Animal Intelligence / The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.

by George John Romanes

I never before knew that domestic rabbits would fight with any carnivorous antagonist. That wild rabbits never do so I infer from having several times seen ferrets turn out from the most crowded burrow in a warren young stoats and weasels not more than four inches long.

It is evident that the show-fight instinct cannot have been developed in Himalayan rabbits by means of natural selection, but it is no less evident that if it ever arose in wild rabbits it would be preserved and intensified by such means.

The following observation of my own on a previously unnoticed instinct displayed by wild rabbits is, I think, of sufficient interest to render. Most people are aware that if a rabbit is shot near the mouth of its burrow, the animal will employ the last remnant of its life in struggling into it. Having several times observed that wounded rabbits which had thus escaped appeared again several days afterwards above ground, lying dead a few feet from the mouth of the burrow, I wished to ascertain whether the wounded animals had themselves come out before dying, possibly for air, or had been taken out by their companions. I therefore shot numerous rabbits while they were sitting near their burrows, taking care that the distance between the gun and the animal should be such as to insure a speedy, though not an immediate death. Having marked the burrows at which I shot rabbits in this manner I returned to them at intervals for a fortnight or more, and found that about one-half of the bodies appeared again on the surface in the way described. That this reappearance above ground is not due to the victim's own exertions, I am now quite satisfied; for not only did two or three days generally elapse before the body thus showed itself—a period much too long for a severely wounded rabbit to survive—but in a number of cases decomposition had set in. Indeed, on one occasion scarcely anything of the animal was left save the skin and bones. This was in a large warren.

It is a curious thing that I have hitherto been unable to get any bodies returned to the surface, of rabbits which I inserted into their burrows after death. I account for this by supposing that the stench of the decomposing carcass is not so intolerable to the other occupants of the burrow when it is near the orifice as it is when further in. Similarly, I find that there is not so good a chance of bodies being returned from an extensive warren of intercommunicating holes, as there is from smaller warrens or blind holes; the reason probably being that in the one case the living inhabitants are free to vacate the offensive locality, while in the other case they are not so. Anyhow, there can be no reasonable doubt that the instinct of removing their dead has arisen in rabbits from the necessity of keeping their confined domiciles in a pure state.

Hare.

The hare is a more intelligent animal than the rabbit. Possibly its much greater powers of locomotion may be one cause of its mental superiority to its nearest congener. I have never myself observed a hare commit the mistake already mentioned in the case of the rabbit, viz., that of crouching for concealment upon an inappropriately coloured surface. But the best idea of the comparatively high intelligence of the hare will be gained by the following quotations. The first of these is taken from Loudoun's 'Magazine of Natural History' (vol. iv., p. 143):—

It is especially conscious of the scent left by its feet, and of the danger which threatens it in consequence; a reflection which implies as much knowledge of the habits of its enemies as of its own. When about to enter its seat for the purpose of rest, it leaps in various directions, and crosses and recrosses its path with repeated springs; and at last, by a leap of greater energy than it has yet used, it effects a lodgment in the selected spot, which is chosen rather to disarm suspicion than to protect it from injury. In the 'Manuel du Chasseur' some instances are quoted from an ancient volume on hunting by Jaques du Fouillouse. A hare intending to mislead its pursuers has been seen spontaneously to quit its seat and to proceed to a pond at the distance of nearly a mile, and having washed itself, push off again through a quantity of rushes. It has, too, been known, when pursued to fatigue by dogs, to thrust another hare from its seat and squat itself down in its place. This author has seen hares swim successively through two or three ponds, of which the smallest was eighty paces round. He has known it, after a long chase, to creep under the door of a sheep-house and rest among the cattle, and when the hounds were in pursuit, it would get into the middle of a flock of sheep and accompany them in all their motions round the field, refusing by any means to quit the shelter they afforded. The stratagem of its passing forward on one side of a hedge and returning by the other, with only the breadth of the hedge between itself and its enemies, is of frequent occurrence, and it has even been known to select its seat close to the walls of a dog-kennel. This latter circumstance, however, is illustrative of the principles of reflection and reasoning; for the fox, weasel, and polecat are to the hare more dangerous enemies than the hound; and the situations chosen were such as those ferocious creatures were not likely to approach. A gentleman was engaged in the amusement of coursing, when a hare, closely pressed, passed under a gate, while the dogs followed by leaping over it. The delay caused to her pursuers by this manœuvre seems to have taught a sudden and useful lesson to the persecuted creature; for as soon as the dogs had cleared the gate and overtaken her, she doubled and returned under the gate as before, the dogs again following and passing over it. And this flirtation continued backwards and forwards until the dogs were fairly tired of the amusement; when the hare, taking advantage of their fatigue, quietly stole away.

The following note, by Mr. Yarrell, is significant of a process of reasoning derived from observations of the course of nature, such as would do no discredit to a higher race of creatures:—

A harbour of great extent on our northern coast has an island near the middle of considerable size, the nearest point of which is a mile distant from the mainland at high water, and with which point there is frequent communication by a ferry. Early one morning in spring two hares were observed to come down from the hills of the mainland towards the sea-side; one of which from time to time left its companion, and proceeding to the very edge of the water, stopped there a minute or two, and then returned to its mate. The tide was rising, and after waiting some time, one of them, exactly at high water, took to the sea, and swam rapidly over, in a straight line, to the opposite projecting point of land. The observer on this occasion, who was near the spot, but remained unperceived by the hares, had no doubt they were of different sexes, and that it was the male (like another Leander) which swam across the water, as he had probably done many times before. It was remarkable that the hares had remained on the shore nearly half an hour; one of them occasionally examining, as it would seem, the state of the current, and ultimately taking to the sea at that precise period of the tide called slackwater, when the passage across could be effected without being carried by the force of the stream either above or below the desired point of landing. The other hare then cantered back to the hills. (Loudoun's 'Magazine of Natural History,' vol. v., p. 99.)