The Naturalist in La PlataHudson, W. H. (William Henry)
History
The Naturalist in La Plata
Hudson, W. H. (William Henry)
Animal behavior -- Argentina -- Pampas; Natural history -- Argentina -- Pampas; Zoology -- Argentina -- Pampas
substance unite in crystallization, corresponds in that kingdom to the
vital power in organic nature."] to colour and ornaments covers the
whole of the facts. We see that the inferior animals, when the
conditions of life are favourable, are subject to periodical fits of
gladness affecting them powerfully and standing out in vivid contrast to
their ordinary temper. And we know what this feeling is--this periodic
intense elation which even civilized man occasionally experiences when
in perfect health, more especially when young. There are moments when
he is mad with joy, when he cannot keep still, when his impulse is to
sing and shout aloud and laugh at nothing, to run and leap and exert
himself in some extravagant way. Among the heavier mammalians the
feeling is manifested in loud noises, bellowings and screamings, and in
lumbering, uncouth motions--throwing up of heels, pretended panics, and
ponderous mock battles.
In smaller and livelier animals, with greater celerity and certitude in
their motions, the feeling shows itself in more regular and often in
more complex ways. Thus, Felidae when young, and, in very agile,
sprightly species like the Puma, throughout life, simulate all the
actions of an animal hunting its prey--sudden, intense excitement of
discovery, concealment, gradual advance, masked by intervening objects,
with intervals of watching, when they crouch motionless, the eyes
flashing and tail waved from side to side; finally, the rush and spring,
when the playfellow is captured, rolled over on his back and worried to
imaginary death. Other species of the most diverse kinds, in which voice
is greatly developed, join in noisy concerts and choruses; many of the
cats may be mentioned, also dogs and foxes, capybaras and other
loquacious rodents; and in the howling monkeys this kind of performance
rises to the sublime uproar of the tropical forest at eventide.
Birds are more subject to this universal joyous instinct than mammals,
and there are times when some species are constantly overflowing with
it; and as they are so much freer than mammals, more buoyant and
graceful in action, more loquacious, and have voices so much finer,
their gladness shows itself in a greater variety of ways, with more
regular and beautiful motions, and with melody. But every species, or
group of species, has its own inherited form or style of performance;
and, however rude and irregular this may be, as in the case of the
pretended stampedes and fights of wild cattle, that is the form in which
the feeling will always be expressed. If all men, at some exceedingly
remote period in their history, had agreed to express the common glad
impulse, which they now express in such an infinite variety of ways or
do not express at all, by dancing a minuet, and minuet-dancing had at
last come to be instinctive, and taken to spontaneously by children at
an early period, just as they take to walking "on their hind legs,"
man's case would be like that of the inferior animals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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