ILLUSTRATIONS
| Recreation is as common among animals as it is among children (in Colours) | [Frontispiece] |
| The Indians claim that the mother bison forced her calf to roll often in a puddle of red clay, so that it might be indistinguishable against its clay background | [6] |
| The zebra is one of the cleverest of camouflagers. The black-and-white stripes of his body give the effect of sunlight passing through bushes | [7] |
| Monkeys are the most musical of all animals. When they congregate for "concerts," as some of the tribes do, the air is filled with weird strains of monkey-music | [20] |
| Cats, unlike dogs, are very fond of music. And it has been proved that their music-sense can be developed to a remarkable degree | [21] |
| A happy family of polar bears. The young cubs wrestle and tumble, as playfully as two puppies. This play has much to do with their physical and mental development | [34] |
| Dryptosaurus. The prehistoric animals, too, undoubtedly had their play time, with games and "setting up" exercises | [35] |
| The mother opossum is never happier than when she has her little ones playing hide-and-seek over her back | [38] |
| This young fox came from his home in the woods daily to play with a young fox-terrier. He is now resting after a romp | [39] |
| Naosaurus and Dimetrodon, two extinct armour-bearers who should have been well able to protect themselves | [50] |
| An armour-bearer of prehistoric times whose shield was an effective protection against enemy horns | [51] |
| To the polar bear the ice and snow of the Far North means warmth and protection. The mother bear digs herself into a snowbank, where lives quite comfortably throughout the winter | [84] |
| The sharp claws of the ground squirrel are efficacious tools in digging his cosy underground burrow | [85] |
| The coyote can readily distinguish whether a herd of sheep is guarded by one or more dogs, and will plan his attack accordingly | [94] |
| The zebu, the sacred bull of India, in spite of its domestication, has an agile body and a quick, alert mind | [95] |
| Roosevelt's Colobus. These horse-tailed monkeys chatter together in a language exclusively their own, yet they seem to have no difficulty in making themselves understood by other monkey-tribes | [112] |
| A tamed deer of Texas, whose constant companion and playmate was a rabbit dog. Between the two, there developed, necessarily, a common language | [113] |
| Water-loving animals, like the beavers, seemingly take great pride in their toilets. Their fur is always sleek and clean | [122] |
| Great forest pigs of Central Africa. Like the common domesticated hogs, they will seek a clay bath to heal their wounds | [123] |
| The Rocky Mountain goat has many means of defence, not the least of which is his agility in climbing to inaccessible places | [134] |
| Wild boars are among the most ferocious of animals. By means of their great strength alone they are well able to defend themselves | [135] |
| Brontosaurus. The animals that seemed best equipped to defend themselves are the ones that, thousands of years ago, became extinct | [144] |
| This prehistoric monster was equipped not only with a pair of strong horns but with a shield back of them as well | [145] |
| The beaver is the greatest of all animal architects. His skill is equalled only by his patience (in Colours) | [158] |
| The skunk mother tries to keep on hand a good supply of such delicacies as frogs and toads, so that her young may never go hungry | [172] |
| The porcupine and the hedgehog have a unique method of collecting food for their young. After shaking down berries or grapes, they roll in them, then hurry home with the food attached to their quills | [173] |
| The black bear is not one of the great migrating animals. The thickness of his coat must therefore change with the seasons | [188] |
| Rabbits seem to have a well-devised system in their road-building, running their paths in and out of underbrush in a truly ingenious manner | [189] |
| The mongoose, a scavenger of the worst type, feeding on rats and mice and snakes, and even poultry | [202] |
| Diplodocus. The prehistoric animals, also, undoubtedly had their scavengers and criminals | [203] |
| The Esquimo-dog is man's greatest friend in the Far North | [218] |
| Chipmunks are among the most easily tamed of man's wild friends, and they even seem fond of human companionship | [219] |
| Men cruelly take the lives of these denizens of the wildwood, rejoicing in their slaughter, but the animal soul they cannot kill | [244] |
| Two pals. There is between man and dog a kinship of spirit that cannot be denied | [245] |
FOREWORD
"And in the lion or the frog—
In all the life of moor or fen—
In ass and peacock, stork and dog,
He read similitudes of men."
More and more science is being taught in a new way. More and more men are beginning to discard the lumber of the brain's workshop to get at real facts, real conclusions. Laboratories, experiments, tables, classifications are all very vital and all very necessary but sometimes their net result is only to befog and confuse. Occasionally it becomes important for us to cast aside all dogmatic restraints and approach the wonders of life from a new angle and with the untrammelled spirit of a little child.
In this book I have attempted to bring together many old and new observations which tend to show the human-like qualities of animals. The treatment is neither formal nor scholastic, in fact I do not always remain within the logical confines of the title. My sole purpose is to make the reader self-active, observative, free from hide-bound prejudice, and reborn as a participant in the wonderful experiences of life which fill the universe. I hope to lead him into a new wonderland of truth, beauty and love, a land where his heart as well as his eyes will be opened.
In attempting to understand the animals I have used a method a great deal like that of the village boy, who when questioned as to how he located the stray horse for which a reward of twenty dollars had been offered, replied, "I just thought what I would do if I were a horse and where I would go—and there I went and found him." In some such way I have tried to think why animals do certain things, I have studied them in many places and under all conditions, and those acts of theirs which, if performed by children, would come under the head of wisdom and intelligence, I have classified as such.
Life is one throughout. The love that fills a mother's heart when she sees her first-born babe, is also felt by the mother bear, only in a different way, when she sees her baby cubs playing before her humble cave dwelling. The sorrow that is felt by the human heart when a beloved one dies is experienced in only a little less degree by an African ape when his mate is shot dead by a Christian missionary. The grandmother sheep that watches her numerous little lamb grandchildren on the hillside, while their mothers are away grazing, is just as mindful of their care as any human grandparent could be. One drop of water is like the ocean; and love is love.
The trouble with science is that too often it leaves out love. If you agree that we cannot treat men like machines, why should we put animals in that class? Why should we fall into the colossal ignorance and conceit of cataloging every human-like action of animals under the word "instinct"? Man delights in thinking of himself as only a little lower than the angels. Then why should he not consider the animals as only a little lower than himself? The poet has truly said that "the beast is the mirror of man as man is the mirror of God." Man had to battle with animals for untold ages before he domesticated and made servants of them. He is just beginning to learn that they were not created solely to furnish material for sermons, nor to serve mankind, but that they also have an existence, a life of their own.
Man has long preached this doctrine that he is not an animal, but a kinsman of the gods. For this reason, he has claimed dominion over animal creation and a right to assert that dominion without restraint. This anthropocentric conceit is the same thing that causes one nation to think it should rule the world, that the sun and moon were made only for the laudable purpose of giving light unto a chosen few, and that young lambs playing on a grassy hillside, near a cool spring, are just so much mutton allowed to wander over man's domain until its flavour is improved.
It is time to remove the barriers, once believed impassable, which man's egotism has used as a screen to separate him from his lower brothers. Our physical bodies are very similar to theirs except that ours are almost always much inferior. Merely because we have a superior intellect which enables us to rule and enslave the animals, shall we deny them all intellect and all feeling? In the words of that remarkable naturalist, William J. Long, "To call a thing intelligence in one creature and reflex action in another, or to speak of the same thing as love or kindness in one and blind impulse in the other, is to be blinder ourselves than the impulse which is supposed to govern animals. Until, therefore, we have some new chemistry that will ignore atoms and the atomic law, and some new psychology that ignores animal intelligence altogether, or regards it as under a radically different law from our own, we must apply what we know of ourselves and our own motives to the smaller and weaker lives that are in some distant way akin to our own."
It is possible to explain away all the marvellous things the animals do, but after you have finished, there will still remain something over and above, which quite defies all mechanistic interpretation. An old war horse, for instance, lives over and over his battles in his dreams. He neighs and paws, just as he did in real battle; and cavalrymen tell us that they can sometimes understand from their horses when they are dreaming just what command they are trying to obey. This is only one of the myriads of animal phenomena which man does not understand. If you doubt it, try to explain the striking phenomena of luminescence, hybridization, of eels surviving desiccation for fourteen years, post-matrimonial cannibalism, Nature's vast chain of unities, the suicide of lemmings, why water animals cannot get wet, transparency of animals, why the horned toad shoots a stream of blood from his eye when angry. If you are able to explain these things to humanity, you will be classed second only to Solomon. Yet the average scientist explains them away, with the ignorance and loquaciousness of a fisher hag.
By a thorough application of psychological principles, it is possible to show that man himself is merely a machine to be explained in terms of neurones and nervous impulses, heredity and environment and reactions to outside stimuli. But who is there who does not believe that there is more to a man than that?
Animals have demonstrated long ago that they not only have as many talents as human beings, but that under the influence of the same environment, they form the same kinds of combinations to defend themselves against enemies; to shelter themselves against heat and cold; to build homes; to lay up a supply of food for the hard seasons. In fact, all through the ages man has been imitating the animals in burrowing through the earth, penetrating the waters, and now, at last, flying through the air.
When a skunk bites through the brains of frogs, paralysing but not killing them, in order that he may store them away in his nursery-pantry so that his babes may have fresh food; when a mole decapitates earth-worms for the same reason and stores them near the cold surface of the ground so that the heads will not regrow, as they would under normal conditions, only a deeply prejudiced man can claim that no elements of intelligence have been employed.
There are also numerous signs, sounds and motions by which animals communicate with each other, though to man these symbols of language may not always be understandable. Dogs give barks indicating surprise, pleasure and all other emotions. Cows will bellow for days when mourning for their dead. The mother bear will bury her dead cub and silently guard its grave for weeks to prevent its being desecrated. The mother sheep will bleat most pitifully when her lamb strays away. Foxes utter expressive cries which their children know full well. The chamois, when frightened, whistle; they might be termed the policemen of the animal world. The sentinel will continue a long, drawn-out whistle, as long as he can without taking a breath. He then stops for a brief moment, looks in all directions, and begins blowing again. If the danger comes too near, he scampers away.
In their ability to take care of their wounded bodies, in their reading of the weather and in all forms of woodcraft, animals undoubtedly possess superhuman powers. Even squirrels can prophesy an unusually long and severe winter and thus make adequate preparations. Some animals act as both barometers and thermometers. It is claimed that while frogs remain yellow, only fair weather may be expected, but if their colour changes to brown, ill weather is coming.
There is no limit to the marvellous things animals do. Elephants, for example, carry leafy palms in their trunks to shade themselves from the hot sun. The ape or baboon who puts a stone in the open oyster to prevent it from closing, or lifts stones to crack nuts, or beats his fellows with sticks, or throws heavy cocoanuts from trees upon his enemies, or builds a fire in the forest, shows more than a glimmer of intelligence. In the sly fox that puts out fish heads to bait hawks, or suddenly plunges in the water and immerses himself to escape hunters, or holds a branch of a bush over his head and actually runs with it to hide himself; in the wolverine who catches deer by dropping moss, and suddenly springing upon them and clawing their eyes out; in the bear, who, as told in the account of Cook's third voyage, "rolls down pieces of rock to crush stags; in the rat when he leads his blind brother with a stick" is actual reasoning. Indeed, there is nothing which man makes with all his ingenious use of tools and instruments, of which some suggestion may not be seen in animal creation.
Great thinkers of all ages are not wanting who believe that animals have a portion of that same reason which is the pride of man. Montaigne admitted that they had both thought and reason, and Pope believed that even a cat may consider a man made for his service. Humboldt, Helvitius, Darwin and Smellie claimed that animals act as a definite result of actual reasoning. Lord Brougham pertinently observes, "I know not why so much unwillingness should be shown by some excellent philosophers to allow intelligent faculties and a share of reason to the lower animals, as if our own superiority was not quite sufficiently established to leave all jealousy out of view by the immeasurably higher place which we occupy in the scale of being."
From the facts enumerated in this book I find that animals are possessed of love, hate, joy, grief, courage, revenge, pain, pleasure, want and satisfaction—that all things that go to make up man's life are also found in them. In the attempt to establish this thesis I have been led mentally and physically into some of Nature's most fascinating highways and hedges, where I have had many occasions to wonder and adore. I will be happy if I have at least added something to the depth of love and appreciation with which most men look upon the animal world.
Royal Dixon.