Chapter XV: Foxes, Wolves, Jackals, Etc

THE general psychology of these animals is, of course, very much the same as that of the dog; but, from never having been submitted to the influences of domestication, their mental qualities present a sufficient number of differences from those of the dog to require another chapter for their consideration.

If we could subtract from the domestic dog all the emotions arising from his prolonged companionship with man, and at the same time intensify the emotions of self-reliance, rapacity, &c., we should get the emotional character now presented by the wolves and jackals. It is interesting to note that this genetic similarity of emotional character extends to what may be termed idiosyncratic details in cases where it has not been interfered with by human agency. Thus the peculiar, weird, and unaccountable class of emotions which cause wolves to bay at the moon has been propagated unchanged to our domestic dogs.

The intelligence of the fox is proverbial; but as I have not received many original observations on this head, I shall merely refer to some of the best authenticated observations already published, and shall begin with the instance narrated by Mr. St. John in his 'Wild Sports of the Highlands':--

When living in Ross-shire I went out one morning in
July, before daybreak, to endeavour to shoot a stag,
which had been complained of very much by an adjoining
farmer, as having done great damage to his crops. Just
after it was daylight I saw a large fox coming quietly
along the edge of the plantation in which I was
concealed; he looked with great care over the turf
wall into the field, and seemed to long to get hold of
some hares that were feeding in it, but apparently
knew that he had no chance of catching one by dint of
running; after considering a short time he seemed to
have formed his plans, and having examined the
different gaps in the wall by which the hares might be
supposed to go in and out, he fixed upon the one that
seemed the most frequented, and laid himself down
close to it in an attitude like a cat watching a
mouse. Cunning as he was, he was too intent on his own
hunting to be aware that I was within twenty yards of
him with a loaded rifle, and able to watch every
movement that he made. I was much amazed to see the
fellow so completely outwitted, and kept my rifle
ready to shoot him if he found me out and attempted to
escape. In the meantime I watched all his plans. He
first with great silence and care scraped a small
hollow in the ground, throwing up the sand as a kind
of screen between his hiding-place and the hares'
mews; every now and then, however, he stopped to
listen, and sometimes to take a most cautious look
into the field; when he had done this he laid himself
down in a convenient position for springing upon his
prey, and remained perfectly motionless with the
exception of an occasional reconnoitre of the feeding
hares. When the sun began to rise, they came one by
one from the field to the cover of the plantation;
three had already come in without passing by his
ambush; one of them came within twenty yards of him,
but he made no movement beyond crouching still more
closely to the ground. Presently two came directly
towards him; though he did not venture to look up, I
saw by an involuntary motion of his ears that those
quick organs had already warned him of their approach:
the two hares came through the gap together, and the
fox, springing with the quickness of lightning, caught
one and killed her immediately; he then lifted up his
booty and was carrying it off like a retriever, when
my rifle-ball stopped his course by passing through
his back-bone, and I went up and despatched him.

Numberless instances are on record showing the remarkable cunning of foxes in procuring bait from traps without allowing themselves to be caught. These cases are so numerous, and all display so much the same quality of intelligence, that it is impossible to doubt so great a concurrence of testimony. I shall only give two or three specific cases, to show the kind of intelligence that is in question. It will be observed that it is much the same as that which is displayed under similar circumstances by rats and wolverines, in which animals we have already considered it. In all these cases the intelligence displayed must justly be deemed to be of a very remarkable order. For, inasmuch as traps are not things to be met with in nature, hereditary experience cannot be supposed to have played any part in the formation of special instincts to avoid the dangers arising from traps, and therefore the astonishing devices by which these dangers are avoided can only be attributed to observation, coupled with intelligent investigation of a remarkably high character.

I extract the following from Couch's 'Illustrations of Instinct' (p. 175):--

Whenever a cat is tempted by the bait, and caught in a
fox-trap, Reynard is at hand to devour the bait and
the cat too, and fearlessly approaches an instrument
which the fox must know cannot _then_ do it any harm.
Let us compare with this boldness the incredible
caution with which the animal proceeds when tempted by
the bait in a _set_ trap. Dietrich aus dem Winkell had
once the good fortune of observing, on a winter
evening, a fox which for many preceding days had been
allured with loop baits, and as often as it ate one it
sat comfortably down, wagging its brush. The nearer it
approached the trap, the longer did it hesitate to
take the baits, and the oftener did it make the tour
round the catching-place. When arrived near the trap
it squatted down, and eyed the bait for ten minutes at
least; whereupon it ran three or four times round the
trap, then it stretched out one of its fore-paws after
the bait, but did not touch it; again a pause, during
which the fox stared immovably at the bait. At last,
as if in despair, the animal made a rush and was
caught by the neck. (Mag. Nat. Hist., N. S., vol. i.,
p. 512.)

In 'Nature,' vol. xxi., p. 132, Mr. Crehore, writing from Boston, says:--

Some years since, while hunting in Northern Michigan,
I tried with the aid of a professional trapper to
entrap a fox who made nightly visits to a spot where
the entrails of a deer had been thrown. Although we
tried every expedient that suggested itself to us we
were unsuccessful, and, what seemed very singular, we
always found the trap sprung. My companion insisted
that the animal dug beneath it, and putting his paw
beneath the jaw, pushed down the pan with safety to
himself; but though the appearance seemed to confirm
it, I could hardly credit his explanation. This year,
in another locality of the same region, an old and
experienced trapper assured me of its correctness, and
said in confirmation that he had several times caught
them, after they had made two or three successful
attempts to spring the trap, by the simple expedient
of setting it upside down, when of course the act of
undermining and touching the pan would bring the paw
within the grasp of the jaws.

In connection with traps, my friend Dr. Rae has communicated to me a highly remarkable instance of the display of reason on the part of the Arctic foxes. I have previously published the facts in my lecture before the British Association in 1879, and therefore shall here quote them from it:--

Desiring to obtain some Arctic foxes, Dr. Rae set
various kinds of traps; but as the foxes knew these
traps from previous experience, he was unsuccessful.
Accordingly he set a kind of trap with which the foxes
in that part of the country were not acquainted. This
consisted of a loaded gun set upon a stand pointing at
the bait. A string connected the trigger of the gun
with the bait, so that when the fox seized the bait he
discharged the gun, and thus committed suicide. In
this arrangement the gun was separated from the bait
by a distance of about 30 yards, and the string which
connected the trigger with the bait was concealed
throughout nearly its whole distance in the snow. The
gun-trap thus set was successful in killing one fox,
but never in killing a second; for the foxes
afterwards adopted either of two devices whereby to
secure the bait without injuring themselves. One of
these devices was to bite through the string at its
exposed part near the trigger, and the other device
was to burrow up to the bait through the snow at right
angles to the line of fire, so that, although in this
way they discharged the gun, they escaped with perhaps
only a pellet or two in the nose. Now both of these
devices exhibited a wonderful degree of what I think
must fairly be called power of reasoning. I have
carefully interrogated Dr. Rae on all the
circumstances of the case, and he tells me that in
that part of the world traps are never set with
strings; so that there can have been no special
association in the foxes' minds between strings and
traps. Moreover, after the death of fox No. 1, the
track on the snow showed that fox No. 2,
notwithstanding the temptation offered by the bait,
had expended a great deal of scientific observation on
the gun before he undertook to sever the cord. Lastly,
with regard to burrowing at right angles to the line
of fire, Dr. Rae justly deemed this so extraordinary a
circumstance, that he repeated the experiment a number
of times, in order to satisfy himself that the
direction of the burrowing was really to be attributed
to thought, and not to chance.[260]

Dr. Rae also informs me with, regard to wolves, that 'they have been frequently known to take the bait from a gun without injury to themselves, by first cutting the line of communication between the two.'[261] He adds:--

I may also mention what I have been told, although I
have never had an opportunity of seeing it, that
wolves watch the fishermen who set lines in deep water
for trout, through holes in the ice on Lake Superior,
and very soon after the man has left, the wolf goes up
to the place, takes hold of the stick which is placed
across the hole and attached to the line, trots off
with it along the ice until the bait is brought to the
surface, then returns and eats the bait and the fish,
if any happens to be on the hook. The trout of Lake
Superior are very large, and the baits are of a size
in proportion.

Mr. Murray Browne, Inspector of the Local Government Board, writes to me from Whitehall as follows:--

I once, at the Devil's Glen, Wicklow, found a fox fast
in a trap by the foot. We did not like to touch him,
but got sticks and poked at the trap till we got it
open. The process took ten minutes or a quarter-hour.
When first we came up the fox strained to get free,
and looked frightfully savage; but we had not poked at
the trap more than a very short time before the whole
expression of his face changed, he lay perfectly quiet
(though we must at times have hurt him); and when at
last we had got the trap completely off his foot, he
still lay quiet, and looked calmly at us, as if he
knew we were friends. In fact, we had some little
difficulty in getting him to move away, which he did
readily enough when he chose. Was not this a case of
reason and good sense _overpowering_ natural instinct?

Couch says ('Illustrations of Instinct,' p. 178): 'Derham quotes Olaus in his account of Norway as having himself witnessed the fact of a fox dropping his tail among the rocks on the sea-shore to catch the crabs below, and hauling up and devouring such as laid hold of it.'

Under the present heading I must not omit to refer to an interesting class of instincts which are manifested by those species of the genus _Canis_, whose custom it is to hunt in packs. The instincts to which I refer are those which lead to a combination among different members of the same pack for the capture of prey by stratagem. These instincts, which no doubt arose and are now maintained by intelligent adaptation to the requirements of the chase, I shall call 'collective instincts.' Thus Sir E. Tennent writes:--

At dusk, and after nightfall, a pack of jackals,
having watched a hare or a small deer take refuge in
one of these retreats, immediately surrounded it on
all sides; and having stationed a few to watch the
path by which the game entered, the leader commences
the attack by raising the cry peculiar to their race,
and which resembles the sound 'okkay' loudly and
rapidly repeated. The whole party then rush into the
jungle and drive out the victim, which generally falls
into the ambush previously laid to entrap it.

A native gentleman, who had favourable opportunities
of observing the movements of these animals, informed
me that when a jackal has brought down his game and
killed it, his first impulse is to hide it in the
nearest jungle, whence he issues with an air of easy
indifference to observe whether anything more powerful
than himself may be at hand, from which he might
encounter the risk of being despoiled of his capture.
If the coast be clear he returns to the concealed
carcass and carries it away, followed by his
companions. But if a man be in sight, or any other
animal to be avoided, my informant has seen the jackal
seize a cocoa-nut husk in his mouth, or any similar
substance, and fly at full speed, as if eager to carry
off his pretended prize, returning for the real booty
at some more convenient season.[262]

Again, Jesse records the following display of the same instinct by the fox, as having been communicated to him by a friend on whose veracity he could rely:--

Part of this rocky ground was on the side of a very
high hill, which was not accessible for a sportsman,
and from which both hares and foxes took their way in
the evening to the plain below. There were two
channels or gullies made by the rains, leading from
these rocks to the lower ground. Near one of these
channels, the sportsman in question, and his
attendant, stationed themselves one evening in hopes
of being able to shoot some hares. They had not been
there long, when they observed a fox coming down the
gully, and followed by another. After playing together
for a little time, one of the foxes concealed himself
under a large stone or rock, which was at the bottom
of the channel, and the other returned to the rocks.
He soon, however, came back, chasing a hare before
him. As the hare was passing the stone where the first
fox had concealed himself, he tried to seize her by a
sudden spring, but missed his aim. The chasing fox
then came up, and finding that his expected prey had
escaped, through the want of skill in his associate,
he fell upon him, and they both fought with so much
animosity, that the parties who had been watching
their proceedings came up and destroyed them both.

Similarly, Mr. E. C. Buck records ('Nature,' viii., 303) the following interesting observation made by his friend Mr. Elliot, B.C.S., Secretary to Government, N.W.P.:--

He saw two wolves standing together, and shortly after
noticing them was surprised to see one of them lie
down in a ditch, and the other walk away over the open
plain. He watched the latter, which deliberately went
to the far side of a herd of antelopes standing in the
plain, and drove them, as a sheep-dog would a flock of
sheep, to the very spot where his companion lay in
ambush. As the antelopes crossed the ditch, the
concealed wolf jumped up as in the former case, seized
a doe, and was joined by his colleague.

Mr. Buck draws attention to another closely similar display of collective instinct of wolves in the same district observed by a 'writer of one of the books on Indian sport.'

With reference to this case I wrote to 'Nature' as follows. The friend to whom I allude was the late Dr. Brydon, C.B. (the 'last man' of the Afghan expedition of 1841), whom I knew intimately for several years, and always found his observations on animals to be trustworthy:--

In response to the appeal which closes Mr. Buck's
interesting letter ('Nature,' vol. viii., p. 302), the
following instance of 'collective instinct' exhibited
by an animal closely allied to the wolf, viz., the
Indian jackal, deserves to be recorded. It was
communicated to me by a gentleman (since deceased) on
whose veracity I can depend. This gentleman was
waiting in a tree to shoot tigers as they came to
drink at a large lake (I forget the district), skirted
by a dense jungle, when about midnight a large axis
deer emerged from the latter and went to the water's
edge. Then it stopped and sniffed the air in the
direction of the jungle, as if suspecting the presence
of an enemy; apparently satisfied, however, it began
to drink, and continued to do so for a most inordinate
length of time. When literally swollen with water it
turned to go into the jungle, but was met on its
extreme margin by a jackal, which, with a sharp yelp,
turned it again into the open. The deer seemed much
startled, and ran along the shore for some distance,
when it again attempted to enter the jungle, but was
again met and driven back in the same manner. The
night being calm, my friend could hear this process
being repeated time after time--the yelps becoming
successively fainter and fainter in the distance,
until they became wholly inaudible. The stratagem thus
employed was sufficiently evident. The lake having a
long narrow shore intervening between it and the
jungle, the jackals formed themselves in line along it
while concealed within the extreme edge of the cover,
and waited until the deer was waterlogged. Their prey,
being thus rendered heavy and short-winded, would fall
an easy victim if induced to run sufficiently far,
_i.e._, if prevented from entering the jungle. It was,
of course, impossible to estimate the number of
jackals engaged in this hunt, for it is not impossible
that as soon as one had done duty at one place, it
outran the deer to await it in another.

A native servant who accompanied my friend told him
that this was a stratagem habitually employed by the
jackals in that place, and that they hunted in
sufficient numbers 'to leave nothing but the bones.'
As it is a stratagem which could only be effectual
under the peculiar local conditions described, it
must appear that this example of collective instinct
is due to 'separate expression,' and not to 'inherited
habit.'

Cases of collective instinct are not of unfrequent
occurrence among dogs. For the accuracy of the two
following I can vouch. A small Skye and a large
mongrel were in the habit of hunting hares and rabbits
upon their own account, the small dog having a good
nose, and the larger one great fleetness. These
qualities they combined in the most advantageous
manner, the terrier driving the cover towards his
fleet-footed companion which was waiting for it
outside.

The second case is remarkable for a display of sly
sagacity. A friend of mine in Ross-shire had a small
terrier and a large Newfoundland. One day a shepherd
called upon him to say that his dogs had been worrying
sheep the night before. The gentleman said there must
be some mistake, as the Newfoundland had not been
unchained. A few days afterwards the shepherd again
called with the same complaint, vehemently asserting
that he was positive as to the identity of the dogs.
Consequently the owner set one watch upon the kennel
and another outside the sheep enclosure, directing
them (in consequence of what the shepherd had told
him) not to interfere with the action of the dogs.
After this had been done several nights in succession,
the small dog was observed to come at daydawn to the
place where the large one was chained; the latter
immediately slipped his collar, and the two animals
made straight for the sheep. Upon arriving at the
enclosure the Newfoundland concealed himself behind a
hedge, while the terrier drove the sheep towards his
ambush, and the fate of one of them was quickly
sealed. When their breakfast was finished the dogs
returned home, and the larger one, thrusting his head
into his collar, lay down again as though nothing had
happened. Why this animal should have chosen to hunt
by stratagem prey which it could easily run down, I
cannot suggest; but there can be little doubt that so
wise a dog must have had some good reason.

A similar instance of the display of collective instinct is thus narrated by M. Dureau de la Malle:--

I had at one time two sporting dogs, the one an
excellent pointer with a very smooth skin, and of
remarkable beauty and intelligence; the other was a
spaniel with long and thick hair, but which had not
been taught to point, but only coursed in the woods
like a harrier. My _château_ is situated on a level
spot of ground, opposite to copse wood filled with
hares and rabbits. When sitting at my window, I have
observed these two dogs, which were at large in the
yard, approach and make signs to each other, and first
glancing at me, as if to see if I offered any obstacle
to their wishes, step away very gently, then quicken
their pace when they were at a little distance from my
sight, and finally dart off at full speed when they
thought I could neither see them nor order them back.
Surprised at this mysterious manoeuvre, I followed
them, and witnessed a singular sight. The pointer, who
seemed to be the leader of the enterprise, had sent
the spaniel out to beat the bushes, and give tongue at
the opposite extremity of the bushwood. As to himself,
he made with slow steps the circuit of the wood by
following it along the border, and I observed him stop
before a passage much frequented by rabbits, and there
point. I continued at a distance to observe how the
intrigue was going to end. At length I heard the
spaniel, which had started a hare, drive it with much
tongue towards the place where its companion was lying
in ambush, and the moment that the hare came out of
the passage to gain the fields, the latter darted upon
it and brought it to me with an air of triumph. I have
seen these two dogs repeat this same manoeuvre more
than a hundred times; and this conformity has
convinced me that it was not accidental, but the
result of a concerted agreement and combined plan of
operations understood beforehand.

Again, among Mr. Darwin's MSS., I find a letter from Mr. H. Reeks (1871), which says that the wolves of Newfoundland adopt exactly the same stratagem for the capture of deer in winter as that which is adopted by the hunters. That is to say, some of the pack secrete themselves in one or more of the _leeward_ deer-paths in the forest or 'belting,' while one or two wolves make a circuit round the herd of deer to windward. The herd invariably retreats by one of its accustomed runs, and 'it rarely happens . . . that the wolves do not manage by this stratagem to secure a doe or young stag.' And Leroy, in his book on Animal Intelligence, narrates closely similar facts of the wolves of Europe as having fallen within his own observation.

FOOTNOTES:

[260] I have requested Dr. Rae to write out all the particulars of these remarkable observations, and the following is the response which he has kindly made:--'When trapping foxes in Hudson's Bay it sometimes happens that certain of these acute animals, probably from having seen their companions caught, studiously avoid the ordinary steel and wooden traps, however carefully set. The trapper then sets one or more guns in a peculiar manner, having a line 15 or 20 yards long uniting the trigger with a bait, on taking hold of which the fox sets the gun off, and commits suicide. The double object of the bait being placed so near the gun is that the fox may be certainly killed--not wounded only--and that the head alone should be hit, and the body not riddled all over with shot, which would spoil the skin. It is also necessary to mention that four or five inches of slack line must be allowed for contraction of the line by change from a dry to a moist atmosphere, which otherwise would cause so great a strain on the trigger that the gun would be discharged without the bait being touched. So as to conceal as far as possible all connection between bait and gun, that part of the line next the bait is carefully hid under the snow.

'When the fox takes the bait, he will have lifted it five inches (the length of the slack line) from its normal position before the gun goes off; consequently, instead of pointing the gun at the bait, it is aimed fully eight or nine inches higher, at the probable position of the brain of the animal when the gun is discharged.

'For reasons which scarcely require explanation, foxes very generally go about in pairs (long before the snow disappears), not necessarily always close together, because they have a better chance of finding food if separated some distance from each other.

'After one or more foxes have been shot, the trapper on visiting his guns perhaps finds that a fox has first cut the line connecting the bait with the gun, and then gone up and eaten the bait; or, if the gun has been set on a drift bank of snow, he or she has scraped a trench ten or twelve inches deep up to the bait, taken hold of it whilst lying in the trench, set the gun off, and then trotted coolly away with the food (taken, one may say, from the gun's mouth) safe and uninjured, as is clearly evinced by there being no mark of blood on the tracks.

'In pulling the bait whilst in the trench, the fox would drag it five inches, or the length of the slack line, _downwards_, and therefore his _head_ and _nose_ would be completely out of harm's way, both because of the snow protection, and also these parts of his body being twelve or thirteen inches below the line of aim.

'In the cases seen by myself, and by a friend of greater experience, the trench was always scraped at right angles, or nearly so, to the line of fire of the gun. This at first sight may appear erroneous, but on reflection it really is not so, for if the trench is to be a shelter one--thinking, as the fox must have done, that the gun or something coming from it was the danger to be protected from or guarded against--it must be made across the line of fire, for if scratched in the direction of fire it would afford little or no protection or concealment, and the reasoning power or intelligence of the fox would be at fault.

'My belief is that one of these knowing foxes had seen his or her companion shot, or found it dead shortly after it had been killed, and not unnaturally attributed the cause of the mishap to the only strange thing it saw near, namely, the gun.

'It was evident that in all cases they had studied the situation carefully, as was sufficiently shown by their tracks in the snow, which indicated their extremely cautious approach when either the string-cutting or trench-making dodge was resorted to, in attempting to obtain the coveted bait without injury to themselves.'

[261] It will be remembered that, from evidence previously detailed, both the wolverine or glutton and certain deer have been shown capable of similarly obviating the danger of gun-traps.

[262] _Nat. Hist. of Ceylon_, p. 35.