The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals Part 25

5. The trainer handed a ball to the sea-lion nearest him, who balanced it on his nose, walked with it to his box and climbed up.

6. Then another sea-lion walked over to him, and waited expectantly until sea-lion No. 1 tossed the ball to No. 2, who caught it on his nose, walked over to his box, climbed up, and presently tossed it to No. 3.

7. A silk hat was balanced on its rim.

8. A seal carrying a balanced ball scrambled upon a cylindrical basket and rolled it across the arena, after which other seals repeated the performance.

9. In the last act a flaming torch was balanced, tossed about, caught and whirled, and finally returned to the trainer, still blazing.

Trained Horses. By carefully selecting the brightest and most intelligent horses that can be found, it is possible for a trainer to bring together and educate a group that will go through a fine performance in public. However, some exhibitions of trained horses are halting, ragged and poor. I have seen only one that stands out in my records as superlatively fine,--for horses. That was known to the public when I saw it as Bartholomew's "Equine Paradox," and it contained twelve wonderfully trained horses. My record of this fine performance fills seven pages of a good-sized notebook. While it is too long to reproduce here entire, it can at least be briefly described. The trainer called his group a "school," and of it he said:

"While I do not say that any one horse knows the meaning of from 300 to 400 words, I claim that _as a whole_ the school does know that number."

The performance was fairly bewildering; but by diligent work I recorded the whole of it. Various horses did various things. They fetched chairs, papers, hats and coats; opened desks, rang bells, came when called, bowed, knelt, and erased figures from a blackboard. They danced a waltz, a clog dance, a figure-8; they marched, halted, paced, trotted, galloped, backed, jumped, leaped over each other, performed with a barrel, a see-saw and a double see-saw. Their marching and drilling would have been creditable to a platoon of rookies.

In performing, every horse is handicapped by his lack of hands and plant grade feet; and the horse memory is not very sure or certain. More than any other animal, the horse depends upon the trainer's command, and in poor performances the command often requires to be repeated, two or three times, or more. The memory of the horse is not nearly so quick nor so certain as that of the chimpanzee or elephant.

Dr. Martin J. Potter, of New York, famous trainer of stage and movie animals, states that of all animals, wild or domestic, the horse is the most intelligent; but I doubt whether he ever trained any chimpanzees. Speaking from out of the abundance of his training experience with many species of animals except the great apes, Dr. Potter says that "the seal [i. e. California sea-lion]

learns its stage cues more easily than any other mute performer.

The horse, however, is the most intelligent of all animals in its grasp and understanding of the work it has learned to perform, and in its reliable faithfulness and memory." Dr. Potter holds that of wild animals the tiger, owing to its treachery and ferocity, is the most difficult wild animal to train; the lion is the most reliable, and the most stupid of all animals is the pig.

The Taming of Boma. A keeper for a short time in our place, named D'Osta, once did a very neat piece of work in taming a savage and intractable chimpanzee. When Boma came to us, fresh from the French Congo, he was savage and afraid. He retreated to the highest resting-place of his cage, came down only at night for his meals, and would make no compromise. We believed that he had been fearfully abused by his former owners, and through mistreatment had acquired both fear and hatred of all men.

After the lapse of several months with Boma on that basis, the situation grew tiresome and intolerable. So D'Osta said:

"I must tame that animal, and teach him not to be afraid of us."

He introduced a roomy shifting cage into Boma's compartment, fixed the drop door, and for many days served Boma's food and water in that cage only. For two weeks the ape eluded capture, but eventually the keeper caught him. At first Boma's rage and fear were boundless; but presently the idea dawned upon his mind that he was not to be killed immediately. D'Osta handed him excellent food and water, twice a day, spoke to him soothingly, and otherwise let him alone. Slowly Boma's manner changed. He learned that he was not to be hurt, nor even annoyed. Confidence in the men about him began to come to him. His first signs of friendliness were promptly met and cultivated.

At the end of ten days, D'Osta opened the sliding door, and Boma walked out, a wiser and better ape. His bad temper and his fears were gone. He trusted his keeper, and cheerfully obeyed him.

Strangest of all, he even suffered D'Osta to put a collar upon him, and chain him to the front bars to curb his too great playfulness while his cage was being cleaned.

Boma's fear of man has never returned. Now, although he is big and dangerous, he is a perfectly normal ape.

The Training of an Over-Age Bear. A bear-trainer-athlete and "bear-wrestler" named Jacob Gla.s.s once taught me a lesson that astounded me. It related to the training of a bear that I thought was too old to be trained.

We had an Alaskan cinnamon bear, three years old, that had been christened "Christian," at Skagway, because it stood so much pestering without flying into rages, as the grizzly did. After a short time with us, the concrete floors of our bear dens reacted upon the soles of its feet so strangely and so seriously that we were forced to transfer the animal to a temporary cage that had a wooden floor. While I was wondering what to do with that bear, along came Mr. Gla.s.s, anxious and unhappy.

"My wrestling bear has died on me," he said, "and I've got to get another. You have got one that I would like to buy from you. It's the one you call Christian."

Very kindly I said, "That is a mighty fine bear, as to temper; but now he is entirely too old to train, and you couldn't do anything with him. He would be a loss to you."

"I've looked him over, and I like his looks. I think I can train him all right. You let me have him, and I'll make a fine performer of him."

"I know that you never can do it; but you may try him, and send him back when you fail."

Thus ended the first lesson; and I was sure that in a month Mr.

Gla.s.s would beg me to take back the untrainable animal.

About one year later Gla.s.s appeared again, jubilant. At once he broke forth into eulogies of Christian; but one chapter would not be large enough to contain them. He had trained that bear, with outrageous ease and celerity, and hadimmediately taken him upon the stage as a professional jiu-jitsu wrestler. And really, the act was admirable. As a wrestler, the bear seemed almost as intelligent as the man. He knew the "left-hand half-nelson" as well as Gla.s.s, and he knew the following words, perfectly: "Right, left, half-nelson, strangle, head up, nose under arm, and hammer-lock."

[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: THE WRESTLING BEAR "CHRISTIAN" AND HIS PARTNER]

Gla.s.s declared that this bear was more intelligent than any lion, or any other trained animal ever seen by him. He was wise in many ways besides wrestling,--in his friendship with Gla.s.s, with other bears, with other men, and with a dog. _He obeyed all orders willingly,_ even permitting Gla.s.s to take his food away when he was eating; but he would not stand being punished with a whip or a stick! In response to that he would bite. However, he generously permitted himself to be _held down and choked, as a punishment,_ after which he would be very repentant, and would insist upon getting into his partner's lap,--to show his good will.

Gla.s.s was enthusiastically certain that Christian could reason independently from cause to effect. He declared that his alertness of mind was so p.r.o.nounced it was very rarely necessary to show him a second time how to do a given thing.

Training an Adult Savage Monkey. Once we had a number of j.a.panese red-faced monkeys, and one of the surplus adult males had a temper as red as his face. Mr. Wormwood, an exhibitor of performing monkeys, wished to buy that animal; but I declined to sell it, on the ground that it would be impossible to train it.

At that implied challenge the trainer perked up and insisted upon having that particular bad animal; so we yielded. He wished him for the special business of turning somersaults, because he had no tail to interfere with that performance.

Two months later Mr. Wormwood appeared again. "Yes," he said, but not boastfully, "_I trained him;_ but I came mighty near to giving him up as a bad job. He was the hardest subject I ever tackled; but I conquered him at last, and now he is working all right."

A really great number of different kinds of animals have been trained for stage performances, running the scale all the way up from fleas to elephants. It is easy to recall mice, rats, rabbits, squirrels, parrots, macaws, c.o.c.katoos, crows, chickens, geese, cats, pigs, dogs, monkeys, baboons, apes, bears, seals, sea-lions, walruses, kangaroos, horses, hippopotami and elephants. It is a large subject, and its many details are full of interest. It is impossible to discuss here all these species and breeds.

In concluding these notes I leave off as I began,--with the statement that any student of animal psychology who for any reason whatever ignores or undervalues the intelligence of trained animals puts a handicap upon himself.

III. THE HIGHER Pa.s.sIONS

XVIII

THE MORALS OF WILD ANIMALS

The ethics and morals of men and animals are thoroughly comparative, and it is only by direct comparisons that they can be a.n.a.lyzed and cla.s.sified. It is quite possible that there are quite a number of intelligent men and women who are not yet aware of the fact that wild animals _have_ moral codes, and that on an average they live up to them better than men do to theirs.

It is a painful operation to expose the grinning skeletons in the closets of the human family, but in no other way is it possible to hold a mirror up to nature. With all our brightness and all our talents,--real and imitation,--few men ever stop to ask what our horses, dogs and cats think of our follies and our wickedness.

By the end of the year 1921 the annual total of human wickedness had reached staggering proportions. From August 1914 to November 1918 the moral standing of the human race reached the lowest depth it ever sounded since the days of the cave-dwellers. This we know to be true, because of the increase in man's capacity for wickedness, and its crop of results. After what we recently have seen in Europe and Asia, and on the high seas, let no man speak of a monster in human form as "a brute;" for so far as moral standing is concerned, some of the animals allegedly "below man" now are in a position to look down upon him.

It is a cold and horrid fact that today, all around us, and sometimes close at hand, men are committing a long list of revolting crimes such as even the most debased and cruel beasts of the field _never_ commit. I refer to wanton wholesale murder, often with torture; a.s.sault with violence, robbery in a hundred cruel forms, and a dozen unmentionable crimes invented by degenerate man and widely practiced. If anyone feels that this indictment is too strong, I can cite a few t.i.tles that will be quite sufficient for my case.

Let us make a few comparisons between the human species (_h.o.m.o sapiens_) and the so-called "lower" wild animals; and let it be understood that the author testifies, in courtroom phrase, only "to the best of his information and belief."

Only two wild animal species known to me,--wolves and crocodiles, --devour their own kind; but many of the races of men have been cannibals, and some are so today.

Among free wild animals, the cruel abuse or murder of children by their parents, or by other adults of the tribe, is unknown; but in all the "civilized" races of men infanticide and child murder are frightfully common crimes. In 1921 a six-year-old Eskimo girl, whose father and mother had been murdered, was strangled by her relatives, because she had no visible means of support.

The murder of the aged and helpless among wild animals is almost unknown; but among both the savage and the civilized races of men it is quite common. Our old acquaintance, Shack-Nasty Jim, the Modoc Indian, tomahawked his own mother because she hindered his progress; but many persons in and around New York have done worse than that.

Civil war between the members of a wild animal species is a thing unknown in the annals of wild-animal history; but among men it is an every-day occurrence.

Among _free_ animals it is against the moral and ethical codes of all species of vertebrates for the strong to bully and oppress the weak; but it is almost everywhere a common rule of action with about ten per cent of the human race.

The members of a wild animal species are in honor bound not to rob one another, but with 25 per cent of the men of all civilized races, robbery, and the desire to get something for nothing, are ruling pa.s.sions. No wild animals thus far known and described practice s.e.x crimes; but the less said of the races of men on this subject, the better for our feelings.