If the races and nations of men were as peace-loving, honest and sensible in avoiding wars as all the wild animal species are, then would we indeed have a social heaven upon earth.
Now, tell me, ye winged winds that blow from the four corners of the earth and over the seven seas, whence came the Philosophy of Peace to the world's wild animals? Did they learn it by observing the ways of man? "It is to laugh," says the innkeeper. Man has not yet learned it himself; and therefore do we find the beasts of the field a lap ahead of the quarrelsome biped who has assumed dominion over them.
Day by day we read in our newspapers of men and women who are moral lepers and utterly unfit to associate with horses, dogs, cats, deer and elephants. Our big male chimpanzee, Father Boma, who knows no wife but Suzette, and firmly repels the blandishments of his neighbor Fanny, is a more moral individual than many a pretty gentleman whose name we see heading columns of divorce proceedings in the newspapers.
Said the Count to Julia in "The Hunchback," "Dost thou like the picture, dearest?" As a natural historian, it is our task to hew to the line, and let the chips fall where they will.
Among the wild animals there are but few degenerate and unmoral species. In some very upright species there are occasionally individual lapses from virtue. A famous case in point is the rogue elephant, who goes from meanness to meanness until he becomes unbearable. Then he is driven out of the herd; he becomes an outcast and a bandit, and he upsets carts, maims bullocks, tears down huts and finally murders natives until the nearest local sahib gets after him, and ends his career with a bullet through his wicked brain.
In my opinion the gray wolf of North America (like his congener in the Old World) is the most degenerate and unmoral mammal species on earth. He murders his wounded packmates, he is a greedy cannibal, he will attack his wife and chew her unmercifully. On the other hand, his one redeeming trait is that he helps to rear the pups,—when they are successfully defended from him by their mother!
The wolverine makes a specialty of devilish and uncanny cunning and energy in destroying the property of man. Trappers have told us that when a wolverine invades a trapper's cabin in his absence, he destroys very nearly its entire contents. The food that he can neither eat nor carry away he defiles in such a manner that the hungriest man is unable to eat it. This seems to be a trait of this species only,—among wild animals; but during the recent war it was asserted that similar acts were committed by soldiers in the captured and occupied villas of northern France.
The domestication of the dog has developed a new type of animal criminal. The sheep-killing dog is in a class by himself. The wild dog hunts in the broad light of day, often running down game by the relay system. The sheep-killing dog is a cunning night assassin, a deceiver of his master, a shrewd hider of criminal evidence, a sanctimonious hypocrite by day but a bloody-minded murderer under cover of darkness. Sometimes his cunning is almost beyond belief. Now, can anyone tell us how much of this particular evolution is due to the influence of Man upon Dog through a hundred generations of captivity and association? Has the dog learned from man the science of moral banditry, the best methods for the concealment of evidence, and how to dissemble?
Elsewhere a chapter is devoted to the crimes of wild animals; but the great majority of the cases cited were found among captive animals, where abnormal conditions produced exceptional results. The crimes of captive animals are many, but the crimes of free wild animals are comparatively few. Whenever we disturb the delicate and precise balance of nature we may expect abnormal results.