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
Not long ago, it was a park owner who was killed by a dangerous
deer. Next it was a bull elk who killed the keeper who undertook
to show that the animal was afraid of him. In Idaho we saw a
death-penalty mistake with a bull buffalo. Recently, in Spain, an
American ape trainer was killed by his big male chimpanzee.
Recently in Switzerland a snake-charmer was strangled and killed
on the stage by her python.
Men who keep or who handle dangerous animals owe it to themselves,
their heirs and their assigns to _know the animal mind and
temperament, and to keep on the safe side._
In view of the tragedies and near-tragedies that animal trainers
and keepers have been through during the past twenty years, I am
desirous of so vividly exhibiting the wild animal mind and temper
that at least a few of the mistakes of the past may be avoided in
the future. Fortunately I am able to state that thus far no one
ever has been killed by an animal in the Zoological Park; but
several of our men have been severely hurt. The writer hereof
carries two useless fingers on his best hand as a reminder of a
fracas with a savage bear. How Dangerous Animals Attack Men. The
following may be listed as the wild animals most dangerous to man:
1. In the open: Alaskan brown bears, the grizzly bears, lion,
tiger, elephant, leopard, wolf, African buffalo, Indian gaur and
buffalo, and gorilla.
All these species are dangerous to the man who meddles with them,
either to kill or to capture them. If they are not molested by
man, there is very little to fear from any of them save the man-
eating lions, and tigers, the northern wolf packs, Alaskan brown
bears and rogue elephants.
2. In captivity, or in process of capture: Under this head a
special list may be thus composed:
Male elk and deer in the rutting season; male elephants over
fifteen years of age; all bears over one year of age, and
especially "pet" bears; all gorillas, chimpanzees and orangs over
seven years of age (puberty); all adult male baboons, gibbons,
rhesus monkeys, callithrix or green monkeys, Japanese red-faced
monkeys and large macaques; many adult bison bulls and cows of
individually bad temper; also gaur, Old World buffalo, anoa bulls,
many individually bad African antelopes, gnus and hartebeests; all
lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, wolves, hyenas, and all male
zebras and wild asses over four years of age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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