Wild beasts

by J. Hampden Porter

Occasionally an old bull who despises that part of mankind who do not possess improved rifles, and knows perfectly well the difference between an Englishman and a native, will take possession of some unfortunate ryot’s millet field or cane patch, and hold it by right of conquest against all attempts to dislodge him. Crowds revile the animal from a safe distance, and a village shikári comes with a small-bored matchlock and shoots pieces of old iron and pebbles at him from the nearest position where it is mathematically certain that he will be secure. As for the marauder, he stays where he is until everything is eaten or destroyed, or until he gets tired.

The amount actually consumed by elephants forms but a small portion of the loss which agriculturists sustain from their forays. They always trample down and ruin far more than they eat. Both in India and Ceylon, various districts suffered so severely in this way that government gave rewards for all elephants killed. This has now been discontinued in both countries, but in many places where the herds are protected their numbers are increasing, so that the same necessity for thinning them out will again arise.

All over the cultivated portions of India platforms are erected in fields, where children by day, and men at night, endeavor to frighten away these invaders, together with the birds, antelopes, bears, monkeys, and wild hogs, that ravage their crops. No very signal success can be said to attend these efforts, and when a herd of elephants makes its appearance, they simply keep at a distance from the stages, and otherwise do as they please.

Plundering bands survey the ground, study localities, go on their duroras like a troop of Dacoits, and are organized for the time being in a rude way, under the influence of what Professor Romanes calls “the collective instinct.”

Hunters favorably situated can easily see this. A far-off trumpet now and then announces the herd’s advance through the forest, but as they approach the point where possible danger is to be apprehended, no token of their presence is given, and its first indication is the appearance of a scout,—not a straggler who has got in front by accident, but an animal upon whom the others depend, and who is there to see that all is safe. Everything about the creature, its actions and attitudes, the way it steps, listens, and searches the air with slowly moving trunk, speaks for itself of wariness, knowledge of what might occur, and an appreciation of the position it occupies; no doubt, to a certain extent, of a sense of responsibility. When this scout feels satisfied that no danger is impending, it moves on, at the same time assuring those who yet remain hidden that they may follow, by one of the many significant sounds that elephants make.

A number of narratives describe events as they are likely then to occur, but they are merely hunting stories, and so far as the writer’s memory serves, do not bring out the animal’s traits in any special way. It would appear, however, that the behavior of elephants who unexpectedly meet with Europeans in those places where all the resistance previously experienced came from farmers themselves, is very different from what it is in the former case. Then they are said to be difficult to get rid of, and when driven away from one point by shouts, horns, drums, and the firing of guns, they rush away to another part of the plantations, and continue their depredations. No such passive resistance as this is attempted when English sportsmen are upon the spot. Elephants discover their presence immediately. Upon the first explosion of a heavy rifle, the alarm is sounded from different parts of the field, and the herd betakes itself to flight without any notion of halting by the way. Their dominant idea is to get clear of those premises as soon as possible.

“The elephant,” says Andersson, “has a very expressive organ of voice. The sounds which he utters have been distinguished by his Asiatic keepers into three kinds. The first is very shrill, and is produced by blowing through his trunk. This is indicative of pleasure. The second, made by the mouth, is a low note expressive of want; and the third, proceeding from the throat, is a terrific roar of anger or revenge.” Sanderson seems to think that these discriminations are somewhat fanciful. He remarks that “elephants make use of a great variety of sounds in communicating with one another, and in expressing their wants and feelings.” But he adds that, while “some are made by the trunk and some by the throat, the conjunctures in which either means of expression is employed, cannot be strictly classified, as pleasure, fear, want, and other emotions are indicated by either.” Leveson, on the contrary, gives a list of these intonations, and describes the manner in which they are produced. So also does Tennant; and Baker adds another sound to those before given; “a growl,” this writer calls it, and he says that “it is exactly like the rumbling of distant thunder.”

Undoubtedly these animals express their thoughts and feelings intelligibly by the voice, as also through facial expressions, and by means of such gestures as they are capable of making. It has been before said that although the elephant’s face is half covered up, and there are no muscles either in his case or in that of any other animal, whose primary function is to express mental or emotional states, his physiognomy may be in the highest degree significant.

“The courage of elephants,” writes Captain Drayson, “seems to fluctuate in a greater degree than that of man. Sometimes a herd is unapproachable from savageness; sometimes the animals are the greatest curs in creation.” What is called boldness varies considerably in different species, among members of the same species, and in the same individuals at different times. It is a quality, that, like all others, is double-sided, certain elements belonging to the mind, and the residue to the body. Elephants are nervous; that is to say, their nerve centres—the ganglia in which energy is stored up—are constitutionally in a state of more or less unstable equilibrium, so that stimulus, whether of external origin, or initiated centrically, is apt to produce explosive effects. Courage depends upon physical and mental constitution, upon specializations in race, training, and structure, upon differences in personal experience and organization.

So much as this may be said with confidence, but on what grounds, biological or psychological, is it possible for Professor Romanes to assert that the elephant seems usually to be “actuated by the most magnanimous of feelings”? Magnanimity belongs to the rarest and loftiest type of human character: how did an elephant come by it? The obligations of mental and moral congruity are not less binding than those of physical fitness. No one nowadays draws an elephant with a human head; but a beast with self-respect, courage, refinement, sympathy, and charity enough to be magnanimous, does not seem to outrage any sense of propriety. Works like those of Watson (“Reasoning Power of Animals”), Broderip (“Zoölogical Recreations”), Bingley (“Animal Biography”), Swainson (“Habits and Instincts of Animals”), too often interpret facts so that they will fit preconceived opinions. There is a story, for example, by Captain Shipp, of how, during the siege of Bhurtpore, an elephant pushed another one into a well because he had appropriated his bucket. Tales like this resemble pictures in which the design and execution are both weak, and which depend for their effect upon accessories illegitimately introduced into the composition. Probably a large part of the present inhabitants of the earth have seen animals who, while contending for some possession, acted in a similar manner; but they were not elephants, nor were the circumstances of a well and a siege at hand to set them off, and produce an impression that the actual incident does not justify. The grief of captive elephants over their situation is a subject upon which many fine remarks have been made. Colonel Yule (“Embassy to Ava”) states that numbers die from this cause alone; but yaarba’hd, either in its dropsical or atrophic form, is what chiefly proves fatal to them, and this is brought on by the sudden and violent interruption of their natural way of life. According to Strachan, Sanderson, and other experts, the disorder is due to an overthrow of functional balance; something which is sure to induce disease whenever it occurs. Sterility, temporary failure of milk in females with calves, together with the various effects already mentioned, may be referred to the same cause. It is not said that elephants never die of grief; still less, that this is impossible. Any animal highly organized enough to feel intense and persistent sorrow may perish. Pain, either physical or mental, is intimately connected with waste of tissue and paralysis of reparative action. Bain’s formula that “states of pleasure are concomitant with an increase, and states of pain with a decrease, of some, or all, of the vital functions,” is not strictly correct as it stands; still the truth it is intended to convey remains indisputable. Grant-Allen (“Physiological Æsthetics”) defines pleasure as a “concomitant of the healthy action of any or all of the organs or members supplied with afferent cerebro-spinal nerves, to an extent not exceeding the ordinary powers of reparation possessed by the system.” Grief, when intense, reverses this, makes normal function impossible, palsies the viscera, and impairs or perverts those nutritive processes upon which life directly depends. But the profound and abiding sorrow this race cherishes in servitude is a romance. There is nothing to show the regret and longing which have been imagined. Elephants struggle for a while against coercion, and then forget. They fail to take advantage of opportunities for escape, and when they do, the fugitives are recaptured more easily than they were taken in the first place. Instances have often occurred of their voluntary return after a long absence. In the beginning, it is the finest animals who perish. They kill themselves in their struggles, or die of disease. Subsequently, it is said that domestication lengthens average life. This must, however, be one of those blank assertions made so commonly about wild beasts; since, independently of any other objection, it is evident that the statement, in order to be worth anything, should rest upon the basis of a wide comparison between the relative longevities of free and captive animals, and vital statistics of this kind, not only have not been tabulated, but it is impossible that they should have been collected.