Theft is a common vice among these various criminals. Monkeys and baboons form regular bands to rob and plunder. They have a chief who sees that a sentinel is posted at each dangerous post. The plunderers then line up in a long row, and the leader gets the booty and passes it along the line until it reaches the last of the band—the receiver. He deposits it in a safe place. If the sentry sounds an alarm, they all flee away, each with as much booty as he can grab. If the enemy presses too close, all booty is thrown away.
Passion, especially of love, causes much crime among animals as it does among men. Jealousy burns fiercely even in the breast of a beast. It is a common heritage of the fiercest lion and the gentle gazelle alike, and is capable of perpetrating the most dreadful crimes.
There are types of ugly dispositioned animals, who are always in a ferocious mood, just like certain ill-tempered human beings, who believe everything and everybody is trying to injure them. The common shrew, for example, is noisy, bold and fussy. He seems to delight in calling attention to himself by his grunty, squeaky voice. He advertises himself as a bad animal; and bad he is, for his terrible odour prevents other animals from coming near. Horses and mules are at times quite ferocious, and kick and bite, with no idea of obedience or kindness. They, of course, like our human criminals, are mentally unbalanced. Skilled horse trainers can detect at a glance a criminally inclined horse.
Rogue elephants are common in India. Even their trumpeting shows a ferocity and unbalance that terrifies the natives. Often these criminal elephants are sufferers of mental ailments. A respectable, law-abiding elephant herd will not allow a thug or rogue to live in their midst. They recognise him as dangerous for their society, and combine to force him entirely away from their homes.
Certain criminal animals have a strange antipathy for members of their own tribe, or for other kinds of animals. Such is common among monkeys, cats, horses, and dogs, and many terrible crimes are committed because of these antipathies. Every one has witnessed the terror of a dog that has been insulted, and elephants will carry an old grudge for fifty years and finally seek the most terrible revenge.
Often violent outbursts of temper on the part of a tame animal are caused by a change in the temperature or atmosphere. Even animals have days when they feel ugly and grouchy. Those that live in very hot climates are especially subject to fits of rage and anger. The approach of an electrical storm causes many of them to lose their self-control: herds of cattle often stampede just preceding a cyclone. They, like human savages, seem terrorised at the unknown. Not a few wild animals have actually run in the way of an automobile or passing train to attempt to stop it. Fear and rage are often caused by the appearance of a curious object. A bull, for example, when he sees a red rag, will madly rush at it, seemingly altogether oblivious of the man holding it. The matadors are safe only because the bull is insane from rage.
Many scientists of fame, like Lombroso, have demonstrated that strong drink is the cause of much crime among animals, the same as it is among men. In the pastures of Abyssinia the sheep and goats get on regular "drunks" by eating the beans of the coffee plants. They fight and carouse at such times like regular topers. Elephants are incorrigible when drunk, while dogs and horses have to be put in strait-jackets to prevent them from killing themselves.
Wicked animals always seek their own kind, and often band together for evil purposes. Figuier tells of three beavers that built for themselves a nice little home near a stream, and they had as a neighbour a respectable hermit beaver. The three called on their neighbour one day, and he received them cordially, and hastened to return their visit, when they pounced upon him and slew him, like human murderers, who had trapped their victim.
From all these we learn that Nature is filled with life-saving and life-furthering adaptations. Just as in the human drama we find deceit, disguise, mask, trickery, bunco and bluff, all forms of cheating and clever deceptions, so it is precisely the same in the animal world, though man is little informed on Nature's real ways.