Chapter IX (2)

A high-class Dog is the animal that mentally is in closest touch with the mind, the feelings and the impulses of man; and it is the only one that can read a man's feelings from his eyes and his facial expression.

The Marvelous Beaver. Let us consider this animal as an illuminating example of high-power intelligence.

In domestic economy the beaver is the most intelligent of all living mammals. His inherited knowledge, his original thought, his reasoning power and his engineering and mechanical skill in constructive works are marvelous and beyond compare. In his manifold industrial activities, there is no other mammal that is even a good second to him. He builds dams both great and small, to provide water in which to live, to store food and to escape from his enemies. He builds air-tight houses of sticks and mud, either as islands, or on the shore. When he cannot live as a pond-beaver with a house he cheerfully becomes a river-beaver. He lives in a river-bank burrow when house-building in a pond is impossible; and he will cheerfully tunnel under a stone wall from one-pond monotony, to go exploring outside.

He cuts down trees, both small and large, and he makes them fall as he wishes them to fall. He trims off all branches, and leaves no "slash" to cumber the ground. He buries green branches, in great quantity, in the mud at the bottom of his pond, so that in winter he can get at them under a foot of solid ice. He digs canals, of any length he pleases, to float logs and billets of wood from hinterland to pond.

If you are locating beavers in your own zoo, and are wise, you can induce beavers to build their dam where you wish it to be. This is how we did it!

We dug out a pond of mud in order that the beavers might have a pond of water; and we wished the beavers to build a dam forty feet long, at a point about thirty feet from the iron fence where the brook ran out. On thinking it over we concluded that we could manage it by showing the animals where we wished them to go to work.

We set a l2-inch plank on its edge, all the way across the dam site, and pegged it down. Above it the water soon formed a little pool and began to flow over the top edge in a very miniature waterfall. Then we turned loose four beavers and left them.

The next morning we found a cart-load of sticks and fresh mud placed like a dam against the iron fence. In beaver language this said to us:

"We would rather build our dam here,--if you don't mind. It will be easier for us, and quicker."

We removed all their material; and in our language that action said: "No; we would rather have you build over the plank."

The next night more mud and sticks piled against the fence said to us,

"We really _insist_ upon building it here!"

We made a second clearance of their materials, saying in effect:

"You _shall not_ build against the fence! You _must_ build where we tell you!"

Thereupon, the beavers began to build over the plank, saying,

"Oh, well, if you are going to make a fuss about it, we will let you have your way."

So they built a beautiful water-tight dam precisely where we suggested it to them, and after that our only trouble was to keep them from overdoing the matter, and flooding the whole valley.

I am not going to dwell upon the mind and manners of the beaver. The animal is well known. Three excellent books have been written and pictured about him, in the language that the General Reader understands. They are as follows: "The American Beaver and His Works," Lewis H. Morgan (1868); "The Romance of the Beaver," A. R. Dugmore (no date); "History and Traditions of the Canada Beaver," H. T. Martin (1892).

"Clever Hans," the "Thinking Horse." From 1906 to 1910 the world read much about a wonderful educated horse owned and educated by Herr von Osten, in Germany. The German scientists who first came in touch with "Hans" were quite bowled over by the discovery that that one horse could "think." The _Review of Reviews_ said, in 1910:

"It may be recalled that Clever Hans knew figures and letters, colors and tones, the calendar and the dial, that he could count and read, deal with decimals and fractions, spell out answers to questions with his right hoof, and recognize people from having seen their photographs. In every case his 'replies' were given in the form of scrapings with his right forehoof.

"Whether the questioner was von Osten, who had worked with him for seven years, or a man like Schillings, who was a complete stranger, seemed immaterial; and this went farthest, perhaps, in disposing of all talk of 'collusion' between master and beast."

Now, by the bald records of the case the fact was fixed for all time that Hans was the most wonderful mental prodigy that ever bore the form of a four-footed animal. His learning and his performances were astounding, and even uncanny. I do not care how he was trained, nor by what process he received ideas and reacted to them! He was a phenomenon, and I doubt whether this world ever sees his like again. His mastery of figures alone, no matter how it was wrought, was enough to make any animal or trainer illustrious.

But eventually Clever Hans came to grief. He was ostensibly thrown off his pedestal, in Germany, by human jealousy and egotism. Several industrious German scientists deliberately set to work to discredit him, and they stuck to it until they accomplished that task. The chief instrument in this was no less a man than the director of the "Psychological Institute" of the Berlin University, Professor Otto Pfungst. He found that when Hans was put on the witness stand and subjected to rigid cross examinations _by strangers_, his answers were due partly to _telepathy and hypnotic influence_! For example, the discovery was made that Hans could not always give the correct answer to a problem in figures unless it was known to the questioner himself.

To Hans's inquisitors this discovery imparted a terrible shock. It did not look like "thinking" after all! The mental process was _different_ from the process of the German mind! The wonderful fact that Hans could remember and recognize and _reproduce_ the ten digits was entirely lost to view. At once a shout went up all over Germany,--in the scientific circle, that Hans was an "impostor," that he could not "think," and that his mind was nothing much after all.

Poor Hans! The glory that should have been his, and imperishable, is gone. He was the victim of scientists of one idea, who had no sense of proportion. He truly WAS a thinking horse; and we are sure that there are millions of men whose minds could not be developed to the point that the mind of that "dumb" animal attained,--no, not even with the aid of hypnotism and telepathy.

The bare fact that a horse _can_ be influenced by occult mental powers proves the close parallelism that exists between the brains of men and beasts. The Trap-Door Spider. Let no one suppose for one moment that animal mind and intelligence is limited to the brain-bearing vertebrates. The scope and activity of the notochord in some of the invertebrates present phenomena far more wonderful per capita than many a brain produces. Interesting books have been written, and more will be written hereafter, on the minds and doings of ants, bees, wasps, spiders and other insects.

Consider the ways and means of the ant-lion of the East, and the trap-door spider of the western desert regions. As one object lesson from the insect world, I will flash upon the screen, for a moment only, the trap-door spider. This wonderful insect personage has been exhaustively studied by Mr. Raymond L. Ditmars, in the development of a series of moving pictures, and at my request he has contributed the following graphic description of this spider's wonderful work.

"The trap-door spiders, inhabiting the warmer portions of both the Old and New Worlds, dig a deep tunnel in the soil, line this with a silken wallpaper, then construct a hinged door at the top so perfectly fitted and camouflaged with soil, that when it is closed there is no indication of the burrow. Moreover, the inside portion of the door of some species is so constructed that it may be "latched," there being two holes near the edge, precisely placed where the curved fangs may be inserted and the door held firmly closed. Also, the trap-door of a number of species is so designed as to be absolutely rain-proof, being bevelled and as accurately fitting a corresponding bevel of the tube as the setting of a compression valve of a gasolene engine.

"The study of a number of specimens of our southern California species, which builds the cork-type door, including observations of them at night, when they are particularly active, indicates that the construction of the tube involves other material than the silken lining employed by many burrowing spiders. In the excavation of the tube and retention of the walls, the spider appears to employ a glairy substance, which thoroughly saturates the soil and renders the interior of the tube of almost cement- like hardness. It is then plastered with a thick jet of silk from the spinning glands. This interior finishing process appears to be quite rapid, a burrow being readily lined within a couple of hours.

"The construction of the trap-door is a far more complicated process, this convex, beautifully bevelled entrance with its hinge requiring real scientific skill. Judging from observations on a number of specimens, the work is done from the outside, the spider first spinning a net-like covering over the mouth of the tube. This is thickened by weaving the body over the net, each motion leaving a smoky trail of silk. Earth is then shoveled into the covering, the spider carefully pushing the particles toward the centre, which soon sags, and assumes the proper curvature, and automatically moulds against the bevelled walls of the tube.

"The shoveling process must be nicely regulated to produce the proper bevel and thickness of the door. Then the cementing process is applied to the top, rendering the door a solid unit. From the actions of these spiders,--which often calmly rest an hour without a move,--it appears that the edges of the door are now subjected, by the stout and sharp fangs, to a cutting process like that of a can opener, leaving a portion of the marginal silk to act as a hinge. This hinge afterward receives some finishing touches, and the top of the door is either pebbled or finished with a few fragments of dead vegetation, cemented on, in order to exactly match the surrounding soil."

V

THE RIGHTS OF WILD ANIMALS

Every harmless wild bird and mammal has the right to live out its life according to its destiny; and man is in honor bound to respect those rights. At the same time it is a mistake to regard each wild bird or quadruped as a sacred thing, which under no circumstances may be utilized by man. We are not fanatical Hindus of the castes which religiously avoid the "taking of life" of any kind, and gently push aside the flea, the centipede and the scorpion. The reasoning powers of such people are strictly limited, the same as those of people who are opposed to the removal by death of the bandits and murderers of the human race.

The highest duty of a reasoning being is to reason. We have no moral or legal right to act like idiots, or to become a menace to society by protecting criminal animals or criminal men from adequate punishment. Like the tree that is known by its fruit, every alleged "reasoning being" is to be judged by the daily output of his thoughts.

Toward wild life, our highest duty is to be sane and sensible, in order to be just, and to promote the greatest good for the greatest number. Be neither a Hindu fanatic nor a cruel game- butcher like a certain wild-animal slaughterer whom I knew, who while he was on earth earned for himself a place in the hottest corner of the hereafter, and quickly passed on to occupy it.

The following planks constitute a good platform on which to base our relations with the wild animal world, and by which to regulate our duty to the creatures that have no means of defense against the persecutions of cruel men. They may be regarded as representing the standards that have been fixed by enlightened and humane civilization.

THE WILD ANIMALS' BILL OF RIGHTS

This Bill of Rights is to be copied and displayed conspicuously in all zoological parks and gardens, zoos and menageries; in all theatres and shows where animal performances are given, and in all places where wild animals and birds are trained, sold or kept for the pleasure of their owners.

Article 1. In view of the nearness of the approach of the higher animals to the human level, no just and humane man can deny that those wild animals have certain rights which man is in honor bound to respect.

Art. 2. The fact that God gave man "dominion over the beasts of the field" does not imply a denial of animal rights, any more than the supremacy of a human government conveys the right to oppress and maltreat its citizens.

Art. 3. Under certain conditions it is justifiable for man to kill a limited number of the so-called game animals, on the same basis of justification that domestic animals and fowls may be killed for food.

Art. 4. While the trapping of fur-bearing animals is a necessary evil, that evil must be minimized by reducing the sufferings of trapped animals to the lowest possible point, and by preventing wasteful trapping.

Art. 5. The killing of harmless mammals or birds solely for "sport," and without utilizing them when killed, is murder; and no good and humane man will permit himself to engage in any such offenses against good order and the rights of wild creatures.

Art. 6. Shooting at sea-going creatures from moving vessels, without any possibility of securing them if killed or wounded, is cruel, reprehensible, and criminal, and everywhere should be forbidden by ship captains, and also by law, under penalties.

Art. 7. The extermination of a harmless wild animal species is a crime; but the regulated destruction of wild pests that have been proven guilty, is sometimes necessary and justifiable.

Art. 8. No group or species of birds or mammals that is accused of offenses sufficiently grave to merit destruction shall be condemned undefended and unheard, nor without adequate evidence of a character which would be acceptable in a court of law.

Art. 9. The common assumption that every bird or mammal that offends, or injures the property of any man, is necessarily deserving of death, is absurd and intolerable. The death penalty should be the last resort, not the first one!

Art. 10. Any nation that fails adequately to protect its crop-and- tree-protecting birds deserves to have its fields and forests devastated by predatory insects.

Art. 11. No person has any moral right to keep a wild mammal, bird, reptile or fish in a state of uncomfortable, unhappy or miserable captivity, and all such practices should be prevented by law, under penalty. It is entirely feasible for a judge to designate a competent person as a referee to examine and decide upon each case.

Art. 12. A wild creature that cannot be kept in comfortable captivity should not be kept at all; and the evils to be guarded against are cruelly small quarters, too much darkness, too much light, uncleanliness, bad odors, and bad food. A fish in a glass globe, or a live bird in a cage the size of a collar-box is a case of cruelty.

Art. 13. Every captive animal that is suffering hopelessly from disease or the infirmities of old age has the right to be painlessly relieved of the burdens of life.

Art. 14. Every keeper or owner of a captive wild animal who through indolence, forgetfulness or cruelty permits a wild creature in his charge to perish of cold, heat, hunger or thirst because of his negligence, is guilty of a grave misdemeanor, and he should be punished as the evidence and the rights of captive animals demand.

Art. 15. An animal in captivity has a right to do all the damage to its surroundings that it can do, and it is not to be punished therefor.

Art. 16. The idea that all captive wild animals are necessarily "miserable" is erroneous, because some captive animals are better fed, better protected and are more happy in captivity than similar animals are in a wild state, beset by dangers and harassed by hunger and thirst. It is the opinion of the vast majority of civilized people that there is no higher use to which a wild bird or mammal can be devoted than to place it in perfectly comfortable captivity to be seen by millions of persons who desire to make its acquaintance.

Art. 17. About ninety-five per cent of all the wild mammals seen in captivity were either born in captivity or captured when in their infancy, and therefore have no ideas of freedom, or visions of their wild homes; consequently their supposed "pining for freedom" often is more imaginary than real.

Art. 18. A wild animal has no more inherent right to live a life of lazy and luxurious ease, and freedom from all care, than a man or woman has to live without work or family cares. In the large cities of the world there are many millions of toiling humans who are worse off per capita as to burdens and sorrows and joys than are the beasts and birds in a well kept zoological park. "Freedom" is comparative only, not absolute.

Art. 19. While the use of trained animals in stage performances is not necessarily cruel, and while training operations are based chiefly upon kindness and reward, it is necessary that vigilance should be exercised to insure that the cages and stage quarters of such animals shall be adequate in size, properly lighted and acceptably ventilated, and that cruel punishments shall not be inflicted upon the animals themselves.

Art. 20. The training of wild animals may, or may not, involve cruelties, according to the intelligence and the moral status of the trainer. This is equally true of the training of children, and the treatment of wives and husbands. A reasonable blow with a whip to a mean and refractory animal in captivity is not necessarily an act of cruelty. Every such act must be judged according to the evidence.

Art. 21. It is unjust to proclaim that "all wild animal performances are cruel" and therefore should be prohibited by law. The claim is untrue, and no lawmaker should pay heed to it. Wild animal performances are no more cruel or unjust than men-and-women performances of acrobatics. Practically all trained animals are well fed and tended, they welcome their performances, and go through them with lively interest. Such performances, when good, have a high educational value,--but not to closed minds.

Art. 22. Every bull-fight, being brutally unfair to the horses and the bull engaged and disgustingly cruel, is an unfit spectacle for humane and high-minded people, and no Christian man or woman can attend one without self-stultification.

Art. 23. The western practice of "bulldogging," now permitted in some Wild West shows, is disgusting, degrading, and never should be permitted.

Art. 24. The use of monkeys by organ-grinders is cruel, it is degrading to the monkeys, and should in all states be prohibited by law.

Art. 25. The keeping of live fishes in glass globes nearly always ends in cruelty and suffering, and should everywhere be prohibited by law. A round glass straight-jacket is just as painful as any other kind.

Art. 26. The sale and use of chained live chameleons as ornaments and playthings for idiotic or vicious men and children always means death by slow torture for the reptile, and should in all states be prohibited by law.

II. MENTAL TRAITS OF WILD ANIMALS

VI

THE BRIGHTEST MINDS AMONG AMERICAN ANIMALS

We repeat that _the most interesting features of a wild animal are its mind, its thoughts, and the results of its reasoning._ Besides these, its classification, distribution and anatomy are of secondary importance; but at the same time they help to form the foundation on which to build the psychology of species and individuals. Let no student make the mistake of concluding that when he has learned an animal's place in nature there is nothing more to pursue.

After fifty years of practical experience with wild animals of many species, I am reluctantly compelled to give the prize for greatest cunning and foresight _in self-preservation_ to the common brown rat,--the accursed "domestic" rat that has adopted man as his perpetual servant, and regards man's goods as his lawful prey. When all other land animals have been exterminated from the earth, the brown rat will remain, to harry and to rob the Last Man.

The brown rat has persistently accompanied man all over the world. Millions have been spent in fighting him and the bubonic-plague flea that he cheerfully carries in his offensive fur. For him no place _that contains food_ is too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. Many old sailors claim to believe that rats will desert at the dock an outward-bound ship that is fated to be lost at sea; but that certificate of superhuman foreknowledge needs a backing of evidence before it can be accepted.

Of all wild animals, rats do the greatest number of "impossible" things. We have matched our wits against rat cunning until a madhouse yawned before us. Twice in my life all my traps and poisons have utterly failed, and left me faintly asking: _Are_ rats possessed of occult powers? Once the answer to that was furnished by an old he-one who left his tail in my steel trap, but a little later _caught himself_ in a trap-like space in the back of the family aeolian, and ignominiously died there,--a victim of his own error in judging distances without a tape line.

Tomes might be written about the minds and manners of the brown rat, setting forth in detail its wonderful intelligence in quickly getting wise to new food, new shelter, new traps and new poisons. Six dead rats are, as a rule, sufficient to put any _new_ trap out of business; but poisons and infections go farther before being found out. [Footnote: For home use, my best rat weapon is rough-on-rats, generously mixed with butter and spread liberally on very thin slices of bread. It has served me well in effecting clearances.]

The championship for keen strategy in self-preservation belongs to the musk-oxen for their wolf-proof circle of heads and horns. Every musk-ox herd is a mutual benefit life insurance company. When a gaunt and hungry wolf-pack appears, the adult bull and cow musk-oxen at once form a close circle, with the calves and young stock in the centre. That deadly ring of lowered heads and sharp horns, all hung precisely right to puncture and deflate hostile wolves, is impregnable to fang and claw. The arctic wolves know this well. Mr. Stefansson says it is the settled habit of wolf packs of Banks Land to pass musk-ox herds without even provoking them to "fall in" for defense.

Judging by the facts that Charles L. Smith and the Norboe brothers related to Mr. Phillips and me around our camp-fires in the Canadian Rockies, the wolverine is one of the most cunning wild animals of all North America. This is a large order; for the gray wolf and grizzly bear are strong candidates for honors in that contest.

The greatest cunning of the wolverine is manifested in robbing traps, stealing the trapper's food and trap-baits, and at the same time avoiding the traps set for him. He is wonderfully expert in springing steel traps for the bait or prey there is in them, without getting caught himself. He will follow up a trap line for miles, springing all traps and devouring all baits as he goes. Sometimes in sheer wantonness he will throw a trap into a river, and again he will bury a trap in deep snow. Dead martens in traps are savagely torn from them. Those that can not be eaten on the spot are carried off and skilfully cached under two or three feet of snow.

Trapper Smith once set a trap for a wolverine, and planted close behind it a young moose skull with some flesh upon it. The wolverine came in the night, started at a point well away from the trap, dug a tunnel through six feet of snow, fetched up well behind the trap,--and triumphantly dragged away the head through his tunnel.

From the testimony of W. H. Wright, of Spokane, in his interesting book on "The Grizzly Bear," and for other reasons, I am convinced that the Rocky Mountain silver-tip grizzly is our brightest North American animal, and very keen of nose, eye, ear and brain. Mr. Wright says that "the grizzly bear far excels in cunning any other animal found throughout the Rocky Mountains, and, for that matter, he far excels them all combined." While the last clause is a large order, I will not dispute the opinion of a man of keen intelligence who has lived much among the most important and interesting wild animals of the Rockies.

In the Bitter Root Mountains Mr. Wright and his hunting party once set a bear trap for a grizzly, in a pen of logs, well baited with fresh meat. On the second day they found the pen demolished, the bait taken out, and everything that was movable piled on the top of the trap.

The trap was again set, this time loosely, under a bed of moss. The grizzly came and joyously ate all the meat that was scattered around the trap, but the moss and the trap were left untouched. And then followed a major operation in bear trapping. A mile away there was a steep slope of smooth rock, bounded at its foot by a creek. On one side was a huge tangle of down timber, on the other side loomed some impassable rocks; and a tiny meadow sloped away at the top. The half-fleshed carcasses of two dead elk were thrown half way down the rock slide, to serve as a bait. On the two sides two bear guns were set, and to their triggers were attached two long silk fish-lines, stretched taut and held parallel to each other, extending across the rocky slope. The idea was that the bear could not by any possibility reach the bait from above or below, without setting off at least one gun, and getting a bullet through his shoulders.

On the first night, no guns went off. The next morning it was found that the bear had crossed the stream and climbed straight up toward the bait until he reached the first fish-line; where he stopped. Without pressing the string sufficiently to set off its gun, he followed it to the barrier of trees. Being balked there, he turned about, retraced his steps carefully and followed the string to the barrier of rocks. Being blocked there, he back- tracked down the slide and across the stream, over the way he came. Then he widely circled the whole theatre, and came down toward the bait from the little meadow at its top of the slide.

Presently he reached the upper fish-line, twelve feet away from the first one. First he followed this out to the log barrier, then back to the rock ledge that was supposed to be unclimbable. There he scrambled up the "impossible" rocks, negotiated the ledge foot by foot, and successfully got around the end of line No. 2. Getting between the two lines he sailed out across the slope to the elk carcasses, feasted sumptuously, and then meandered out the way he came, without having disturbed a soul.

All this was done at night, and in darkness; and presumably that bear is there to this day, alive and well. No wonder Mr. Wright has a high opinion of the grizzly bear as a thinking animal.

In hiding their homes and young, either in burrows or in nests on the ground, wild rabbits and hares are wonderfully skilful, even under new conditions. Being quite unable to fight, or even to dig deeply, they are wholly dependent upon their wits in keeping their young alive by hiding them. Thanks to their keenness in concealment, the gray rabbit is plentiful throughout the eastern United States in spite of its millions of enemies. Is it not wonderful? The number killed by hunters last year in Pennsylvania was about 3,500,000!

The most amazing risk that I ever saw taken by a rabbit was made by a gray rabbit that nested in a shallow hole in the middle of a lawn-mower lawn east of the old National Museum building in Washington. The hollow was like that of a small wash-basin, and when at rest in it with her young ones the neutral gray back of the mother came just level with the top of the ground. At the last, when her young were almost large enough to get out and go under their own steam, a lawn-mower artist chanced to look down at the wrong moment and saw the family. Evidently that mother believed that the boldest ventures are those most likely to win.

Among the hoofed and horned animals of North America the white- tailed deer is the shrewdest in the recognition of its enemies, the wisest in the choice of cover, and in measures for self- preservation. It seems at first glance that the buck is more keen- witted than the doe; but this is a debatable question. Throughout the year the buck thinks only of himself. During fully one-half the year the doe is burdened by the cares of motherhood, and the paramount duty of saving her fawns from their numerous enemies. This, I am quite sure, is the handicap which makes it so much easier to kill a doe in the autumn hunting season than to bag a fully antlered and sophisticated buck who has only himself to consider.

The white-tailed deer saves its life by skulking low in timber and thick brush. This is why it so successfully resists the extermination that has almost swept the mule deer, antelope, white goat, moose and elk from all the hunting-grounds of the United States. Thanks to its alertness in seeing its enemies first, its skill and quickness in hiding, _and its mental keenness in recognizing and using deer sanctuaries,_ the white- tailed or "Virginia" deer will outlive all the other hoofed animals of North America. In Pennsylvania they know enough to rush for the wire-bounded protected area whenever the hunters appear. That state has twenty-six such deer sanctuaries,--well filled with deer.

The moose and caribou dwell upon open or half-open ground, and are at the mercy of the merciless long-range rifles. Their keenness does not count much against rifles that can shoot and kill at a quarter of a mile. In the rutting season the bull moose of Maine or New Brunswick is easily deceived by the "call" of a birch-bark megaphone in the hands of a moose hunter who imitates the love call of the cow moose so skilfully that neither moose nor man can detect the falsity of the lure.

The mountain sheep is wide-eyed, alert and ready to run, but he dwells in exposed places from the high foothills up to the mountain summits, and now even the most bungling hunter can find him and kill him at long range. In the days of black powder and short ranges the sheep had a chance to escape; but now he has none whatever. He has keener vision and more alertness than the goat, but as a real life-saving factor that amounts to nothing! Wild sheep are easily and quickly exterminated.

The mountain goat has no protection except elevation and precipitous rocks, and to the hunter who has the energy to climb up to him he, too, is easy prey. Usually his biped enemy finds him and attacks him in precipitous mountains, where running and hiding are utterly impossible. When discovered on a ledge two feet wide leading across the face of a precipice, poor Billy has nothing to do but to take the bullets as they come until he reels and falls far down to the cruel slide-rock. He has a wonderful mind, but its qualities and its usefulness belong in Chapter XIII.

Warm-Coated Animals Avoid "Fresh Air." On this subject there is a strange divergence of reasoning power between the wild animals of cold countries and the sleeping-porch advocates of today.

Even the most warm-coated of the fur-bearing animals, such as the bears, foxes, beavers, martens and mink, and also the burrowing rodents, take great pains to den up in winter just as far from the "fresh air" of the cold outdoors as they can attain by deep denning or burrowing. The prairie-dog not only ensconces himself in a cul-de-sac at the end of a hole fourteen feet deep and long, but as winter sets in he also tightly plugs up the mouth of his den with moist earth. When sealed up in his winter den the black bear of the north draws his supply of fresh air through a hole about one inch in diameter, or less.

But the human devotees of fresh air reason in the opposite direction. It is now the regular thing for mothers to open wide to the freezing air of out-doors either one or all the windows of the rooms in which their children sleep, giving to each child enough fresh air to supply ten full-grown elephants, or twenty head of horses. And the final word is the "sleeping-porch!" It matters not how deadly damp is the air along with its 33 degrees of cold, or the velocity of the wind, the fresh air must be delivered. The example of the fat and heavily furred wild beast is ignored; and I just wonder how many people in the United States, old and young, have been killed, or permanently injured, by fresh air, during the last fifteen years.

And furthermore. Excepting the hoofed species, it is the universal rule of the wild animals of the cold-winter zones of the earth that the mother shall keep her helpless young close beside her in the home nest and keep them warm partly by the warmth of her own body. The wild fur-clad mother does not maroon her helpless offspring in an isolated cot in a room apart, upon a thin mattress and in an atmosphere so cold that it is utterly impossible for the poor little body and limbs to warm it and keep it warm. Yet many human mothers do just that, and some take good care to provide a warmer atmosphere for themselves than they joyously force upon their helpless infants.

No dangerous fads should be forced upon defenseless children or animals.

A proper amount of fresh air is very desirable, but the intake of a child is much less than that of an elephant. Besides, if Nature had intended that men should sleep outdoors in winter, with the moose and caribou, we would have been furnished with ruminant pelage and fat.

VII

KEEN BIRDS AND DULL MEN

If all men could know how greatly the human species varies from highest to lowest, and how the minds and emotions of the lowest men parallel and dove-tail with those of the highest quadrupeds and birds, we might be less obsessed with our own human ego, and more appreciative of the intelligence of animals.

A thousand times in my life my blood has been brought to the boiling point by seeing or reading of the cruel practices of ignorant and vicious men toward animals whom they despised because of their alleged standing "below man." By his vicious and cruel nature, many a man is totally unfitted to own, or even to associate with, dogs, horses and monkeys. Many persons are born into the belief that every man is necessarily a "lord of creation," and that all animals per se are man's lawful prey. In the vicious mind that impression increases with age. Minds of the better classes can readily learn by precept or by reasoning from cause to effect the duty of man to observe and defend the God- given rights of animals.

It was very recently that I saw on the street a group that represented man's attitude toward wild animals. It consisted of an unclean and vicious-looking man in tramp's clothing, grinding an offensive hand-organ and domineering over a poor little terrorized "ringtail" monkey. The wretched mite from the jungle was encased in a heavy woolen straight-jacket, and there was a strap around its loins to which a stout cord was attached, running to the Root of All Evil. The pavement was hot, but there with its bare and tender feet on the hot concrete, the sad-eyed little waif painfully moved about, peering far up into the faces of passers-by for sympathy, but all the time furtively and shrinkingly watching its tormentor. Every now and then the hairy old tramp would jerk the monkey's cord, each time giving the frail creature a violent bodily wrench from head to foot. I think that string was jerked about forty times every hour.

And that exhibition of monkey torture in a monkey hell continues in summer throughout many states of our country,--because "it pleases the children!" The use of monkeys with hand-organs is a cruel outrage upon the monkey tribe, and no civilized state or municipality should tolerate it. I call upon all humane persons to put an end to it.

As an antidote to our vaulting human egotism, we should think often upon the closeness of mental contact between the highest animals and the lowest men. In drawing a parallel between those two groups, there are no single factors more valuable than the home, and the family food supply. These hark back to the most primitive instincts of the vertebrates. They are the bedrock foundations upon which every species rests. As they are stable or unstable, good or bad, so lives or dies the individual, and the species also.

In employing the term "highest animals" I wish to be understood as referring to the warm-blooded vertebrates, and not merely the apes and monkeys that both structurally and mentally are nearest to man.

Throughout my lifetime I have been by turns amazed, entertained and instructed by the marvelous intelligence and mechanical skill of small mammals in constructing burrows, and of certain birds in the construction of their nests. Today the hanging nest of the Baltimore oriole is to me an even greater wonder than it was when I first saw one over sixty years ago. Even today the mechanical skill involved in its construction is beyond my comprehension. My dull brain can not figure out the processes by which the bird begins to weave its hanging purse at the tip end of the most unstable of all earthly building sites,--a down-hanging elm-tree branch that is swayed to and fro by every passing breeze. The situation is so "impossible" that thus far no moving picture artist has ever caught and recorded the process.

Take in your hand a standard oriole nest, and examine it thoroughly. First you will note that it is very strong, and thoroughly durable. It can stand the lashings of the fiercest gales that visit our storm-beaten shore.

How long would it take a man to unravel that nest, wisp by wisp, and resolve it into a loose pile of materials? Certainly not less than an entire day. Do you think that even your skilful fingers,-- unassisted by needles,--could in two days, or in three, weave of those same materials a nest like that, that would function as did the original? I doubt it. The materials consist of long strips of the thin inner bark of trees, short strings, and tiny grass stems that are long, pliable and tough. Who taught the oriole how to find and to weave those rare and hard-to-find materials? And how did it manage all that weaving with its beak only? Let the wise ones answer, if they can; for I confess that I can not!

Down in Venezuela, in the delta of the Orinoco River, and elsewhere, lives a black and yellow bird called the giant cacique (pronounced cay-seek'), which as a nest-builder far surpasses our oriole. Often the cacique's hanging nest is from four to six feet long. The oriole builds to escape the red squirrels, but the cacique has to reckon with the prehensile-tailed monkeys.

Sometimes a dozen caciques will hang their nests in close proximity to a wasps' nest, as if for additional protection. A cacique's nest hangs like a grass rope, with a commodious purse at its lower end, entered by a narrow perpendicular slit a foot or so above the terminal facilities. It is impossible to achieve one of these nests without either shooting off the limb to which it hangs, or felling the tree. If it hangs low enough a charge of coarse shot usually will cut the limb, but if high, cutting it down with a rifle bullet is a more serious matter.

To our Zoological Park visitors the African weaver birds are a wonder and a delight. Orioles and caciques do not build nests in captivity, but the weavers blithely transfer their activities to their spacious cage in our tropical-bird house. The bird-men keep them supplied with raffia grass, and they do the rest. Fortunately for us, they weave nests for fun, and work at it all the year round! Millions of visitors have watched them doing it. To facilitate their work the upper half of their cage is judiciously supplied with tree-branches of the proper size and architectural slant. The weaving covers many horizontal branches. Sometimes a group of nests will be tied together in a structure four feet long; and it branches up, or down, or across, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

Some of the weavers, which inhabit Africa, Malayana and Australia, are "communal" nest-builders. They build colonies of nests, close together. Imagine twenty-five or more Baltimore orioles massing their nests together on one side of a single tree, in a genuine village. That is the habit of some of the weaver birds;--and this brings us to what is called the most wonderful of all manifestations of house-building intelligence among birds. It is the community house of the little sociable weaver-bird of South Africa (_Philetoerus socius_). Having missed seeing the work of this species save in museums, I will quote from the Royal Natural History, written by the late Dr. Richard Lydekker, an excellent description: --This species congregates in large flocks, many pairs incubating their eggs under the same roof, which is composed of cartloads of grass piled on a branch of some camel- thorn tree in one enormous mass of an irregular umbrella shape, looking like a miniature haystack and almost solid, but with the under surface (which is nearly flat) honeycombed all over with little cavities, which serve not only as places for incubation, but also as a refuge against rain and wind.

"They are constantly being repaired by their active little inhabitants. It is curious that even the initiated eye is constantly being deceived by these dome-topped structures, since at a distance they closely resemble native huts. The nesting- chambers themselves are warmly lined with feathers."

Here must we abruptly end our exhibits of the intelligence of a few humble little birds as fairly representative of the wonderful mental ability and mechanical skill so common in the ranks of the birds of the world. It would be quite easy to write a volume on The Architectural Skill of Birds!

Now, let us look for a moment into the house-building intelligence and skill of some of the lower tribes of men. Out of the multitude of exhibits available I will limit myself to three, widely separated. In the first place, the habitations of the savage and barbaric tribes are usually the direct result of their own mental and moral deficiencies. The Eskimo is an exception, because his home and its location are dictated by the hard and fierce circumstances which dictate to him what he must do. Often he is compelled to move as his food supply moves. The Cliff-Dweller Indian of the arid regions of the Southwest was forced to cliff- dwell, in order to stave off extermination by his enemies. Under that spur he became a wonderful architect and engineer.

For present purposes we are concerned with three savage tribes which might have been rich and prosperous agriculturists or herdsmen had they developed sufficient intelligence to see the wisdom of regular industry.

Consider first the lowest of three primitive tribes that inhabit the extreme southern point of Patagonia, whose real estate holdings front on the Strait of Magellan. That region is treeless, rocky, windswept, cold and inhospitable. I can not imagine a place better fitted for an anarchist penal colony. North of it lie plains less rigorous, and by degrees less sterile, and finally there are lands quite habitable by cattle-and-crop-growing men.

But those three tribes elect to stick to the worst spot in South America. The most primitive is the tribe of "canoe Indians" of Tierra del Fuego, which probably represents the lowest rung of the human ladder. Beside them the cave men of 30,000 years ago were kings and princes. Their only rivals seem to be the Poonans of Central Borneo, who, living in a hot country, make no houses or shelters of any kind, and have no clothing but a long strip of bark cloth around the loins.

The Fuegians have long been known to mariners and travellers. They inhabit a region that half the year is bleak, cold and raw, but they make nothing save the rudest of the rude in canoes--of rough slabs tied together and caulked _with moss,_--and rough bone- pointed spears, bows, arrows and paddles. Their only clothing consists of skins of the guanacos loosely hung from the neck, and flapping over the naked and repulsive body. They make no houses, and on shore their only shelters from the wind and snow and chilling rains are rabbit-like forms of brush, broken off by hand.

These people are lower in the scale of intelligence than any wild animal species known to me; for they are mentally too dull and low to maintain themselves on a continuing basis. Their hundred years of contact with man has taught them little; and numerically they are decreasing so rapidly that the world will soon see the absolute finish of the tribe.

In the best of the three tribes, the Tchuelclus, the birth rate is so low that within recent times the tribe has diminished from about 5,000 to a remnant of about 500.

Now, have those primitive creatures "immortal souls?" Are they entitled to call chimpanzees, elephants, bears and dogs "lower animals?" Do they "think," or "reason," any more than the animals I have named?

It is a far cry from the highest to the lowest of the human race; and we hold that the highest animals intellectually are higher than the lowest men.

Now go with me for a moment to the lofty and dense tropical forest in the heart of the Territory of Selangor, in the Malay Peninsula. That forest is the home of the wild elephant, rhinoceros and sladang. And there dwells a jungle tribe called the Jackoons, some members of which I met at their family home, and observed literally in their own ancestral tree. Their house was not wholly bad, but it might have been 100 per cent better. It was merely a platform of small poles, placed like a glorified bird's nest in the spreading forks of a many-branched tree, about twenty feet from the ground. The main supports were bark-lashed to the large branches of the family tree. Over this there was a rude roof of long grass, which had a fairly intelligent slope. As a shelter from rain, the Jackoon house left much to be desired. The scanty loin cloths of the habitants knew no such thing as wash-day or line. With all its drawbacks, however, this habitation was far more adequate to the needs of its builders than the cold brush rabbit-forms of the Patagonian canoe Indians.

We now come to a tribe which has reduced the problem of housing and home life to its lowest common denominator. The Poonans of Central Borneo, discovered and described by Carl Bock, build _no houses of any kind,_ not even huts of green branches; and their only overture toward the promotion of personal comfort in the home is a five-foot grass mat spread upon the sodden earth, to lie upon when at rest. And this, in a country where in the so-called "dry season" it rains half the time, and in the "wet season" all the time.

The Poonans have rudely-made spears for taking the wild pig, deer and smaller game, their clothes consist of bark cloth, around the loins only. They know no such thing as agriculture, and they live off the jungle.

It was said some years ago that a similarly primitive jungle tribe of Ceylon, known as the Veddahs, could count no more than five, that they could not comprehend "day after to-morrow," and that their vocabulary was limited to about 200 words.

It is very probable that the language of the Poonans and the Jackoons is equally limited. And what are we to conclude from all the foregoing? Briefly, I should say that the architectural skill of the orioles, the caciques and the weaver birds is greater than that of the South Patagonia native, the Jackoon and the Poonan. I should say that those bird homes yield to their makers more comfort and protection, and a better birth-rate, than are yielded by the homes of those ignorant, unambitious and retrogressive tribes of men now living and thinking, and supposed to be possessed of reasoning powers. If the whole truth could be known, I believe it would be found that the stock of ideas possessed and used by the groups of highly-endowed birds would fully equal the ideas of such tribes of simple-minded men as those mentioned. If caught young, those savages could be trained by civilized men, and taught to perform many tricks, but so can chimpanzees and elephants.

Curiously enough, it is a common thing for even the higher types of civilized men to make in home-building just as serious mistakes as are made by wild animals and savages. For example, among the men of our time it is a common mistake to build in the wrong place, to build entirely too large or too ugly, and to build a Colossal Burden instead of a real Home. From many a palace there stands forth the perpetual question: "_Why_ did he do it?"

Any reader who at any time inclines toward an opinion that the author is unduly severe on the mentality of the human race, even as it exists today in the United States, is urged to read in the _Scientific Monthly_ for January, 1922, an article by Professor L. M. Tennan entitled "Adventures in Stupidity.--A Partial Analysis of the Intellectual Inferiority of a College Student." He should particularly note the percentages on page 34 in the second paragraph under the subtitle "The Psychology of Stupidity."

VIII

THE MENTAL STATUS OF THE ORANG-UTAN

My first ownership of a live orang-utan began in 1878, in the middle of the Simujan River, Borneo, where for four Spanish dollars I became the proud possessor of a three-year old male. No sooner was the struggling animal deposited in the bottom of my own boat than it savagely seized the calf of my devoted leg and endeavored to bite therefrom a generous cross section. My leggings and my leech stockings saved my life. That implacable little beast never gave up; and two days later it died,--apparently to spite me.

My next orang was a complete reverse of No. 1. He liked not the Dyaks who brought him to me, but in the first moment of our acquaintance he adopted me as his foster-father, and loved me like a son. Throughout four months of jungle vicissitudes he stuck to me. He was a high-class orang,--and be it known that many orangs are thin-headed scrubs, who never amount to anything. His skull was wide, his face was broad, and he had a dome of thought like a statesman. He had a fine mind, and I am sure I could have taught him everything that any ape could learn.