Wild beasts

by J. Hampden Porter

At the same time there seems to be some general preconception with respect to the character of wild beasts, such as converts every manifestation of prudence into poltroonery. The clash of opinions expressed about all the more imposing animals witnesses to the crude and arbitrary manner in which they have been formed. With respect to this one, not the tiger himself has been the subject of more irreconcilable statements.

Stories of puma hunting and of the animal’s exploits depend, so far as their style is concerned, upon the place where they are told, and the experiences of the narrator. No hunter of large game thinks it anything of a feat to shoot a cougar, yet the author has known these brutes to fight desperately when brought to bay, and in two instances their resistance was sufficiently formidable to cause, in the one case loss of life, and in the other injuries from which men never entirely recovered. Many such examples might be gathered, but they are nevertheless exceptional. A puma is not difficult to kill, and if it is seen in time, a properly armed man must either be very unfortunate or very unfit for the position in which he finds himself, if the result is not favorable. What is said of the panther and leopard, however, by Captain Forsyth (“The Highlands of Central India”) and by Sir Samuel Baker (“Wild Beasts and their Ways”) is peculiarly applicable to this animal: it is almost always met with unexpectedly, and no mortal can say beforehand what it will do. If taken at advantage and by surprise, as commonly happens, a single man would not usually have much chance at close quarters. The writer has, however, known them to be killed with knives, though not without severe injury to the victor.

The average native of tropical America, while fully appreciating how much more dangerous is the beast he calls a tiger, is quite enough impressed with the prowess of its smaller, though sometimes equally ferocious ally, to have his mind saturated with superstitions concerning pumas. Tapuyo or Mameluco guides will sit by a camp fire and talk in a way to put Acuna or Artieda in the background. Almost equally with the jaguar this creature has supernatural and diabolic connections. When its rarely heard cry or scream, as any one may choose to call a sound so difficult to describe and which varies so greatly, floats through the forest, these natives never know whether they hear a prowling cougar, or the voice of that god from whom its race descended. Botos, a demon of woodland lakes, guides the beast to his prey; the basilisk worm Minhocao is somehow connected with it in its designs against human beings, and the deadly man-like Cæpora shrieks in concert with pumas as they roam through the darkness. W. A. Parry (“The Cougar”) says that its cry “can only be likened to a scream of demoniac laughter,” and that the female’s answer to her mate’s call resembles “the wail of a child in terrible pain.”

James Orton and Prince Maximilian of Nieuwied have severally settled it that cougars are all abject cowards. Speaking from personal recollection, the author feels no hesitation in saying that it required great singleness of mind to come to this conclusion, and much dexterity to go where they did and avoid seeing things which might have modified this conclusion.

It does not follow, for reasons which have been explained at length, that because a puma attacks a grizzly bear he must be dangerous to a man; or because numbers of men have undoubtedly been killed in some places, that it should be formidable to human beings everywhere.

“When hungry,” says Theodore Roosevelt (“Hunting Trips of a Ranchman”), “a cougar will attack anything it can master.” Audubon, however, supposes that it never ventures to assail such large animals as cows or steers. William B. Stevenson (“Twenty Years in South America”) tells us how destructive this creature is to horses, and also how the more than half-wild cattle of the pampas form into rings to defend themselves. Captain Flack (“A Hunter’s Experience in the Southern States of America”) relates an incident in which his horse was stalked by a cougar. S. S. Hill (“Travels in Peru and Mexico”) informs us that “this animal always flies at the sight of man.” G. W. Webber (“The Hunter Naturalist”) declares that he “knows hundreds of well-authenticated instances in which the cougar or panther attacked the early hunters—springing suddenly upon them from an ambush.” Many writers affirm that calves, colts, sheep, goats, swine, are the only domestic animals ever preyed upon, and a deer the largest wild creature which is destroyed. But a traveller like Charles Darwin was certain to observe that, although in La Plata “cougars seldom assault cattle or horses, and most rarely man,” living principally on ostriches, deer, bizcacha, etc., in Chile, they killed all those animals they are said never to touch, including man.

Moreover, we read dogmatic assertions to the effect that pumas always leap on their victims from behind, and break their necks by bending back the head. Another authority decides that this is so far from being the case that death commonly arises from dislocation caused by a blow with the paw; still another insists that the vertebræ are not disjointed at all, but bitten through, which is again denied by those who are convinced that cougars invariably kill their prey by cutting the throat. Much the same statements are made about everything the beast does or is said to do, and the conclusion, which one familiar with this kind of literature comes to, is that these conflicting statements are not all false, but in a restricted sense all true. That is to say, the several ways of destruction mentioned are practised as occasion requires or suggests.

One point at least with regard to the puma’s disposition in certain directions is more clearly set forth than has been the case in respect to other beasts of prey, and this is the fact that the creature’s temper has been greatly changed by contact with mankind. The same thing has happened everywhere with all game hunted successfully for a long period; but this fact is ignored, and brutes whose natures are different in some minor traits from what they once were, are discussed as if the special features now exhibited had been always the same.

C. Barrington Brown (“Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana”) relates an incident which occurred while he was exploring the upper courses of the Cutari and Aramatau rivers. “One evening, while returning to camp along the portage path that we were cutting at Wonobobo Falls, I walked faster than the men, and got some two hundred yards in advance of them. As I rose the slope of an uneven piece of ground, I saw a large puma (Felis concolor) advancing towards me, along the other side of the rise, with its nose close to the ground. The moment I saw it I stopped, and at the same instant it tossed up its head, and seeing me also, came to a stand. With its body half-crouched, its head erect, and its eyes round and black from the expansion of their pupils in the dusky light, it was at once a noble and appalling sight. I glanced back along our wide path to see if any of the men were coming, as at that moment I felt that it was not well to be alone without some weapon of defence, and I knew that one of them had a gun; but nothing could be seen. As long as I did not move the puma remained motionless also; and thus we stood, some fifteen yards apart, eyeing each other curiously. I had heard that the human voice was potent in scaring most wild beasts, and feeling that the time had arrived for doing something desperate, I waved my arms in the air and shouted loudly. The effect on the animal was electrical; it turned quickly to one side, and in two bounds was lost in the forest.”

Now why did this brute thus behave? The narrative gives not the least explanation of its conduct. Brown thought it was frightened by his gestures, because a few days before he had come upon a jaguar basking on a rock by the river, whose serenity was not at all disturbed by the voices of a boat full of men. But that was merely a guess. Very probably this animal had never seen a man previously, and almost certainly not a white man in civilized costume. There was then the profound impressiveness of absolute strangeness in the sight, and this alone would have been more likely to alarm a human being or intelligent brute than any other cause we know of. Perhaps the puma had just devoured a peccary and was gorged; or possibly its keen senses revealed the approach of Brown’s party, who in fact appeared almost immediately. One may see in a narrative like this, which is a fair specimen of those relations from which most dogmatic conclusions upon the character of wild beasts have been drawn, how arbitrary and unjustifiable they generally are.