How animals talk

by William J. Long

It is true that the event often befalls otherwise, since you may jump one animal without alarming others of the same herd; and it is possible that the degree or quality of the alarm has something to do with its carrying power, as we feel the intense emotion of a friend more quickly than his ordinary [[103]]moods. In this case the solitary caribou was tremendously startled; for I was very near, and the first intimation he had of me, or I of him, was when my snow-shoe caught on a snag and I pitched over a log almost on top of him. Yet the difficulty of drawing a conclusion from any single instance appears in this: that I have more than once stalked, killed and dressed an animal without disturbing others of his kind near at hand (it may be that no alarm was sent out, for the animal was shot before he knew the danger, and in the deep woods animals pay little attention to the sound of a rifle); and again, when I have been trying to approach a herd from leeward, I have seen them move away hurriedly, silently, suspiciously, in obedience to some warning which seemed to spread through the woods like a contagion.

The latter experience is common enough among hunters of big game, who are often at a loss to explain the sudden flight of animals that a moment ago, under precisely the same outward influences, were feeding or resting without suspicion. Thus, you may be stalking a big herd of elk, or wapiti, which are spread out loosely over half a mountainside. You are keen for the master bull with the noble antlers; nothing else interests you, more’s the pity; but you soon learn that the cunning old [[104]]brute is hidden somewhere in the midst of the herd, depending on the screen of cow-elk to warn him of danger to his precious skin. Waiting impatiently till this vanguard has moved aside, you attempt to worm your way nearer to the hidden bull. You are succeeding beautifully, you think, when a single cow that you overlooked begins to act uneasily. She has not seen or heard you, certainly, and the wind is still in your favor; but there she stands, like an image of suspicion, head up, looking, listening, testing the air, till she makes up her mind she would as lief be somewhere else, when without cry or grunt or warning of any kind that ears can hear she turns and glides rapidly away.

Now if you value animal lore above stuffed skins, or experience above the babble of hunting naturalists, forget the big bull and his greed-stirring antlers; scramble quickly to the highest outlook at hand, and use your eyes. No alarm has been sounded; the vast silence is unbroken; yet for some mysterious reason the whole herd is suddenly on the move. To your right, to your left, near at hand or far away, bushes quiver or jump; alert brown forms appear or vanish like shadows, all silent and all heading in the direction taken by the first sentinel. One moment there are scores of elk in sight, feeding or resting [[105]]quietly; the next they are gone and the great hillside is lifeless. The thrill of that silent, moving drama has more wisdom in it, yes, and more pleasure, than the crash of your barbarous rifle or the convulsive kicking of a stricken beast that knows not why you should kill him.

Such is the experience, known to almost every elk-hunter who has learned that life is more interesting than death; and I know nothing of deer nature to explain it save this—that the whole herd has suddenly felt and understood the silent impulse to go, and has obeyed it without a question, as the young wolf or fox cub obeys the silent return call of his watchful mother.

Such impulses seem to be more common and more dependable among the whales, which have rudimentary or imperfect sense-organs, but which are nevertheless delicately sensitive to external impressions, to the approach of unseen danger, to the movements of the tiny creatures on which they feed, to changes of wind or tide and to a falling barometer, as if nature had given them a first-class feeling apparatus of some kind to make up for their poor eyes and ears. Repeatedly have I been struck by this extraordinary sensitiveness when watching the monstrous creatures feeding with the tide in one of the great bays of the Newfoundland or the Labrador coast. If I lowered a [[106]]boat to approach one of them, he would disappear silently before I could ever get near enough to see clearly what he was doing. That seemed odd to me; but presently I began to notice a more puzzling thing: at the instant my whale took alarm every other whale of the same species seemed to be moved by the same impulse, sounding when the first sounded, or else turning with him to head for the open sea.

A score of times I tried the experiment, and commonly, but not invariably, with the same result. I would sight a few leviathans playing or feeding, shooting up from the deep, breaching half their length out of water to fall back with a tremendous souse; and through my glasses I would pick up others here or there in the same bay. Selecting a certain whale, I would glide rapidly toward him, crouching low in the dory and sculling silently by means of an oar over the stern. By some odd channel of perception (not by sight, certainly, for I kept out of the narrow range of his eye, and a whale is not supposed to smell or hear) he would invariably get wind of me and go down; and then, jumping to my feet, I would see other whales in the distance catch the instant alarm, some upending as they plunged to the deeps, others whirling seaward and forging full speed ahead. [[107]]

This observation of mine is not unique, as I supposed, for later I heard it echoed as a matter of course by the whalemen. Thus, when I talked with my friend, Captain Rule, about the ways of the great creatures he had followed in the old whaling-days, he said, “The queerest habit of a whale, or of any other critter I ever fell foul of, was this: when I got my boat close enough to a sperm-whale to put an iron into him, every other sperm-whale within ten miles would turn flukes, as if he had been harpooned, too.” But he added that he had not noticed the same contagion of alarm, not in the same striking or instantaneous way, when hunting the right or Greenland whale—perhaps because the latter is, as a rule, more solitary in its habits.

Wolves and caribou and whales are far from the observation of most folk; but the winter birds in your own yard may some time give you a hint, at least, of the same mysterious transference of an impulse over wide distances. When you scatter food for them during a cold snap or after a storm (it is better not to feed them regularly, I think, especially in mild weather when their proper food is not covered with snow) your bounty is at first neglected except by the house sparrows and starlings. Unlike our native birds, these imported foreigners are easily “pauperized,” seeking [[108]]no food for themselves so long as you take care of them. They keep tabs on you, also, waiting patiently about the house, and soon learn what it means when you emerge from your back door on a snowy morning with a broom in one hand and a pan in the other. They are feeding greedily the moment your back is turned, and for a time they are the only birds at the table. When they have gorged themselves, for they have no manners, a few tree-sparrows and juncos flit in to eat daintily. Then suddenly the wilder birds appear—jays, chickadees, siskins, kinglets and, oh, welcome! a flock of bob-whites—coming from you know not where, in obedience to a summons which you have not heard. Some of these may have visited the yard in time past, and are returning to it now, hunger driven; but others you have never before met within the city limits, and a few have their accustomed dwelling in the pine woods, which are miles away. How did these hungry hermits suddenly learn that food was here?

The answer to that question is simple, and entirely “sensible” if you think only of birds that live or habitually glean in your neighborhood. Some of them saw you scatter the food, or else found it by searching, while others spied these lucky ones feeding and came quickly to join the feast. For birds that live wider afield there is also [[109]]an explanation that your senses can approve, though it is probably wrong or only half right: from a distance they chanced to see wings speeding in the direction of your yard, and followed them expectantly because wings may be as eloquent as voices, the flight of a bird when he is heading for food being very different from the flight of the same bird when he is merely looking for food. But these most rare visitors, kinglets or pine-finches or grosbeaks or bob-whites, that never before entered your yard, and that would not be here now had you not thought to scatter food this morning,—at these you shake your head, calling it chance or Providence or mystery, according to your mood or disposition. To me, after observing the matter closely many times, the reasonable explanation of these rare visitors is that either wild birds know how to send forth a silent food-call or, more likely, that the excitement of feeding birds spreads powerfully outward, and is felt by other starving birds, alert and sensitive, at a distance beyond all possible range of sight or hearing. By no other hypothesis can I account for the fact that certain wild birds make their appearance in my yard at a moment when a number of other birds are eagerly feeding, and at no other time, though I watch for them from one year’s end to another.

Like every other explanation, whether of stars [[110]]or starlings, this also leads to a greater mystery. The distance at which such a summoning call can be felt by others must be straitly limited, else would all the starving birds of a state be flocking to my yard on certain mornings; and the force by which the silent call is projected is as unknown as the rare mental ether which bears its waves or vibrations in all directions. Yet the problem need not greatly trouble us, since the answer, when it comes, will be as natural as breathing. If silent or telepathic communication exists in nature, and I think it surely does, the mystery before us is no greater than that which daily confronts the astronomer or the wireless operator. One measures the speed of light from Orion; the other projects his finger-touch across an ocean; but neither can tell or even guess the quality of the medium by which the light or the electric wave is carried to its destination.