III. THE HIGHER PASSIONS
XVIII
THE MORALS OF WILD ANIMALS
The ethics and morals of men and animals are thoroughly comparative, and it is only by direct comparisons that they can be analyzed and classified. It is quite possible that there are quite a number of intelligent men and women who are not yet aware of the fact that wild animals have moral codes, and that on an average they live up to them better than men do to theirs.
It is a painful operation to expose the grinning skeletons in the closets of the human family, but in no other way is it possible to hold a mirror up to nature. With all our brightness and all our talents,—real and imitation,—few men ever stop to ask what our horses, dogs and cats think of our follies and our wickedness.
By the end of the year 1921 the annual total of human wickedness had reached staggering proportions. From August 1914 to November 1918 the moral standing of the human race reached the lowest depth it ever sounded since the days of the cave-dwellers. This we know to be true, because of the increase in man's capacity for wickedness, and its crop of results. After what we recently have seen in Europe and Asia, and on the high seas, let no man speak of a monster in human form as "a brute;" for so far as moral standing is concerned, some of the animals allegedly "below man" now are in a position to look down upon him.
It is a cold and horrid fact that today, all around us, and sometimes close at hand, men are committing a long list of revolting crimes such as even the most debased and cruel beasts of the field never commit. I refer to wanton wholesale murder, often with torture; assault with violence, robbery in a hundred cruel forms, and a dozen unmentionable crimes invented by degenerate man and widely practiced. If anyone feels that this indictment is too strong, I can cite a few titles that will be quite sufficient for my case.
Let us make a few comparisons between the human species (Homo sapiens) and the so-called "lower" wild animals; and let it be understood that the author testifies, in courtroom phrase, only "to the best of his information and belief."
Only two wild animal species known to me,—wolves and crocodiles, —devour their own kind; but many of the races of men have been cannibals, and some are so today.
Among free wild animals, the cruel abuse or murder of children by their parents, or by other adults of the tribe, is unknown; but in all the "civilized" races of men infanticide and child murder are frightfully common crimes. In 1921 a six-year-old Eskimo girl, whose father and mother had been murdered, was strangled by her relatives, because she had no visible means of support.
The murder of the aged and helpless among wild animals is almost unknown; but among both the savage and the civilized races of men it is quite common. Our old acquaintance, Shack-Nasty Jim, the Modoc Indian, tomahawked his own mother because she hindered his progress; but many persons in and around New York have done worse than that.
Civil war between the members of a wild animal species is a thing unknown in the annals of wild-animal history; but among men it is an every-day occurrence.
Among free animals it is against the moral and ethical codes of all species of vertebrates for the strong to bully and oppress the weak; but it is almost everywhere a common rule of action with about ten per cent of the human race.
The members of a wild animal species are in honor bound not to rob one another, but with 25 per cent of the men of all civilized races, robbery, and the desire to get something for nothing, are ruling passions. No wild animals thus far known and described practice sex crimes; but the less said of the races of men on this subject, the better for our feelings.
Among animals, save in the warfare of carnivorous animals for their daily food, there are no exterminatory wars between species, and even local wars over territory are of very rare occurrence. Among men, the territorial wars of tribes and nations are innumerable, they have been from the earliest historic times, and they are certain to continue as long as this earth is inhabited by man. The "end of war" between the grasping nations of this earth is an iridescent dream, because of the inextinguishable jealousy and meanness of nations; but it is well to reduce them to a minimum. Nations like Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey and Russia will never stand hitched for any long periods. Their peace-loving neighbors need to keep their weapons well oiled and polished, and indulge in no hallucinations of a millenium upon this wicked earth.
In the mating season, there is fighting in many wild animal species between the largest and finest male individuals for the honor of overlordship in increasing and diffusing the species. These encounters are most noticeable in the various species of the deer family, because the fatal interlocking of antlers occasionally causes the death of both contestants. We have in our National Collection of Heads and Horns sets of interlocked antlers of moose, caribou, mule deer and white-tailed deer.
Otherwise than from the accidental interlocking of antlers,—due to the fact that an animal can push forward with far greater force than it can pull back,—I have never seen, heard or read of a wild animal having been killed outright in a fight over the possession of females. Fur seal and Stellar sea-lion bulls, and big male orang-utans, frequently are found badly scarified by wounds received in fighting during the breeding season, but of actual deaths we have not heard.
The first law of the jungle is: "Live, and let live."
Leaving out of account the carnivorous animals who must kill or die, all the wild vertebrate species of the earth have learned the logic that peace promotes happiness, prosperity and long life. This fundamentally useful knowledge governs not only the wild animal individual, but also the tribe, the species, and contiguous species.
Do the brown bears and grizzlies of Alaska wage war upon each other, species against species? By no means. It seems reasonably certain that those species occasionally intermarry. Do the big sea-lions and the walruses seek to drive away or exterminate the neighboring fur seals or the helpless hair seals? Such warfare is absolutely unknown. Do the moose and caribou of Alaska and Yukon Territory attack the mountain sheep and goats? Never. Does the Indian elephant attack the gaur, the sambar, the axis deer or the muntjac? The idea is preposterous. Does any species of giraffe, zebra, antelope or buffalo attack any other species on the same crowded plains of British East Africa? If so, we have yet to learn of it.
If the races and nations of men were as peace-loving, honest and sensible in avoiding wars as all the wild animal species are, then would we indeed have a social heaven upon earth.
Now, tell me, ye winged winds that blow from the four corners of the earth and over the seven seas, whence came the Philosophy of Peace to the world's wild animals? Did they learn it by observing the ways of man? "It is to laugh," says the innkeeper. Man has not yet learned it himself; and therefore do we find the beasts of the field a lap ahead of the quarrelsome biped who has assumed dominion over them.
Day by day we read in our newspapers of men and women who are moral lepers and utterly unfit to associate with horses, dogs, cats, deer and elephants. Our big male chimpanzee, Father Boma, who knows no wife but Suzette, and firmly repels the blandishments of his neighbor Fanny, is a more moral individual than many a pretty gentleman whose name we see heading columns of divorce proceedings in the newspapers.
Said the Count to Julia in "The Hunchback," "Dost thou like the picture, dearest?" As a natural historian, it is our task to hew to the line, and let the chips fall where they will.
Among the wild animals there are but few degenerate and unmoral species. In some very upright species there are occasionally individual lapses from virtue. A famous case in point is the rogue elephant, who goes from meanness to meanness until he becomes unbearable. Then he is driven out of the herd; he becomes an outcast and a bandit, and he upsets carts, maims bullocks, tears down huts and finally murders natives until the nearest local sahib gets after him, and ends his career with a bullet through his wicked brain.
In my opinion the gray wolf of North America (like his congener in the Old World) is the most degenerate and unmoral mammal species on earth. He murders his wounded packmates, he is a greedy cannibal, he will attack his wife and chew her unmercifully. On the other hand, his one redeeming trait is that he helps to rear the pups,—when they are successfully defended from him by their mother!
The wolverine makes a specialty of devilish and uncanny cunning and energy in destroying the property of man. Trappers have told us that when a wolverine invades a trapper's cabin in his absence, he destroys very nearly its entire contents. The food that he can neither eat nor carry away he defiles in such a manner that the hungriest man is unable to eat it. This seems to be a trait of this species only,—among wild animals; but during the recent war it was asserted that similar acts were committed by soldiers in the captured and occupied villas of northern France.
The domestication of the dog has developed a new type of animal criminal. The sheep-killing dog is in a class by himself. The wild dog hunts in the broad light of day, often running down game by the relay system. The sheep-killing dog is a cunning night assassin, a deceiver of his master, a shrewd hider of criminal evidence, a sanctimonious hypocrite by day but a bloody-minded murderer under cover of darkness. Sometimes his cunning is almost beyond belief. Now, can anyone tell us how much of this particular evolution is due to the influence of Man upon Dog through a hundred generations of captivity and association? Has the dog learned from man the science of moral banditry, the best methods for the concealment of evidence, and how to dissemble?
Elsewhere a chapter is devoted to the crimes of wild animals; but the great majority of the cases cited were found among captive animals, where abnormal conditions produced exceptional results. The crimes of captive animals are many, but the crimes of free wild animals are comparatively few. Whenever we disturb the delicate and precise balance of nature we may expect abnormal results.