Read Ebook: The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations by Hornaday William T William Temple

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Ebook has 1187 lines and 103755 words, and 24 pages

Yes. Animals do reason. If any one truth has come out of all the critical or uncritical study of the animal mind that has been going on for two centuries, it is this. Animals do reason; they always have reasoned, and as long as animals live they never will cease to reason.

The higher wild animals possess and display the same fundamental passions and emotions that animate the human race. This fact is subject to intelligent analysis, discussion and development, but it is not by any means a "question" subject to debate. In the most intellectual of the quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, the display of fear, courage, love, hate, pleasure, displeasure, confidence, suspicion, jealousy, pity, greed and generosity are so plainly evident that even children can and do recognize them. To the serious and open-minded student who devotes prolonged thought to these things, they bring the wild animal very near to the "lord of creation."

To the question, "Have wild animals souls?" we reply, "That is a debatable question. Read; then think it over."

METHODS WITH THE ANIMAL MIND. In the study of animal minds, much depends upon the method employed. It seems to me that the problem- box method of the investigators of "animal behavior" leaves much to be desired. Certainly it is not calculated to develop the mental status of animals along lines of natural mental progression. To place a wild creature in a great artificial contrivance, fitted with doors, cords, levers, passages and what not, is enough to daze or frighten any timid animal out of its normal state of mind and nerves. To put a wild sapajou monkey,-- weak, timid and afraid,--in a strange and formidable prison box filled with strange machinery, and call upon it to learn or to invent strange mechanical processes, is like bringing a boy of ten years up to a four-cylinder duplex Hoe printing-and-folding press, and saying to him: "Now, go ahead and find out how to run this machine, and print both sides of a signature upon it."

The average boy would shrink from the mechanical monster, and have no stomach whatever for "trial by error."

I think that the ideal way to study the minds of apes, baboons and monkeys would be to choose a good location in a tropical or sub- tropical climate that is neither too wet nor too dry, enclose an area of five acres with an unclimbable fence, and divide it into as many corrals as there are species to be experimented upon. Each corral would need a shelter house and indoor playroom. The stage properties should be varied and abundant, and designed to stimulate curiosity as well as activity.

Somewhere in the program I would try to teach orang-utans and chimpanzees the properties of fire, and how to make and tend fires. I would try to teach them the seed-planting idea, and the meaning of seedtime and harvest. I would teach sanitation and cleanliness of habit,--a thing much more easily done than most persons suppose. I would teach my apes to wash dishes and to cook, and I am sure that some of them would do no worse than some human members of the profession who now receive per month, or more, for spoiling food.

In one corral I would mix up a chimpanzee, an orang-utan, a golden baboon and a good-tempered rhesus monkey. My apes would begin at two years old, because after seven or eight years of age all apes are difficult, or even impossible, as subjects for peaceful experimentation.

I would try to teach a chimpanzee the difference between a noise and music, between heat and cold, between good food and bad food. Any trainer can teach an animal the difference between the blessings of peace and the horrors of war, or in other words, obedience and good temper versus cussedness and punishment.

Dr. Yerkes' laboratory in Montecito, California, and his experiments there with an orang-utan and other primates, were in a good place, and made a good beginning. It is very much to be hoped that means will be provided by which his work can be prosecuted indefinitely, and under the most perfect conditions that money can provide.

I hope that I will live long enough to see Dr. Yerkes develop the mind of a young grizzly bear in a four-acre lot, to the utmost limits of that keen and sagacious personality.

WILD ANIMAL TEMPERAMENT AND INDIVIDUALITY

Fundamentally the temperament of a man or an animal is an inheritance from ancestors near or remote. In the human species a morose or hysterical temperament may possibly be corrected or improved, by education and effort. With animals this is rarely possible. The morose gorilla gives way to cheerfulness only when it is placed in ideally pleasant and stimulating social conditions. This, however, very seldom is possible. The nervous deer, bear or monkey is usually nervous to the end of its days.

The orang-utan is sanguine, optimistic and cheerful, a good boarder, affectionate toward his keepers, and friendly toward strangers. He eats well, enjoys life, lives long, and is well liked by everybody.

Except when quite young, the chimpanzee is either nervous or hysterical. After six years of age it is irritable and difficult to manage. After seven years of age it is rough, domineering and dangerous. The male is given to shouting, yelling, shrieking and roaring, and when quite angry rages like a demon. I know of no wild animal that is more dangerous per pound than a male chimpanzee over eight years of age. When young they do wonders in trained performances, but when they reach maturity, grow big of arm and shoulder, and masterfully strong, they quickly become conscious of their strength. It is then that performing chimpanzees become unruly, fly into sudden fits of temper, their back hair bristles up, they stamp violently, and sometimes leap into a terrorized orchestra. Next in order, they are retired willy-nilly from the stage, and are offered for sale to zoological parks and gardens having facilities for confinement and control.

The baboons are characteristically fierce and aggressive, and in a wild state they live in troops, or even in herds of hundreds. Being armed with powerful canine teeth and wolf-like jaws, they are formidable antagonists, and other animals do not dare to attack them. It is because of their natural weapons, their readiness to fight like fiends, and their combined agility and strength that the baboons have been able to live on the ground and survive and flourish in lands literally reeking with lions, leopards, hyenas and wild dogs. The awful canine teeth of an old male baboon are quite as dangerous as those of any leopard, and even the leopard's onslaught is less to be feared than the wild rage of an adult baboon. In the Transvaal and Rhodesia, it is a common occurrence for an ambitious dog to go after a troop of baboons and never return.

Temperamentally the commoner groups of monkeys are thus characterized:

The rhesus monkeys of India are nervous, irritable and dangerous.

The green monkeys of Africa are sanguine, but savage and treacherous.

The langur monkeys of India are sanguine and peace-loving.

The macaques of the Far East vary from the sanguine temperament to the combative.

The gibbons vary from sanguine to combative.

The lemurs of Madagascar are sanguine, affectionate and peaceful.

Nearly all South American monkeys are sanguine, and peace-loving, and many are affectionate.

The species of the group of Carnivora are too numerous and too diversified to be treated with any approach to completeness. However, to illustrate this subject the leading species will be noticed.

TEMPERAMENTS OF THE LARGE CARNIVORES

The lion is sanguine, courageous, confident, reposeful and very reliable.

The tiger is nervous, suspicious, treacherous and uncertain.

The black and common leopards are nervous and combative, irreconcilable and dangerous.

The snow leopard is sanguine, optimistic and peace-loving. The puma is sanguine, good natured, quiet and peaceful.

The wolves are sanguine, crafty, dangerous and cruel.

The foxes are hysterical, timid and full of senseless fear.

The lynxes are sanguine, philosophic, and peaceful.

The mustelines are either nervous or hysterical, courageous, savage, and even murderous.

The bears are so very interesting that it is well worth while to consider the leading species separately. Possibly our conclusions will reveal some unsuspected conditions.

BEAR TEMPERAMENTS, BY SPECIES. The polar bears are sanguine, but in captivity they are courageous, treacherous and dangerous.

The Alaskan brown bears in captivity are sanguine, courageous, peaceful and reliable, but in the wilds they are aggressive and dangerous.

The grizzlies are nervous, keen, cautious, and seldom wantonly aggressive.

The European brown bears are sanguine, optimistic and good- natured.

The American black bears are sanguine and quiet, but very treacherous.

The sloth bears of India are nervous or hysterical, and uncertain.

The Malay sun bears are hysterical, aggressive and evil-tempered.

The Japanese black bears are nervous, cowardly and aggressive.

To those who form and maintain large collections of bears, involving much companionship in dens, it is necessary to keep a watchful eye on the temperament chart.

THE DEER. In our Zoological Park establishment there is no collection in which both the collective and the individual equation is more troublesome than the deer family. In their management, as with apes, monkeys and bears, it is necessary to take into account the temperament not only of the species, but also of each animal; and there are times when this necessity bears hard upon human nerves. The proneness of captive deer to maim and to kill themselves and each other calls for the utmost vigilance, and for heroic endurance on the part of the deer keeper.

Even when a deer species has a fairly good record for common sense, an individual may "go crazy" the instant a slightly new situation arises. We have seen barasingha deer penned up between shock-absorbing bales of hay seriously try to jump straight up through a roof skylight nine feet from the floor. We have seen park-bred axis deer break their own necks against wire fences, with 100 per cent of stupidity.

CHARACTERS OF DEER SPECIES

The white-tailed deer is sanguine, but in the fall the bucks are very aggressive and dangerous, and to be carefully avoided. The mule deer is sanguine, reasonable and not particularly dangerous.

The elk is steady of nerve, and sanguine in temperament, but in the rutting season the herd-masters are dangerous.

The fallow deer species has been toned down by a hundred generations of park life, and it is very quiet, save when it is to be captured and crated.

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