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 our many discussions of gorilla character Mr. Garner always
represented that animal as very shy, wary of observation by man,
profoundly cunning in raiding _in darkness_ the banana
plantations of man's villages, and most carefully avoiding
exposures by daylight. He described the gorilla as practically
never attacking men unless first attacked by them, and fleeing
unless forcibly brought to bay. He told me of are doubtable
African tribesman who once captured a baby gorilla on the ground
by suddenly attacking the mother with his club and beating her so
successfully that she fled from him and abandoned her young.
"But," said Mr. Garner, "there is only one tribe in Africa that
could turn out a man who would attempt a feat like that."
That the gorilla can and will fight furiously and effectively when
brought to bay is well known, and never denied.
Of the apes I have known in captivity, the chimpanzees are by far
the most aggressive, courageous and dangerous. A vigorous male
specimen over eight years of age is more dangerous than a lion,
or tiger, or grizzly bear, and _far more anxious_ to fight
something. I think that even if our Boma were muzzled, no five men
of my acquaintance could catch him and tie his hands and feet.
The orang-utan is only half the fighter that the chimpanzee is.
Even the adult males are not persistently aggressive, or inflamed
by savage desires to hurt somebody.
Courage in Elephants as an Asset. In all portions of India wherein
tiger hunting with elephants is practiced, elephants with good
courage are at a premium. No elephant is fit to carry a howdah in
a line of beaters, with a valuable sahib on board, unless its
courage can stand the acid test of a wounded tiger's charge. When
an elephant can endure without panic an infuriated tiger climbing
up its frontispiece to get at the unhappy mahout and the hunter,
that elephant belongs in the courageous class. The cowardly
elephant screams in terror, bolts for the rear, and if there is a
tree in the landscape promptly wrecks the howdah and the sportsman
against its lower branches.
A "rogue" elephant always reminds me of my Barbados boatman's
description of a pugnacious friend: "De trouble is, he am too
brave!" A rogue elephant will attack anything from a wheelbarrow
to a hut, and destroy it. The peak of rogue ambition was reached
on a railway in Burma, near Ban Klap, in March 1908, when a rogue
elephant "on hearing the locomotive whistle, trumpeted loudly and
then, lowering his head, charged the oncoming train. The impact
was tremendous. Such was the impetus of the great pachyderm that
the engine was partially derailed, the front of the smoke-box
shattered as far as the tubes, the cow-catcher was crushed into a
shapeless piece of iron, and other damages of minor importance
were sustained. The train was going thirty-four miles per hour,
and the engine alone weighed between forty and fifty tons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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