CHAPTER VI
PARENTAL AFFECTION
It has been claimed that one of the main objections to the doctrine of kinship, which, undoubtedly, exists between all animals, is the wide difference that is to be noted between the solicitude that animals evince for their young, and the tender love of the human mother and father for their children. This difference is more apparent than real; for the ethical love, the refined affection of civilized human parents for their offspring, is but a psychical culmination of the material and matter-of-fact solicitude of the lower animals for the preservation of their kind.
There is a vast difference between the psychical habitudes of a civilized mother and those of an Aleutian squaw or a Niam-niam "pot-boiler": the love of a civilized mother for her child extends throughout its life and even beyond the grave, while the solicitude of her savage sisters (I use the word in its maternal sense) for their offspring ceases as soon as the infant toddler is "tall enough to look into the pot." The latter emotion is closely akin to the maternal solicitude of the higher and lower animals, while the former in its refined ethical excellence shows that it is the result of unnumbered thousands of years of evolutionary growth and development.
The love of kind-preservation is inherent in all animals; it ranks next in psychical strength to self-preservation, and, in some instances, even surpasses this so-called "first law of nature." For it very frequently happens that the mother, both brute and human (and I use the word brute as the antithesis of the word human, and mean it to embrace all creatures other than man), will lay down her life in defence of her young, seemingly, utterly forgetting this "first law" in her aim to save her offspring from destruction. Thus the spider whose egg-bag I had taken away ran here and there and everywhere in search of it, seemingly totally oblivious of my presence. When I extended it to her, clasped between the blades of a small forceps, she seized it with her mandibles and vainly tried to take it away. When she discovered that this was impossible, she turned with fury on the forceps' blades and bit and tore at them in a perfect frenzy of despairing agony. I removed two of her front legs, yet, even when thus maimed and suffering, she never for an instant forgot her beloved bag in whose silken meshes so many of her young lay hidden. She continued her efforts to drag the bag away, and was so persistent and showed such high courage, that my calloused sensibilities, hardened by much biological research, were touched, and I gave her her treasure, which she bore away in triumph.[72]
I, on one occasion, severed an earwig at the injunction of the thorax and abdomen; the upper portion (the head and thorax) gathered together its brood of young and safely conducted them into a haven of safety beneath the bark of a tree.
In crustaceans we probably find the first unmistakable evidences of maternal love. The female crayfish, with the under surface of her tail covered with impregnated eggs or newly hatched young, will fight to the death in their behalf. I have, time and again, reared crayfish, and have succeeded in taming them to such a degree that they would take food from my fingers; whenever the females of these crustaceans became mothers, however, they became timid and suspicious and would seek out the darkest spots in the tanks where they were kept. If I attempted to handle them they would nip me with their sharp mandibles at the first opportunity that offered; they would allow no interference with their precious offspring if they could possibly prevent it. This is true of the lobster also. This giant crustacean, with her enormous forceps-like claws, generally wages a winning fight with the would-be ravishers of her young.
I once owned a monkey which was exceedingly fond of shell-fish. On one occasion I gave him a gravid lobster and came very near losing him thereby. Usually he seized the lobster or crayfish by its back and then broke off its forceps; he would then proceed to suck out its juices and extract its meat. On this occasion, however, the lobster was rendered bold and pugnacious by her burden of young, and managed in some way to close her forceps on one of the monkey's thumbs. He squalled out, and hammered the lobster on the bars of his cage in a vain endeavor to rid himself of his painful encumbrance. I finally loosened her grasp, but not until the flesh on the thumb had been cut to the bone. The wounded hand became inflamed, erysipelas set in, and the poor animal became very sick indeed. He eventually recovered, and ever afterward was exceedingly careful how he handled shell-fish. He approached them with caution, keeping a watchful eye on the dangerous forceps, until, by a quick and sudden dart of his hand, he could seize and tear them off.
It is a mistaken, though quite generally accepted, conclusion that wasps never behold their young, hence can readily be instanced, along with the butterfly and some other insects, as being creatures that evince solicitude for offspring which they never behold. I am quite confident that in the tropics certain of the butterflies live to see their young, for, on one occasion, Dr. Filipe Miranda told me that he was absolutely certain that many of the Papilioninæ and Euplocinæ of the Amazon valley lived at least a year and a half. I have kept alive in my room specimens of Heliconidæ for six and eight months, while mud-dauber wasps have repeatedly wintered in my room, and have witnessed the outcomings of spring broods. Thus, it not infrequently happens that these insect mothers are gratified by a sight of their offspring, though sometimes they evince painstaking care and solicitude toward creatures which they will never see.
The pond catfish, so common to the ponds and creeks of the middle and southern states, evinces maternal solicitude in a very marked degree. I have frequently seen a school of newly hatched catfish under the guardianship of an anxious and solicitous mother. She would swim around and about her frisky and unruly herd, carefully pressing forward all loiterers and bringing back into the school all stragglers. If a stick were thrown among the little fishes, she would dart toward it, and, seizing it in her mouth, would bear it fiercely away, and would not loose her hold of it until she had borne it some distance from her brood of young ones. Bass, white perch, and goggle-eye carefully guard their eggs and drive away all intruders; they likewise keep watchful eyes on the young for several days after they have been hatched. During such times these fish can be easily taken, for they will seize anything that comes near their nests.