[1] To the Teacher.—Please give the class other examples of the "Survival of the Fittest" among other creatures—birds, insects, fish, etc.
Now I come to the second special gift of the deer and the antelope. If by any chance a deer cannot hear a sneaking tiger, he can still smell the tiger.
Most animals can smell their enemy a long way off, even if they do not hear him or see him; but the deer and the antelope can smell the farthest. Even if a sneaking tiger is so cunning that he stops in a thicket and stands quite still for a minute, so that he does not make any sound at all,—and so the deer cannot hear him,—even then the deer can smell him when he is still a long way off.
I must tell you now that the tiger himself can smell the deer. But he cannot do that very far off,—so the deer always smells him first!
Also, the tiger can hear the deer, if the deer happens to be moving. But the tiger cannot hear quite so far as the deer can. So the deer always hears him first!
But in one thing the tiger is better off than the deer: the tiger can see farther than the deer. In the night most animals can see a little, but the tiger can see a little better and farther than the others. And in the daytime, if a deer were feeding in a very big level field, and a tiger came to the field from the other side, the tiger would see the deer before the deer could see him. Then the tiger would come round to the nearest thicket, and try to creep up to the deer from thicket to thicket.
Each Animal has the Gift he Needs Most
So, you understand, the deer can hear farther and smell farther; but the tiger can see farther.
And that is so because it is a wonderful rule in the jungle that each animal has the gift that he needs most.