The Human Side of Animals | Page 4

pleasure and all other emotions. Cows will bellow
for days when mourning for their dead. The mother bear will bury her
dead cub and silently guard its grave for weeks to prevent its being
desecrated. The mother sheep will bleat most pitifully when her lamb
strays away. Foxes utter expressive cries which their children know full
well. The chamois, when frightened, whistle; they might be termed the
policemen of the animal world. The sentinel will continue a long,
drawn-out whistle, as long as he can without taking a breath. He then
stops for a brief moment, looks in all directions, and begins blowing
again. If the danger comes too near, he scampers away.
In their ability to take care of their wounded bodies, in their reading of
the weather and in all forms of woodcraft, animals undoubtedly possess
superhuman powers. Even squirrels can prophesy an unusually long
and severe winter and thus make adequate preparations. Some animals
act as both barometers and thermometers. It is claimed that while frogs
remain yellow, only fair weather may be expected, but if their colour
changes to brown, ill weather is coming.
There is no limit to the marvellous things animals do. Elephants, for
example, carry leafy palms in their trunks to shade themselves from the
hot sun. The ape or baboon who puts a stone in the open oyster to
prevent it from closing, or lifts stones to crack nuts, or beats his fellows
with sticks, or throws heavy cocoanuts from trees upon his enemies, or
builds a fire in the forest, shows more than a glimmer of intelligence. In
the sly fox that puts out fish heads to bait hawks, or suddenly plunges
in the water and immerses himself to escape hunters, or holds a branch
of a bush over his head and actually runs with it to hide himself; in the
wolverine who catches deer by dropping moss, and suddenly springing
upon them and clawing their eyes out; in the bear, who, as told in the

account of Cook's third voyage, "rolls down pieces of rock to crush
stags; in the rat when he leads his blind brother with a stick" is actual
reasoning. Indeed, there is nothing which man makes with all his
ingenious use of tools and instruments, of which some suggestion may
not be seen in animal creation.
Great thinkers of all ages are not wanting who believe that animals
have a portion of that same reason which is the pride of man.
Montaigne admitted that they had both thought and reason, and Pope
believed that even a cat may consider a man made for his service.
Humboldt, Helvitius, Darwin and Smellie claimed that animals act as a
definite result of actual reasoning. Lord Brougham pertinently observes,
"I know not why so much unwillingness should be shown by some
excellent philosophers to allow intelligent faculties and a share of
reason to the lower animals, as if our own superiority was not quite
sufficiently established to leave all jealousy out of view by the
immeasurably higher place which we occupy in the scale of being."
From the facts enumerated in this book I find that animals are
possessed of love, hate, joy, grief, courage, revenge, pain, pleasure,
want and satisfaction--that all things that go to make up man's life are
also found in them. In the attempt to establish this thesis I have been
led mentally and physically into some of Nature's most fascinating
highways and hedges, where I have had many occasions to wonder and
adore. I will be happy if I have at least added something to the depth of
love and appreciation with which most men look upon the animal
world.
ROYAL DIXON.
New York, April, 1918.

THE HUMAN SIDE OF ANIMALS

I

ANIMALS THAT PRACTISE CAMOUFLAGE
"She was a gordian shape of dazzling line, Vermilion-spotted, golden,
green and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a
peacock, and all crimson barr'd, And full of silver moons, that, as she
breathed, Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres
with the glorious tapestries...."
--KEATS (on Lamia, the snake).
The art of concealment or camouflage is one of the newest and most
highly developed techniques of modern warfare. But the animals have
been masters of it for ages. The lives of most of them are passed in
constant conflict. Those which have enemies from which they cannot
escape by rapidity of motion must be able to hide or disguise
themselves. Those which hunt for a living must be able to approach
their prey without unnecessary noise or attention to themselves. It is
very remarkable how Nature helps the wild creatures to disguise
themselves by colouring them with various shades and tints best
calculated to enable them to escape enemies or to entrap prey.