The photograph shows a bear feeding on insects, possibly large ants, which he licks up from the ground, after scratching them out with his claws.
Mr. Watts Jones writes an interesting account of his sensations while being bitten by one of these bears: "I was following up a bear which I had wounded, and rashly went to the mouth of a cave to which it had got. It charged. I shot, but failed to stop it. I do not know exactly what happened next, neither does my hunter who was with me; but I believe, from the marks in the snow, that in his rush the bear knocked me over backwards—in fact, knocked me three or four feet away. When next I remember anything, the bear's weight was on me, and he was biting my leg. He bit, two or three times. I felt the flesh crush, but I felt no pain at all. It was rather like having a tooth out with gas. I felt no particular terror, though I thought the bear had got me; but in a hazy sort of way I wondered when he would kill me, and thought what a fool I was to get killed by a stupid beast like a bear. The shikari then very pluckily came up and fired a shot into the bear, and he left me. I felt the weight lift off me, and got up. I did not think I was much hurt.... The main wound was a flap of flesh torn out of the inside of my left thigh and left hanging. It was fairly deep, and I could see all the muscles working underneath when I lifted it up to clean the wound." This anecdote was sent to Mr. J. Crowther Hirst to illustrate a theory of his, that the killing of wild animals by other animals is not a painful one.
Rustem Pasha, once Turkish Ambassador in England, had an accident when brown bear shooting in Russia, and writes of it in the same sense: "When I met the accident alluded to, the bear injured both my hands, but did not tear off part of the arm or shoulder. In the moment of desperate struggle, the intense excitement and anger did, in fact, render me insensible to the feeling of actual pain as the bear gnawed my left hand, which was badly torn and perforated with holes, most of the bones being broken."
There is good reason to believe that when large carnivora, or beasts large in proportion to the size of their victims, strike and kill them with a great previous shock, the sense of pain is deadened. Not so if the person or animal is seized quietly. Then the pain is intense, though sometimes only momentary. A tigress seized Mr. J. Hansard, a forest officer in Ceylon, by the neck. In describing his sensations afterwards, he said: "The agony I felt was something frightful. My whole skull seemed as if it were being crushed to atoms in the jaws of the great brute. I certainly felt the most awful pain as she was biting my neck; but not afterwards, if I can remember." Sir Samuel Baker says he has twice seen the sloth-bear attack a howdah-elephant. Lord Edward St. Maur, son of the Duke of Somerset, was killed by one. Mr. Sanderson, the head of the Government Elephant-catching Department, used to hunt bears in the jungle with bull-terriers. Against these the bear was unable to make a good fight. They seized it by the nose; and as its claws were not sharp like those of the leopard, the bear could not get them off.
This bear seldom produces more than two or three young at a birth. The young cub is very ugly, but very strong, especially in the claws and legs. A six weeks' old cub has been turned upside-down in a basket, which was shaken violently, without dislodging the little animal clinging inside.
Photo by Fratelli Alinari] [Florence.
POLAR BEARS.
Though Arctic animals, polar bears can endure great heat. During a "heat wave" at Hamburg, Herr C. Hagenbeck found two of his leopards suffering from heat apoplexy, but the polar bears were enjoying the sun.
The Isabelline Bear and Himalayan Black Bear.