The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals Part 14

It is safe to say that, thus far, not one half the elephant's mental capabilities have been developed, or even understood. It would be of great interest to determine by experiment the full educational capacity of this interesting quadruped. It would be equally interesting to determine the limit of its reasoning powers in applied mechanics. An animal that can turn a hand-organ at the proper speed, or ring a telephone and go through the motions of listening with a receiver, can be taught to push a smoothing-plane invented purposely for him; but whether he would learn of himself to plane the rough surface smooth, and let the smooth ones remain untouched, is an open question.

While it is generally fruitless and unsatisfactory to enter the field of speculation, I can not resist the temptation to a.s.sert my belief that an elephant can be taught to read written characters, and also to express some of his own thoughts or states of feeling in writing. It would be a perfectly simple matter to prepare suitable appliances by which the sagacious animal could hold a crayon in his trunk, and mark upon a surface adapted to his convenience. Many an elephant has been taught to make chalk-marks on a blackboard. In Julian's work on "The Nature of Animals," the eleventh chapter of the second book, he describes in detail the wonderful performances of elephants at Rome, all of which he saw.

One pa.s.sage is of peculiar interest to us, and the following has been given as a translation: "...I saw them writing letters on Roman tablets with their trunks, neither looking awry nor turning aside. The hand, however, of the teacher was placed so as to be a guide in the formation of the letters; and, while it was writing, the animal kept its eye fixed down in an accomplished and scholar- like manner."

I can conceive how an elephant may be taught that certain characters represent certain ideas, and that they are capable of intelligent combinations. The system and judgment and patient effort which developed an active, educated, and even refined intellect in Laura Bridgman--deaf, dumb and blind from birth-- ought certainly to be able to teach a clear-headed, intelligent elephant to express at least _some_ of his thoughts in writing.

I believe it is as much an act of murder to wantonly take the life of a healthy elephant as to kill a native Australian or a Central- African savage. If it is more culpable to kill an ignorant human savage than an elephant, it is also more culpable to kill an elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are both morally and intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, and are, in my opinion, as wholly dest.i.tute of that indefinable attribute called soul as all the lower animals commonly are supposed to be.

If an investigator like Dr. Yerkes, and an educator like Dr. Howe, should take it in hand to develop the mind of the elephant to the highest possible extent, their results would be awaited with peculiar interest, and it would be strange if they did not necessitate a revision of the theories now common among those who concede an immortal soul to every member of the human race, even down to the lowest, but deny it to all the animals below man.

Curvature in the Brain of an Elephant. There is curvature of the spine; and there is curvature in the brain. It afflicts the human race, and all other vertebrates are subject to it.

In the Zoological Park we have had, and still have, a persistent case of it in a female Indian elephant now twenty-three years of age, named "Alice." Her mental ailment several times manifested itself in Luna Park, her former home; but when we purchased the animal her former owners carelessly forgot to mention it.

Four days after Alice reached her new temporary home in our Antelope House, and while being marched around the Park for exercise, she heard the strident cry of one of our mountain lions, and immediately turned and bolted.

Young as she was at that time, her two strong and able-bodied keepers, Thuman and Bayreuther, were utterly unable to restrain her. She surged straight forward for the front door of the Reptile House, and into that building she went, with the two keepers literally swinging from her ears.

As the great beast suddenly loomed up above the crowd of sightseers in the quiet building, the crowd screamed and became almost panic-stricken.

Partly by her own volition and partly by encouragement, she circ.u.mnavigated the turtle-bank and went out.

Once outside she went where she pleased, and the keepers were quite unable to control her. Half an hour later she again headed for the Reptile House and we knew that she would again try to enter.

In view of the great array of plate gla.s.s cases in that building, many of them containing venomous cobras, rattlesnakes, moccasins and bushmasters, we were thoroughly frightened at the prospect of that crazy beast again coming within reach of them.

With our men fighting frantically, and exhausted by their prolonged efforts to control her, Alice again entered the Reptile House. As she attempted to pa.s.s into the main hall,--the danger zone,--our men succeeded in chaining her front feet to the two steel posts of the guard rail, set solidly in concrete on each side of the doorway. Alice tried to pull up those posts by their roots, but they held; and there in front of the Crocodile Pool the keepers and I camped for the night. We fed her hay and bread, to keep her partially occupied, and wondered what she would do in the morning when we would attempt to remove her.

Soon after dawn a force of keepers arrived. Chaining the elephant's front feet together so that she could not step more than a foot, we loosed the chains from the two posts and ordered her to come to an "about face," and go out. Instead of doing that she determinedly advanced toward the right, and came within reach of twelve handsome glazed cases of live reptiles that stood on a long table. Frantically the men tried to drive her back. For answer she put her two front feet on the top bar of the steel guard rail and smashed ten feet of it to the floor. Then she began to b.u.t.t those gla.s.s snake cages off their table, one by one.

_"Boom!" "Bang!" "Crash!"_ they went on the floor, one after another. Soon fourteen banded rattlesnakes of junior size were wriggling over the floor. "Smash" went more cases. The Reptile House was in a great uproar. Soon the big wall cases would be reached, and then--I would be obliged to shoot her dead, to avoid a general delivery of poisonous serpents, and big pythons from twenty to twenty-two feet long. The room resounded with our shouts, and the angry trumpeting of Alice.

At last, by vigorous work with the elephant hooks, Alice was turned and headed out of the building. A foot at a time she pa.s.sed out, then headed toward the bear dens. Midway, we steered her in among some young maple trees, and soon had her front legs chained to one of them. Alice tried to push it over, and came near to doing so.

Then we quickly tied her hind legs together,--and she was all ours. Seeing that all was clear for a fall, we joyously pushed Alice off her feet. She went over, and fell p.r.o.ne upon her side.

In three minutes all her feet were securely anch.o.r.ed to trees, and we sat down upon her prostrate body.

At that crowning indignity Alice was the maddest elephant in the world for that day. We gave her food, and the use of her trunk, and left her there twenty-four hours, to think it over. She deserved a vast beating with canes; but we gave her no punishment whatever. It would have served no good purpose.

During the interval we telephoned to Coney Island, and asked d.i.c.k Richards, the former keeper of Alice, to come and reason with her.

Promptly he came,--and he is still guiding as best he can the checkered destinies of that erring female.

When Alice was unwound and permitted to arise,--with certain limitations as to her progress through the world,--it was evident that she was in a chastened mood. She quietly marched to her quarters at the Antelope House, and there we interned her. But that was not all of Alice. Very soon we had to move her to the completed Elephant House, half a mile away. Keeper Richards said that two or three times she had bolted into buildings at Luna Park; so we prepared to overcome her idiosyncrasies by a combination of force and strategy. I had the men procure a strong rope about one hundred feet long, in the middle of which I had them fix a very nice steel hook, large enough to hook suddenly around a post or a tree.

One end of that rope we tied to the left foot of Charming Alice, and the remainder of the rope was carried out at full length in front of her.

Willingly enough she started from the Antelope House, and Richards led her about three hundred feet. Then she stopped, and disregarding all advice and hooks, started to come about, to return to the Antelope House. Quickly the anchor was hooked around the nearest fence post, and Alice fetched up against a force stronger than herself. She was greatly annoyed, but in a few minutes decided to go on.

Another lap of two hundred feet, and the same act was repeated, without the slightest variation.

This process continued for nearly half a mile. By that time we were opposite the Elk House and Alice had become wild with baffled rage. She tried hard to smash fences and uproot trees.

At last she stood still and refused to move another foot; and then we played our ace of trumps. Near by, twenty laborers were working. Calling all hands, they took hold of that outstretched rope, and heading straight for the new Elephant House started a new tug of war. Every "heave-ho" of that hilarious company meant a three-foot step forward for Gentle Alice,--w.i.l.l.y-nilly. As she raged and roared, the men heaved and laughed. A yard at a time they pulled that fatal left foot, into the corral and into the apartment of Alice; and she had to follow it.

Ever since that time, Alice has been permanently under arrest, and confined to her quarters; but within the safe precincts of two steel-bound yards she carries children on her back, and in summer earns her daily bread.

Elephant Mentality in the Jungle. Mr. A. E. Ross, while Commissioner of Forests in Burma, had many interesting experiences with elephants, and he related the following:

A bad-tempered mahout who had been cruel to his work-elephant finally so enraged the animal that it attempted to take revenge.

To forestall an accident, the mahout was discharged, and for two years he completely disappeared. After that lapse of time he quietly reappeared, looking for an engagement. As the line of elephants stood at attention at feeding time, with a score of persons in a group before them, the elephant instantly recognized the face of his old enemy, rushed for him, and drove him out of the camp.

An ill-tempered and dangerous elephant, feared by everybody, once had the end of his trunk nearly cut off in an accident. While the animal was frantic with the pain of it, Mr. Ross ordered him to lie down. As the patient lay in quiet submission, he dressed the wound and put the trunk in rude bamboo splints. The elephant wisely aided the amateur elephant doctor until the wound healed; and afterward that once dangerous animal showed dog-like affection for Mr. Ross.

XII

THE MENTAL AND MORAL TRAITS OF BEARS

Considered as a group, the bears of the world are supremely interesting animals. In fact, no group surpa.s.ses them save the Order Primates, and it requires the enrollment of all the apes, baboons and monkeys to accomplish it.

From sunrise to sunrise a bear is an animal of original thought and vigorous enterprise. Put a normal bear in any new situation that you please, he will try to make himself master of it. Use any new or strange material that you please, of wood, metal, stone or concrete, and he will cheerfully set out to find its weakest points and destroy it. If one board in a wall happens to be of wood a little softer than its fellows, with wonderful quickness and precision he will locate it. To tear his way out of an ordinary wooden cage he asks nothing better than a good crack or a soft knot as a starting point.

Let him who thinks that all animals are mere machines of heredity and nothing more, take upon himself the task of collecting, yarding, housing and KEEPING a collection of thirty bears from all over the world, representing from ten to fifteen species. In a very short time the believer in bear knowledge by inheritance only, will begin to see evidences of new thought.

In spite of our best calculations, in twenty-two years and a total of about seventy bears, we have had three bear escapes. The species involved were an Indian sloth bear, an American black bear and a Himalayan black bear. The troublesome three laboriously invented processes by which, supported by surpa.s.sing acrobatics, they were able to circ.u.mvent our overhanging bars. Now, did the mothers of those bears bequeath to them the special knowledge which enabled them to perform the acrobatic mid-air feat of warping themselves over that sharp-pointed overhang barrier? No; because none of their parents ever saw steel cage-work of any kind.

Universal Traits. The traits common to the majority of bear _species_ as we see them manifested in captivity are the following:

First, playfulness; second, spasmodic treachery; third, contentment in comfortable captivity; fourth, love of water; fifth, enterprise in the mischievous destruction of things that can be destroyed.

The bears of the world are distributed throughout Asia, Borneo, the heavy forests of Europe, all North America, and the northwestern portion of South America. In view of their wonderfully interesting traits, it is surprising that so few books have been written about them. The variations in bear character and habit are almost as wide as the distribution of the species.

There are four books in English that are wholly devoted to American bears and their doings. These are "The Grizzly Bear" and "The Black Bear," by William H. Wright, of Spokane(Scribner's), "The Grizzly Bear," by Enos A. Mills, and "The Adventures of James Capen Adams." In 1918 Dr. C. Hart Merriam published as No. 41 of "North American Fauna" a "Review of the Grizzly and Brown Bears of North America" (U.S. Govt.). This is a scientific paper of 135 pages, the product of many years of collecting and study, and it recognizes and describes eighty-six species and sub-species of those two groups in North America. The cla.s.sification is based chiefly upon the skulls of the animals.

It is unfortunate that up to date no bear student with a tireless pen has written The Book of Bears. But let no man rashly a.s.sume that he knows "all about bears." While many bears do think and act along certain lines, I am constantly warning my friends, "Beware of the Bear! You never can tell what he will do next." I hasten to state that of all the bears of the world, the "pet" bear is the most dangerous.

A Story of a "Pet" Bear. In one of the cities of Canadaa gentleman greatly interested in animals kept a young bear cub, as a pet; and once more I say--if thine enemy offend thee, present him with a black-bear cub. The bear was kept in a back yard, chained to a post, and after his first birthday that alleged "pet"

dominated everything within his circ.u.mpolar region.

One day a lady and gentleman called to see the pet, to observe how tame and good-natured it was. The owner took on his arm a basket of tempting apples, and going into the bear's territory proceeded to show how the Black One would eat from his owner's hand.

The bear was given an apple, which was promptly eaten. The owner reached for a second, but instead of accepting it, the bear instantly became a raging demon. He struck Mr. C. a lightning- quick and powerful blow upon his head, ripping his scalp open.

With horrible growls and bawling, the beast, standing fully erect, struck again and again at his victim, who threw his arms across his face to save it from being torn to pieces. Fearful blows from the bear's claw-shod paws rained upon Mr. C.'s head, and his scalp was almost torn away. In the melee he fell, and the bear pounced upon him, to kill him.

The visiting gentleman rushed for a club. Meanwhile the lady visitor, rendered frantic by the sight of the bear killing her host, did a very brave but suicidally dangerous thing. She _seized the hindquarters_ of the bear, gripping the fur in her bare hands, and actually dragged the animal off its victim!