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
Bears usually fight "on the square," openly and above-board,
rarely committing foul murder. If one bear hates another, he
attacks at the very first opportunity, He does not cunningly wait
to catch the offender at a disadvantage and beyond the possibility
of rescue. Sometimes a captive bear kills a cage-mate or mauls a
keeper, but not by the sneaking methods of the human assassin who
shoots in the dark and runs away.
I do not count the bear as a common criminal, even though at rare
intervals he kills a cage-mate smaller and weaker than himself.
One killing of that kind, done by Cinnamon Jim to a small black
bear that had annoyed him beyond all endurance, was inflicted as a
legitimate punishment, and was so recorded. The attack of two
large bears, a Syrian and a sloth bear, upon a small Japanese
black bear, in which the big pair deliberately attempted to
disembowel the small victim, biting him only in the abdomen,
always has been a puzzle to me. I cannot fathom the idea which
possessed those two ursine minds; but I have no doubt that some of
the book-making men who read the minds of wild animals as if they
were open books could tell me all about it.
On the ice-pack in front of his stone hut at the north end of the
Franz Josef Archipelago Nansen saw an occurrence that was plain
murder. A large male polar bear feeding upon a dead walrus was
approached across the ice-pack by two polar-bear cubs. The
gorging male immediately stopped feeding and rushed toward the
small intruders. They turned and fled wildly; but the villain
pursued them, far out upon the ice. He overtook them, killed both,
and then serenely returned to his solitary feast.
In February, 1907, a tragedy occurred in the Zoological Park which
was a close parallel of the Lopez murder. It was a case in which
my only crumb of satisfaction was in my ability to say, "I told
you so,"--than which no consolation can be more barren.
For seven years there had lived together in the great polar bears'
den of the Zoological Park two full-grown, very large and fine
polar bears. They came from William Hagenbeck's great group, and
both were males. Their rough-and-tumble wrestling, both in the
swimming pool and out of it, was a sight of almost perennial
interest; and while their biting and boxing was of the roughest
character, and frequently drew blood, they never got angry, and
never had a real fight.
In the autumn of 1906 one of the animals sickened and died, and
presently the impression prevailed that the survivor was lonesome.
The desirability of introducing a female companion was spoken of,
but I was afraid to try the experiment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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