thankfully as their own territory, is to all friends of wild life
a source of wonder and delight. With their own eyes Americans have
seen the effects of sanctuary-making upon bison, elk, mule deer,
white-tailed deer, mountain sheep, mountain goat, prong-horned
antelope, grizzly and black bears, beavers, squirrels, chipmunks,
rabbits, sage grouse, quail, wild ducks and geese, swans, pelicans
brown and white, and literally hundreds of species of smaller
birds of half a dozen orders.
In view of this magnificent and continent-wide manifestation of
discovery, new thought and original conclusion, let no man tell us
that the wild birds and quadrupeds "do not think" and "can not
reason."
The Exceptions of Captivity. When wild animals come into
captivity, a few individuals develop and reveal their worst traits
of character, and much latent wickedness comes to the surface. A
small percentage of individuals become mean and lawless, and a
still smaller number show criminal instincts. These Bolshevistic
individuals commit misdemeanors and crimes such as are unknown in
the wild state. One male ruminant out of perhaps fifty will turn
murderer, and kill a female or a fawn, entirely contrary to the
herd law; and at long intervals a male predatory animal kills his
mate or young.
Occasionally captivity warps wild animal or wild bird character
quite out of shape, though it is a satisfaction to know that the
total proportion of those so affected is very small. Long and
close confinement in a prison-like home, filled with more daily
cares and worries than any animal cage has of iron bars, has sent
many a human wife and mother to an insane asylum; but the super-
humanitarians who rail out at the existence of zoological parks
and zoos are troubled by that not at all.
XX
PLAYS AND PASTIMES OF ANIMALS
I approach this subject with a
feeling of satisfaction; but I would not like to state the
number of hours that I have spent in watching the play of our
wild animals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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