XI
THE MIND OF THE ELEPHANT
It was in the jungles of the Animallai Hills of southern India that I first became impressed by the mental capacity of the Indian elephant. I saw many wild herds. I saw elephants at work, and at one period I lived in a timber camp, consisting of working elephants and mahouts. I saw a shrewd young elephant-driver soundly flogged for stealing an elephant, farming it out to a native timber contractor for four days, and then elaborately pretending that the animal had been "lost." Later on I saw elephant performances in the "Greatest Show on Earth" and elsewhere, and for eighteen years I have been chief mourner over the idiosyncrasies of Gunda and Alice. If I do not now know something about elephants, then my own case of animal intelligence is indeed hopeless.
To me it seems that the only thing necessary to establish the elephant as an animal of remarkable intellect and power of original reasoning is to set forth the unadorned facts that lie ready to hand.
Cuvier recorded the opinion that in sagacity the elephant in no way excels the dog and some other species of carnivora. Sir Emerson Tennent, even after some study of the elephant, was disposed to award the palm for intelligence to the dog, but only "from the higher degree of development consequent on his more intimate domestication and association with man." In the mind of G. P. Sanderson we fear that familiarity with the elephant bred a measure of contempt; and this seems very strange. He says:
"Its reasoning faculties are undoubtedly far below those of the dog, and possibly of other animals; and in matters beyond its daily experience it evinces no special discernment."
To me it seems that all three of those opinions are off the target. The dog is not a wild, untrammeled animal; and neither dogs, cats nor savage men evince any special discernment "beyond the range of their daily experience." Moreover, there are some millions of tame men of whom the same may be said with entire safety.
Very often the question is asked: "Is the African elephant equal in intelligence and training capacity to the Indian species?"
To this we must answer: Not proven. We do not know. The African species never has been tried out on the same long and wide basis as the Indian. Many individual African elephants, very intelligent, have been trained, successfully, and have given good accounts of themselves. For my own part I am absolutely sure that when taken in hand at the same age, and trained on the same basis as the Indian species, the African elephant will be found mentally quite the equal of the Indian, and just as available for work or performances.
No negro tribe really likes to handle elephants and train them. The Indian native loves elephants, and enjoys training them and working with them. It is these two conditions that have left the African elephant far behind the procession. The African elephant belongs to the great Undeveloped Continent. He has been, and he still is, mercilessly pursued and slaughtered for his tusks. All the existing species of African elephants are going down and out before the ivory hunters. We fear that they will all be dead one hundred years from this time, or even less. A century hence, when the last africanus has gone to join the mammoth and the mastodon, his well protected wild congener in India still will be devouring his four hundred pounds of green fodder per day, and the tame ones will be performing to amuse the swarming human millions of this overcrowded world.
In the minds of our elephant keepers, familiarity with elephants has bred just the reverse of contempt. Both Thuman and Richards are quite sure that elephants are the wisest of all wild animals.
Despite the very great amount of trouble made for Keeper Thuman by Gunda, the Indian, and Kartoum, the African, Thuman grows enthusiastic over the shrewdness of their "cussedness." He is particularly impressed by their skill in opening chain shackles, and unfastening the catches and locks of doors and gates. And really, Kartoum's ingenuity in finding out how to open latches and bolts is almost inexhaustible, as well as marvelous.
Keeper Richards declares that our late African pygmy elephant, Congo, was the wisest animal he ever has known. I have elsewhere referred to his ability in shutting his outside door. Richards taught him to accept coins from visitors, deposit them in a box, then pull a cord to ring a bell, one pull for each coin represented. The keeper devised four different systems of intimate signals by which he could tell Congo to stop at the right point, and all these were so slight that no one ever detected them. One was by a voice-given cue, another by a hand motion, and a third was by an inclination of the body.
Keeper Richards relates that Congo would go out in his yard, collect a trunkful of peanuts from visitors, bring them inside and secretly cache them in a corner behind his feed box. Then he would go out for more graft peanuts, bring them in, hide them and proceed to eat the first lot. There are millions of men who do not know what it is to conserve something that can be eaten.
In this discussion of the intellectual powers and moral qualities of the elephant I will confine myself to my own observations on Elephas indicus, except where otherwise stated. A point to which we ask special attention is that in endeavoring to estimate the mental capacity of the elephant, we will base no general conclusions upon any particularly intelligent individual, as all mankind is tempted to do in discussions of the intelligence of the dog, the cat, the horse, parrot and ape. On the contrary, it is our desire to reveal the mental capacity of every elephant living, tame or wild, except the few individuals with abnormal or diseased minds. It is not to be shown how successfully an elephant has been taught by man, but how all elephants in captivity have been taught, and the mental capacity of every elephant.
Under the head of intellectual qualities we have first to consider the elephant's
POWERS OF INDEPENDENT OBSERVATIONS, AND REASONING FROM CAUSE TO EFFECT
While many wonderful stories are related of the elephant's sagacity and independent powers of reasoning, it must be admitted that a greater number of more wonderful anecdotes are told on equally good authority of dogs. But the circumstances in the case are wholly to the advantage of the universal dog, and against the rarely seen elephant. While the former roams at will through his master's premises, through town and country, mingling freely with all kinds of men and domestic animals, with unlimited time to lay plans and execute them, the elephant in captivity is chained to a stake, with no liberty of action whatever aside from begging with his trunk, eating and drinking. His only amusement is in swaying his body, swinging one foot, switching his tail, and (in a zoological park) looking for something that he can open or destroy. Such a ponderous beast cannot be allowed to roam at large among human beings, and the working elephant never leaves his stake and chain except under the guidance of his mahout. There is no means of estimating the wonderful powers of reasoning that captive elephants might develop if they could only enjoy the freedom accorded to all dogs except the blood-hound, bull-dog and a few others.
In the jungles of India the writer frequently has seen wild elephants reconnoitre dangerous ground by means of a scout or spy; communicate intelligence by signs; retreat in orderly silence from a lurking danger, and systematically march, in single file, like the jungle tribes of men.
Once having approached to within fifty yards of the stragglers of a herd of about thirty wild elephants, which was scattered over about four acres of very open forest and quietly feeding, two individuals of the herd on the side nearest us suddenly suspected danger. One of them elevated his trunk, with the tip bent forward, and smelled the air from various points of the compass. A moment later an old elephant left the herd and started straight for our ambush, scenting the air with upraised trunk as he slowly and noiselessly advanced. We instantly retreated, unobserved and unheard. The elephant advanced until he reached the identical spot where we had a moment before been concealed. He paused, and stood motionless as a statue for about two minutes, then wheeled about and quickly but noiselessly rejoined the herd. In less than half a minute the whole herd was in motion, heading directly away from us, and moving very rapidly, but without the slightest noise. The huge animals simply vanished like shadows into the leafy depths of the forest. Before proceeding a quarter of a mile, the entire herd formed in single file and continued strictly in that order for several miles. Like the human dwellers in the jungle, the elephants know that the easiest and most expeditious way for a large body of animals to traverse a tangled forest is for the leader to pick the way, while all the others follow in his footsteps.
In strong contrast with the stealthy and noiseless manner in which elephants steal away from a lurking danger, or an ambush discovered, from an open attack accompanied with the noise of fire-arms they rush away at headlong speed, quite regardless of the noise they make. On one occasion a herd which I was designing to attack, and had approached to within forty yards, as its members were feeding in some thick bushes, discovered my presence and retreated so silently that they had been gone five minutes before I discovered what their sudden quietude really meant. In this instance, as in several others, the still alarm was communicated by silent signals, or sign-language.
At the Zoological Park we reared an African pygmy elephant (Elephas pumilio). When his slender little tusks grew to eighteen inches in length he made some interesting uses of them. Once when the keepers wished to lead him upon our large platform scales, the trembling of the platform frightened him. He conceived the idea that it was unsafe, and therefore that he must keep off. He backed away, halted, and refused to leave solid ground. The men pushed him. He backed, and trumpeted a shrill protest. The men pushed harder, and forced him forward. Trumpeting his wild alarm and his protest against what he regarded as murder, he fell upon his knees and drove his tusks into the earth, quite up to his mouth, to anchor himself firmly to the solid ground. It was pathetic, but also amusing. When Congo finally was pushed upon the scales and weighed, he left the trembling instrument of torture with an air of disgust and disapproval that was quite as eloquent as words. On several occasions when taken out for exercise in the park, he endeavored to hinder the return to quarters by anchoring himself to Mother Earth.
Congo once startled us by his knowledge of the usefulness of doors. For a time he was kept in a compartment that had an outside door running sidewise on a trolley track, and controlled by two hanging chains, one to close it and one to open it. Each chain had on its end a stout iron ring for a handle. One chilly morning when I went to see Congo, I asked his keeper to open his door, so that he could go out.
The keeper did so, by pulling the right hand chain. The moment the draft of chilly outer air struck Congo, who stood in the centre of his stall facing me, he impatiently wheeled about, walked up to the left hand chain, grabbed it with his trunk, slipped the ring over one of his tusks, then inclined his head downward and with an irritated tug pulled the door shut with a spiteful slam. "Open it again," I said to the keeper.
He did so, and in the same way, but with a visible increase in irritation, Congo closed it in the same manner as before. Again the keeper opened the door, and this time, with a real exhibition of temper Congo again thrust the ring over his tusk, and brought the door shut with a resounding bang. It was his regular habit to close that door, or to open it, when he felt like more air or less air; and who is there who will say that the act was due to "instinct" in a jungle-bred animal, or anything else than original thought. The ring on his tusk was his own invention, as a means to a desired end.
Every elephant that we ever have had has become, through his own initiative and experimenting, an expert in unfastening the latches of doors and gates, and in untying chains and ropes. Gunda always knew enough to attack the padlocks on his leg chains, and break them if possible. No ordinary clevis would hold him. When the pin was threaded at one end and screwed into its place, Gunda would work at it, hour by hour, until he would start it to unscrewing, and then his trunk-tip would do the rest. The only clevis that he could not open was one in which a stout cotter pin was passed through the end of the clevis-pin and strongly bent.
Through reasons emanating in his own savage brain, Gunda took strong dislikes to several of our park people. He hated Dick Richards,—the keeper of Alice. He hated a certain messenger boy, a certain laborer, a painter and Mr. Ditmars. Toward me he was tolerant, and never rushed at me to kill me, as he always did to his pet aversions. He stood in open fear of his own keeper, Walter Thuman, until he had studied out a plan to catch him off his guard and "get him." Then he launched his long-contemplated attack, and Thuman was almost killed.
Our present (1921) male African elephant, Kartoum, is not so hostile toward people, but his insatiable desire is to break and to smash all of his environment that can be bent or broken. His ingenuity in finding ways to damage doors and gates, and to bend or to break steel beams, is amazing. His greatest feat consisted in breaking squarely in two, by pushing with his head, a 90-pound steel railroad iron used as the top bar of his fence. He knows the mechanism of the latch of the ponderous steel door between his two box stalls, and nothing but a small pin that only human fingers can manipulate suffices to thwart his efforts to control the latch.
Kartoum has gone over every inch of surface of his two apartments, his doors, gates and fences, to find something that he can break or damage. The steel linings of his apartment walls, originally five feet high, we have been compelled to extend upward to a height of nine feet, to save the brick walls from being battered and disfigured. He has searched his steel fences throughout, in order to find their weakest points, and concentrate his attacks upon them. If the sharp-pointed iron spikes three inches long that are set all over his doors are perfectly solid, he respects them, but if one is the least bit loose in its socket, he works at it until he finally breaks it off.
I invite any Doubting Thomas who thinks that Kartoum does not "think" and "reason" to try his own thinking and reasoning at inventing for Kartoum's door a latch that a keeper can easily and surely open and close at a distance of ten feet, and that will be Kartoum-proof. As for ourselves, three or four seemingly intelligent officers and keepers, and a capable foreman of construction, have all they can do to keep ahead of that one elephant, so great is his ingenuity in thwarting our ways and means to restrain him.
In about two days of effort our elephant keepers taught Gunda to receive a coin from the hand of a visitor, or pick it off the floor, lift the lid of a high-placed cash-box, drop the coin into it and ring a bell. This very amusing industry was kept up for several years, but finally it became so popular that it had to be discontinued.
Keeper Dick Richards easily taught Alice to blow a mouth organ, and to ring a telephone, to take the receiver off its hook and hold it to her ear and listen. For years Alice has rendered, every summer, valuable services of a serious nature in carrying children and other visitors around her yard, and only once or twice has she shown a contrary or obstinate spirit.
Tame elephants never tread on the feet of their attendants or knock them down by accident; or, at least, no instances of the kind have come to my knowledge. The elephant's feet are large, his range of vision is circumscribed, and his extreme and wholly voluntary solicitude for the safety of his human attendants can not be due to anything else than independent reasoning. The most intelligent dog is apt to greet his master by planting a pair of dirty paws against his coat or trousers. The most sensible carriage-horse is liable to step on his master's foot or crowd him against a wall in a moment of excitement; but even inside the keddah, with wild elephants all about, and a captive elephant hemmed in by three or four tame animals, the noosers safely work under the bodies and between the feet of the tame elephant until the feet of the captive are tied.
All who have witnessed the tying of captives in a keddah wherein a whole wild herd has been entrapped, testify to the uncanny human- like quality of the intelligence displayed by the tame elephants who assist in tying, leading out and subjugating the wild captives. They enter into the business with both spirit and understanding, and as occasion requires will deceitfully cajole or vigorously punish a troublesome captive. Sir Emerson Tennent asserts that the tame elephants display the most perfect conception of every movement, both of the object to be attained and the means to accomplish it.
Memory in the Elephant. So far as memory may be regarded as an index of an animal's mental capacity, the weight of evidence is most convincingly creditable to the elephant. As a test of memory in an animal, we hold that a trained performance surpasses all others. During the past forty years millions of people have witnessed in either Barnum's or Ringling Brothers' shows, or in the two combined, an imitation military drill performed by from twelve to twenty elephants which in animals of any other species would be considered a remarkable performance. The following were the commands given by one trainer, understood and remembered by each elephant, and executed without any visible hesitation or mistake. These we will call the
Accomplishments of Performing Elephants.
1. Fall in line.
2. Roll-call. (As each elephant's name is called, he takes his place in the ranks).
3. Present arms. (The trunk is uplifted, with its tip curved forward and held in that position for a short time.)
4. Forward, march.
5. File left, march.
6. Right about face, march.
7. Left about face, march.
8. Right by twos, march.
9. Double quick, march.
10. Single file, march.
11. File right.
12. Halt.
13. Ground arms. (All lie down, and lie motionless.)
14. Attention (All arise.)
15. Shoulder arms. (All stand up on their hind-legs.)
In all, fifteen commands were obeyed by the whole company of elephants.
It being impossible, or at least impracticable, to supply so large a number of animals with furniture and stage properties for a further universal performance, certain individuals were supplied with the proper articles when necessary for a continuation of the performance, as follows:
16. Ringing bells.
17. Climbing up a step-ladder.
18. Going lame in a fore leg.
19. Going lame in a hind leg.
20. Stepping up on a tub turned bottom up.
[Illustration with caption: TAME ELEPHANTS ASSISTING IN TYING A WILD CAPTIVE The captive elephant is marked "C." The tame elephants have been quietly massed around him to keep him still and to give the noosers a chance to work at his legs from under the bodies of the tame elephants. The black figures on the tame elephants are their mahouts, wrapped in blankets and lying down. (From A. G. R. Theobald, Mysore)]
21. Standing on a tub on right legs only.
22. The same, on opposite legs.
23. The same, on the fore legs only.
24. The same, on the hind legs only.
25. Using a fan.
26. Turning a hand-organ.
27. Using a handkerchief to wipe the eyes.
28. Sitting in a chair.
29. Kneeling, with the fore legs.
30. Kneeling with the hind legs.
31. Walking astride a man lying lengthwise.
32. Stepping over a man lying down.
33. Forming a pyramid of elephants, by using tubs of various sizes.
While it is true that not all of the acts in the latter part of this performance were performed by each one of the elephants who went through the military drill, there is no reason to doubt the entire ability of each individual to be trained to obey the whole thirty-three commands, and to remember them all accurately and without confusion. The most astonishing feature of the performance, aside from the perfect obedience of the huge beasts, was their easy confidence and accuracy of memory.
We come now to a consideration of the Accomplishments of Working Elephants. In all the timber-forests of southern India every captive elephant is taught to perform all the following acts and services, as I have witnessed on many occasions:
1. To salaam, or salute, by raising the trunk.
2. To kneel, to receive a load or a passenger.
3. When standing, to hold up a fore-foot, to serve the driver as a step in climbing to his place.
4. To lie down to be washed, first on one side and then on the other.
5. To open the mouth. 6. To "hand up" any article from the ground to the reach of a person riding.
7. To pull down an obstructing bough.
8. To halt.
9. To back.
10. To pick up the end of a drag-rope and place it between the teeth.
11. To drag a timber.
12. To kneel and with the head turn a log over, or turn it with the tusks if any are present.
13. To push a log into position parallel with others.
14. To balance and carry timbers on the tusks, if possessing tusks of sufficient size.
15. To "speak," or trumpet.
16. To work in harness.
Every working elephant in India is supposed to possess the intelligence necessary to the performance of all the acts enumerated above at the command of his driver, either by spoken words, a pressure of the knees or feet, or a touch with the driving goad. For the sake of generalization I have purposely excluded from this list all tricks and accomplishments which are not universally taught to working elephants. We have seen, however, that performing elephants are capable of executing nearly double the number of acts commonly taught to the workers; and, while it is useless to speculate upon the subject, it must be admitted that, were a trainer to test an elephant's memory by ascertaining the exact number of commands it could remember and execute in rotation, the result would far exceed anything yet obtained. For my own part, I believe it would exceed a hundred. The performance in the circus-ring is limited by time and space, and not by the mental capacity of the elephants.
Comprehension under Training. When we come to consider the comparative mental receptivity and comprehension of animals under man's tuition, we find the elephant absolutely unsurpassed. On account of the fact that an elephant is about eighteen years in coming to anything like maturity, according to the Indian Government standard for working animals, it is far more economical and expeditious to catch full-grown elephants in their native jungles, and train them, than it is to breed and rear them. About ninety per cent of all the elephants now living in captivity were caught in a wild state and tamed, and of the remainder at least eighty per cent were born in captivity of females that were gravid when captured. It will be seen, therefore, that the elephant has derived no advantage whatever from ancestral association with man, and has gained nothing from the careful selection and breeding which, all combined, have made the collie dog, the pointer and the setter the wonderfully intelligent animals they are. For many generations the horse has been bred for strength, for speed, or for beauty of form, but the breeding of the dog has been based chiefly on his intelligence as a means to an end. With all his advantages, it is to be doubted whether the comprehensive faculties of the dog, even in the most exceptional individuals of a whole race, are equal to those of the adult wild elephant fresh from the jungle.
The extreme difficulty of teaching a dog of mature age even the simplest thing is so well known that it has passed into a proverb: "It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." In other words, the conditions must be favorable. But what is the case with the elephant? The question shall be answered by G. P. Sanderson. In his "Wild Beasts of India," he says: "Nor are there any elephants which can not be easily subjugated, whatever their size or age. The largest and oldest elephants are frequently the most easily tamed, as they are less apprehensive than the younger ones."
Philosophy of the Elephant in Accepting Captivity and Making the Best of It. The most astounding feature in the education of an elephant is the suddenness of his transition from a wild and lawless denizen of the forest to the quiet, plodding, good- tempered, and cheerful beast of draught or burden. I call it astounding, because in comparison with what could not be done with other wild animals caught when adult, no other word is adequate to express the difference. The average wild animal caught fully grown is "a terror," and so far as training is concerned, perfectly impossible.
There takes place in the keddah, or pen of capture, a mighty struggle between the giant strength of the captive and the ingenuity of man, ably seconded by a few powerful tame elephants. When he finds his strength utterly overcome by man's intelligence, he yields to the inevitable, and accepts the situation philosophically. Sanderson once had a narrow escape from death while on the back of a tame elephant inside a keddah, attempting to secure a wild female. She fought his elephant long and viciously, with the strength and courage of despair, but finally she was overcome by superior numbers. Although her attack on Sanderson in the keddah was of the most murderous description, he states that her conduct after her defeat was most exemplary, and she never afterward showed any signs of ill-temper.
Mr. Sanderson and an elephant-driver once mounted a full-grown female elephant on the sixth day after her capture, without even the presence of a tame animal. Sir Emerson Tennent records an instance wherein an elephant fed from the hand on the first night of its capture, and in a very few days evinced pleasure at being patted on the head. Such instances as the above can be multiplied indefinitely. To what else shall they be attributed than philosophic reasoning on the part of the elephant? The orang-utan and the chimpanzee, so often put forward as his intellectual superior, when captured alive at any other period than that of helpless infancy, are vicious, aggressive, and intractable not only for weeks and months, but for the remainder of their lives. Orangs captured when fully adult exhibit the most tiger-like ferocity, and are wholly intractable.
If dogs are naturally superior to elephants in natural intellect, it should be as easy to tame and educate newly-caught wild dogs or wolves of mature age, as newly-caught elephants. But, so far from this being the case, it is safe to assert that it would be impossible to train even the most intelligent company of pointers, setters or collies ever got together to perform the feats accomplished with such promptness and accuracy by all regularly trained work elephants.
The successful training of all elephants up to the required working point is so fully conceded in India that the market value of an animal depends wholly upon its age, sex, build and the presence or absence of good tusks. The animal's education is either sufficient for the buyer, or, if it is not, he knows it can be made so.
Promptness and Accuracy in the Execution of Man's Orders. This is the fourth quality which serves as a key to the mental capacity and mental processes of an animal.
To me the most impressive feature of a performance of elephants in the circus-ring is the fact that every command uttered is obeyed with true military promptness and freedom from hesitation, and so accurately that an entire performance often is conducted and concluded without the repetition of a single command. One by one the orders are executed with the most human-like precision and steadiness, amounting sometimes to actual nonchalance. Human beings of the highest type scarcely could do better. To some savage races—for example, the native Australians, the Veddahs of Ceylon, or the Jackoons of the Malay Peninsula, I believe that such a performance would be impossible, even under training. I do not believe their minds act with sufficient rapidity and accuracy to enable a company of them to go through with such a wholly artificial performance as successfully as the elephants do.
The thoughtful observer does not need to be told that the brain of the ponderous quadruped acts, as far as it goes, with the same rapidity and precision as that of an intelligent man,—and this, too, in a performance that is wholly artificial and acquired. In the performance of Bartholomew's horses, of which I once kept a record in detail, even the most accomplished members of his troupe often had to be commanded again and again before they would obey. A command often was repeated for the fifth or sixth time before the desired result was obtained. I noted particularly that not one of his horses,—which were the most perfectly trained of any ever seen by me,—was an exception to this rule, or performed his tasks with the prompt obedience and self-confidence so noticeable in each one of the sixteen Barnum elephants. The horses usually obeyed with tardiness and hesitation, and very often manifested nervousness and uncertainty.
In the mind of the elephant, e. g., each elephant, there was no confusion of ideas or lapses of memory, but, on the contrary, the mental grasp on the whole subject was so secure and comprehensive that the animal felt himself the master of the situation.
I have never yet seen a performance of trained dogs which could be considered worthy of serious comparison with the accomplishments of either performing or working elephants. In the matter of native educational capacity the dog can not on any grounds be considered the rival of the elephant. The alleged mental superiority of the dog is based almost wholly upon his powers of independent reasoning and observation as exhibited in a state of almost perfect freedom. Until the elephant who has grown to maturity under man's influence, is allowed the dog's freedom to plan and execute, no conclusive comparison between them can be made.
Moral Qualities of the Elephant. Finally, we come to a consideration of the elephant's moral qualities that have a direct bearing upon our subject. In India, excepting the professional "rogue," the elephant bears a spotless reputation for patience, amiability and obedience. The "rogue" is an individual afflicted with either an incorrigible disposition, or else is afflicted with insanity, either temporary or permanent. I know of no instance on record wherein a normal elephant with a healthy mind has been guilty of unprovoked homicide, or even of attempting it. I have never heard of an elephant in India so much as kicking, striking or otherwise injuring either human beings or other domestic animals. There have been several instances, however, of persons killed by elephants which were temporarily insane, or "must," and also by others permanently insane. In America several persons have been killed in revenge for ill treatment. In Brooklyn a female elephant once killed a civilian who burned her trunk with a lighted cigar. It is the misfortune but not the fault of the elephant that in advanced age or by want of necessary exercise, he is liable to be attacked by must, or sexual insanity, during which period he is clearly irresponsible for his acts.
So many men have been killed by elephants in this country that of late years the idea has been steadily gaining ground that elephants are naturally ill-tempered, and vicious to a dangerous extent. Under fair conditions, nothing could be farther from the truth. We have seen that in the hands of the "gentle Hindu" the elephant is safe and reliable, and never attacks man except under the circumstances already stated. In this country, however, many an elephant is at the mercy of quick-tempered and sometimes revengeful showmen, who very often do not understand the temperaments of the animals under their control, and who during the traveling season are rendered perpetually ill-tempered and vindictive by reason of overwork and insufficient sleep. With such masters as these it is no wonder that occasionally an animal rebels, and executes vengeance. In Minneapolis in December an elephant once went on a rampage through the freezing of its ears. I am quite convinced that an elephant could by ill treatment be driven to insanity, and I have no doubt that this has been done many times. Our bad elephant, Gunda, was bad by nature, but finally he became afflicted with sexual insanity, for which there was no cure. When commanded by man, the elephant will tear a criminal limb from limb, or crush him to death with his knees, or go out to battle holding a sword in his trunk. He will, when told to do so, attack his kind with fury and persistence; but in the course of many hours, and even days, spent in watching wild herds, I never yet saw a single individual show any signs of impatience or ill-temper toward his fellows.
It is safe to say that, thus far, not one half the elephant's mental capabilities have been developed, or even understood. It would be of great interest to determine by experiment the full educational capacity of this interesting quadruped. It would be equally interesting to determine the limit of its reasoning powers in applied mechanics. An animal that can turn a hand-organ at the proper speed, or ring a telephone and go through the motions of listening with a receiver, can be taught to push a smoothing-plane invented purposely for him; but whether he would learn of himself to plane the rough surface smooth, and let the smooth ones remain untouched, is an open question.
While it is generally fruitless and unsatisfactory to enter the field of speculation, I can not resist the temptation to assert my belief that an elephant can be taught to read written characters, and also to express some of his own thoughts or states of feeling in writing. It would be a perfectly simple matter to prepare suitable appliances by which the sagacious animal could hold a crayon in his trunk, and mark upon a surface adapted to his convenience. Many an elephant has been taught to make chalk-marks on a blackboard. In Julian's work on "The Nature of Animals," the eleventh chapter of the second book, he describes in detail the wonderful performances of elephants at Rome, all of which he saw. One passage is of peculiar interest to us, and the following has been given as a translation: "…I saw them writing letters on Roman tablets with their trunks, neither looking awry nor turning aside. The hand, however, of the teacher was placed so as to be a guide in the formation of the letters; and, while it was writing, the animal kept its eye fixed down in an accomplished and scholar- like manner."
I can conceive how an elephant may be taught that certain characters represent certain ideas, and that they are capable of intelligent combinations. The system and judgment and patient effort which developed an active, educated, and even refined intellect in Laura Bridgman—deaf, dumb and blind from birth— ought certainly to be able to teach a clear-headed, intelligent elephant to express at least some of his thoughts in writing.
I believe it is as much an act of murder to wantonly take the life of a healthy elephant as to kill a native Australian or a Central- African savage. If it is more culpable to kill an ignorant human savage than an elephant, it is also more culpable to kill an elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are both morally and intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, and are, in my opinion, as wholly destitute of that indefinable attribute called soul as all the lower animals commonly are supposed to be.
If an investigator like Dr. Yerkes, and an educator like Dr. Howe, should take it in hand to develop the mind of the elephant to the highest possible extent, their results would be awaited with peculiar interest, and it would be strange if they did not necessitate a revision of the theories now common among those who concede an immortal soul to every member of the human race, even down to the lowest, but deny it to all the animals below man.
Curvature in the Brain of an Elephant. There is curvature of the spine; and there is curvature in the brain. It afflicts the human race, and all other vertebrates are subject to it.
In the Zoological Park we have had, and still have, a persistent case of it in a female Indian elephant now twenty-three years of age, named "Alice." Her mental ailment several times manifested itself in Luna Park, her former home; but when we purchased the animal her former owners carelessly forgot to mention it.
Four days after Alice reached her new temporary home in our Antelope House, and while being marched around the Park for exercise, she heard the strident cry of one of our mountain lions, and immediately turned and bolted.
Young as she was at that time, her two strong and able-bodied keepers, Thuman and Bayreuther, were utterly unable to restrain her. She surged straight forward for the front door of the Reptile House, and into that building she went, with the two keepers literally swinging from her ears.
As the great beast suddenly loomed up above the crowd of sightseers in the quiet building, the crowd screamed and became almost panic-stricken.
Partly by her own volition and partly by encouragement, she circumnavigated the turtle-bank and went out.
Once outside she went where she pleased, and the keepers were quite unable to control her. Half an hour later she again headed for the Reptile House and we knew that she would again try to enter.
In view of the great array of plate glass cases in that building, many of them containing venomous cobras, rattlesnakes, moccasins and bushmasters, we were thoroughly frightened at the prospect of that crazy beast again coming within reach of them.
With our men fighting frantically, and exhausted by their prolonged efforts to control her, Alice again entered the Reptile House. As she attempted to pass into the main hall,—the danger zone,—our men succeeded in chaining her front feet to the two steel posts of the guard rail, set solidly in concrete on each side of the doorway. Alice tried to pull up those posts by their roots, but they held; and there in front of the Crocodile Pool the keepers and I camped for the night. We fed her hay and bread, to keep her partially occupied, and wondered what she would do in the morning when we would attempt to remove her.
Soon after dawn a force of keepers arrived. Chaining the elephant's front feet together so that she could not step more than a foot, we loosed the chains from the two posts and ordered her to come to an "about face," and go out. Instead of doing that she determinedly advanced toward the right, and came within reach of twelve handsome glazed cases of live reptiles that stood on a long table. Frantically the men tried to drive her back. For answer she put her two front feet on the top bar of the steel guard rail and smashed ten feet of it to the floor. Then she began to butt those glass snake cages off their table, one by one.
"Boom!" "Bang!" "Crash!" they went on the floor, one after another. Soon fourteen banded rattlesnakes of junior size were wriggling over the floor. "Smash" went more cases. The Reptile House was in a great uproar. Soon the big wall cases would be reached, and then—I would be obliged to shoot her dead, to avoid a general delivery of poisonous serpents, and big pythons from twenty to twenty-two feet long. The room resounded with our shouts, and the angry trumpeting of Alice.
At last, by vigorous work with the elephant hooks, Alice was turned and headed out of the building. A foot at a time she passed out, then headed toward the bear dens. Midway, we steered her in among some young maple trees, and soon had her front legs chained to one of them. Alice tried to push it over, and came near to doing so.
Then we quickly tied her hind legs together,—and she was all ours. Seeing that all was clear for a fall, we joyously pushed Alice off her feet. She went over, and fell prone upon her side. In three minutes all her feet were securely anchored to trees, and we sat down upon her prostrate body.
At that crowning indignity Alice was the maddest elephant in the world for that day. We gave her food, and the use of her trunk, and left her there twenty-four hours, to think it over. She deserved a vast beating with canes; but we gave her no punishment whatever. It would have served no good purpose.
During the interval we telephoned to Coney Island, and asked Dick
Richards, the former keeper of Alice, to come and reason with her.
Promptly he came,—and he is still guiding as best he can the
checkered destinies of that erring female.
When Alice was unwound and permitted to arise,—with certain limitations as to her progress through the world,—it was evident that she was in a chastened mood. She quietly marched to her quarters at the Antelope House, and there we interned her. But that was not all of Alice. Very soon we had to move her to the completed Elephant House, half a mile away. Keeper Richards said that two or three times she had bolted into buildings at Luna Park; so we prepared to overcome her idiosyncrasies by a combination of force and strategy. I had the men procure a strong rope about one hundred feet long, in the middle of which I had them fix a very nice steel hook, large enough to hook suddenly around a post or a tree.
One end of that rope we tied to the left foot of Charming Alice, and the remainder of the rope was carried out at full length in front of her.
Willingly enough she started from the Antelope House, and Richards led her about three hundred feet. Then she stopped, and disregarding all advice and hooks, started to come about, to return to the Antelope House. Quickly the anchor was hooked around the nearest fence post, and Alice fetched up against a force stronger than herself. She was greatly annoyed, but in a few minutes decided to go on.
Another lap of two hundred feet, and the same act was repeated, without the slightest variation.
This process continued for nearly half a mile. By that time we were opposite the Elk House and Alice had become wild with baffled rage. She tried hard to smash fences and uproot trees.
At last she stood still and refused to move another foot; and then we played our ace of trumps. Near by, twenty laborers were working. Calling all hands, they took hold of that outstretched rope, and heading straight for the new Elephant House started a new tug of war. Every "heave-ho" of that hilarious company meant a three-foot step forward for Gentle Alice,—willy-nilly. As she raged and roared, the men heaved and laughed. A yard at a time they pulled that fatal left foot, into the corral and into the apartment of Alice; and she had to follow it.
Ever since that time, Alice has been permanently under arrest, and confined to her quarters; but within the safe precincts of two steel-bound yards she carries children on her back, and in summer earns her daily bread.
Elephant Mentality in the Jungle. Mr. A. E. Ross, while Commissioner of Forests in Burma, had many interesting experiences with elephants, and he related the following:
A bad-tempered mahout who had been cruel to his work-elephant finally so enraged the animal that it attempted to take revenge. To forestall an accident, the mahout was discharged, and for two years he completely disappeared. After that lapse of time he quietly reappeared, looking for an engagement. As the line of elephants stood at attention at feeding time, with a score of persons in a group before them, the elephant instantly recognized the face of his old enemy, rushed for him, and drove him out of the camp.
An ill-tempered and dangerous elephant, feared by everybody, once had the end of his trunk nearly cut off in an accident. While the animal was frantic with the pain of it, Mr. Ross ordered him to lie down. As the patient lay in quiet submission, he dressed the wound and put the trunk in rude bamboo splints. The elephant wisely aided the amateur elephant doctor until the wound healed; and afterward that once dangerous animal showed dog-like affection for Mr. Ross.