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
The indisputable facts regarding the temper of the great Alaskan
brown bears are as follows: Usually, unless fired at, these big
brown bears flee from man at sight of him, and by many experienced
Alaskan bear hunters who can shoot they are not regarded as
particularly dangerous, save when they are attacked by man, or
think that they are to be attacked.
They are just now the boldest of all bears, and the most
dangerous.
They often attack men who are hunting them, and have killed
several.
They have attacked a few persons who were not hunting.
Where they are really numerous they are a menace and a nuisance to
frontiersmen who need to traverse their haunts.
In all places where Alaskan brown bears are quite too numerous for
public safety, their numbers should thoroughly be reduced; and
everywhere the bears of Alaska should be pursued and shot until
the survivors acquire the wholesome respect for man that now is
felt everywhere by the polar and the grizzly. Then the Alaskans
will have peace, and our Alaskan enemies possibly will cease to
try to discredit our intelligence.
The most impressive exhibition of wild-animal fear that Americans
ever have seen was furnished by the African motion pictures of
Paul J. Rainey. They were taken from a blind constructed within
close range of a dry river bed in northern British East Africa,
where a supply of water was held, by a stratum of waterproof clay
or rock, about four feet below the surface of the dry river bed.
By industrious pawing the zebras had dug a hole down to the water,
and to this one life-saving well wild animals of many species
flocked from miles around. The camera faithfully recorded the
doings of elephants, giraffes, zebras, hartebeests, gnus,
antelopes of several species, wart-hogs and baboons.
The personnel of the daily assemblage was fairly astounding, and
to a certain extent the observer of those wonderful pictures can
from them read many of the thoughts of the animals.
Next to the plainly expressed desire to quench their thirst, the
dominant thought in the minds of those animals, one and all, was
the _fear of being attacked._ In some species this ever-
present and harassing dread was a pitiful spectacle. I wish it
might be witnessed by all those ultra-humane persons who think and
say that the free wild animals are the only happy ones!
With the possible exception of the sanguine-tempered elephants,
all those animals were afraid of being seized or attacked while
drinking. One and all did the same thing. An animal would approach
the water-hole, nervously looking about for enemies. The fore feet
cautiously stepped down, the head disappeared to reach the water,
--but quickly shot upward again, to look for the enemies. It was
alternately drink, look, drink, look, for a dozen quick
repetitions, then a scurry for safety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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