The study of the intelligence and temperaments of wild animals is by no means a pursuit of academic interest only. Men now are mixing up with dangerous wild beasts far more extensively than ever before, and many times a life or death issue hangs upon the man's understanding of the animal mind. I could cite a long and gruesome list of trainers, keepers and park owners who have been killed by the animals they did not correctly understand.
Not long ago, it was a park owner who was killed by a dangerous deer. Next it was a bull elk who killed the keeper who undertook to show that the animal was afraid of him. In Idaho we saw a death-penalty mistake with a bull buffalo. Recently, in Spain, an American ape trainer was killed by his big male chimpanzee. Recently in Switzerland a snake-charmer was strangled and killed on the stage by her python.
Men who keep or who handle dangerous animals owe it to themselves, their heirs and their assigns to know the animal mind and temperament, and to keep on the safe side.
In view of the tragedies and near-tragedies that animal trainers and keepers have been through during the past twenty years, I am desirous of so vividly exhibiting the wild animal mind and temper that at least a few of the mistakes of the past may be avoided in the future. Fortunately I am able to state that thus far no one ever has been killed by an animal in the Zoological Park; but several of our men have been severely hurt. The writer hereof carries two useless fingers on his best hand as a reminder of a fracas with a savage bear. How Dangerous Animals Attack Men. The following may be listed as the wild animals most dangerous to man:
1. In the open: Alaskan brown bears, the grizzly bears, lion, tiger, elephant, leopard, wolf, African buffalo, Indian gaur and buffalo, and gorilla.
All these species are dangerous to the man who meddles with them, either to kill or to capture them. If they are not molested by man, there is very little to fear from any of them save the man- eating lions, and tigers, the northern wolf packs, Alaskan brown bears and rogue elephants.
2. In captivity, or in process of capture: Under this head a special list may be thus composed:
Male elk and deer in the rutting season; male elephants over fifteen years of age; all bears over one year of age, and especially "pet" bears; all gorillas, chimpanzees and orangs over seven years of age (puberty); all adult male baboons, gibbons, rhesus monkeys, callithrix or green monkeys, Japanese red-faced monkeys and large macaques; many adult bison bulls and cows of individually bad temper; also gaur, Old World buffalo, anoa bulls, many individually bad African antelopes, gnus and hartebeests; all lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, wolves, hyenas, and all male zebras and wild asses over four years of age.
How they attack. The lion, tiger and bear launches at a man's head or face a lightning-quick and powerful fore-paw blow that in one stroke tears the skin and flesh in long gashes, and knocks down the victim with stunning force. Before recovery is possible the assailant rushes to the prostrate man and begins to bite or to tear him. Instinctively the fallen man covers his face with his arms, and with the lion, tiger and leopard the arms come in for fearful punishment. It is the way of carnivorous beasts to attack each other head to head and mouth to mouth, and this same instinct leads these animals to focus their initial attacks upon the heads and faces of their human quarry.
After a man-eating lion or tiger has reduced the human victim to a state of non-resistance, the great beast seizes the man by a bite embracing the chest, and with the feet dragging upon the ground rushes off to a place of safety to devour him at leisure. Dr. David Livingston was seized alive by a lion, and carried I forget how many yards without a stop. His left humerus was broken in the onset, but the lion abandoned him without doing him any further serious harm.