Chapter XXVII: Appendix: The Puma, or Lion of America

The following passage occurs in an article on "The Naturalist in La Plata," by the late Professor Piomanes, which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century,_ May, 1893. After quoting the account of the puma's habits and character given in the book, the writer says:--"I have received corroboration touching all these points from a gentleman who, when walking alone and unarmed on the skirts of a forest, was greatly alarmed by a large puma coming out to meet him. Deeming it best not to stand, he advanced to meet the animal, which thereupon began to gambol around his feet and rub against his legs, after the manner of an affectionate cat. At first he thought these movements must have been preliminary to some peculiar mode of attack, and therefore he did not respond, but walked quietly on, until the puma suddenly desisted and re-entered the forest. This gentleman says that, until the publication of Mr. Hudson's book, he had always remained under the impression that that particular puma must have been insane."

MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE.

I have found among my papers the following mislaid note on the subject of sportive displays of mammalians, which should have been used on page 281, where the subject is briefly treated:--Most mammalians are comparatively silent and live on the ground, and not having the power to escape easily, which birds have, and being more persecuted by man, they do not often disport themselves unrestrainedly in his presence; it is difficult to watch any wild animal without the watcher's presence being known or suspected. Nevertheless, their displays are not so rare as we might imagine. I have more than once detected species, with which I was, or imagined myself to be, well acquainted, disporting themselves in a manner that took me completely by surprise. While out tinamou shooting one day in autumn, near my own home in La Plata, I spied a troop of about a dozen weasels racing madly about over a vizcacha village--the mound and group of pit-like burrows inhabited by a community of vizcachas. These weasels were of the large common species, Galictis barbara, about the size of a cat; and were engaged in a pastime resembling a complicated dance, and so absorbed were they on that occasion that they took no notice of me when I walked up to within nine or ten yards of them, and stood still to watch the performance. They were all swiftly racing about and leaping over the pits, always doubling quickly back when the limit of the mound was reached, and although apparently carried away with excitement, and crossing each other's tracks at all angles, and this so rapidly and with so many changes of direction that I became confused when trying to keep any one animal in view, they never collided nor even came near enough to touch one another. The whole performance resembled, on a greatly magnified scale and without its beautiful smoothness and lightning swiftness, the fantastic dance of small black water-beetles, frequently seen on the surface of a pool or stream, during which the insects glide about in a limited area with such celerity as to appear like black curving lines traced by flying invisible pens; and as the lines everywhere cross and intersect, they form an intricate pattern on the surface, After watching the weasel dance for some minutes, I stepped up to the mound, whereupon the animals became alarmed and rushed pell-mell into the burrows, but only to reappear in a few seconds, thrusting up their long ebony-black necks and flat grey-capped heads, snarling chattering at me, glaring with fierce, beady eyes.

THE STRANGE INSTINCTS OF CATTLE.

In November and December, 1893, a short correspondence appeared in the _Field_ on the curious subject of "Dogs burying their dead." It arose through a letter from a Mr. Gould, of Albany, Western Australia, relating the following incident:--

A settler shot a bitch from a neighbouring estate that had formed the habit of coming on to his land to visit and play with his dog. The dog, finding his companion dead, was observed to dig a large hole in the ground, into which he dragged the carcase; but he did not cover it with earth. The writer wished to know if any reader of the _Field_ had met with a similar case. Some notes, which I contributed in reply to this letter, bear on one of the subjects treated in the chapter on "strange instincts," namely, the instinct of social animals to protect and shield their fellows; and for this reason I have thought it best to reproduce them in this place.

I remember on one occasion watching at intervals, for an entire day, a large and very savage dog keeping watch over the body of a dead bitch that had been shot. He made no attempt to bury the dead animal, but he never left it. He was observed more than once trying to drag the body away, doubtless with the intention of hiding it; not succeeding in these attempts, he settled down by its side again, although it was evident that he was suffering greatly from thirst and heat. It was at last only with the greatest trouble that the people of the house succeeded in getting the body away and burying it out of his sight.

Another instance, more to the point, occurred at my own house on the pampas, and I was one of several persons who witnessed it. A small, red, long-haired bitch--a variety of the common native cur--gave birth to four or five pups. A peon was told to destroy them, and, waiting until the bitch was out of sight, he carried them off to the end of the orchard, some 400 or 500 yards from the house, and threw them into a pool of water which was only two to three feet deep. The bitch passed the rest of the day in rushing frantically about, searching for her young, and in the evening, a little after dark, actually succeeded in finding them, although they were lying at the bottom of the pool. She got them all out, and carried them, one by one, to another part of the grounds, where she passed the night with them, uttering at intervals the most piercing cries. In the morning she carried them to still another spot, where there was a soft mould, and then dug a hole large and deep enough to bury them all, covering them over with the loose earth. Her task done, she returned to the house to sleep all day, but when night came again the whole piteous performance was repeated: the pups were dug up, and she passed the long, piercingly cold night--for it was in the depth of winter--trying to keep them warm, and uttering, as before, distressing cries. Yet a third time the whole thing was repeated; but after the third night, when the dog came home to sleep, the dead pups were taken out of the ground and buried at a distance.

Such an action as this strikes one with astonishment only because we have the custom of burying our dead, and are too ready at all times to regard the dog as human-like. But the explanation of the action in this case is to be found in the familiar fact that very many animals, including the dog, have the habit or instinct of burying or concealing the thing they wish to leave in safety. Thus, the dog buries the bone it does not want to eat, and when hungry digs it up again. When a dog buries or hides the dead body of the she dog it was attached to, or the she dog buries her dead young, it is with the same motive--namely, to conceal the animal that cannot be roused, and that it would not be safe to leave exposed.

It is plain to all who observe their actions that the lower animals have no comprehension of death. In the case of two animals that are accustomed to play or to be much together, if one dies, or is killed, and its body left, the other will come to sniff at, touch, and at last try to rouse it; but finding all attempts vain, it will at length go away to seek companionship elsewhere. In cases where the attachment is much stronger, the dead body may be watched over for an indefinite period. A brother of mine once related to me a very pathetic incident which occurred at an estancia on the pampas where he was staying. A large portion of the land was a low, level, marshy plain, partly overgrown with reeds and rushes; and one day, in this wilderness, a little boy of eight or nine, from the estancia, lost himself. A small dog, his invariable attendant, had gone out with him, but did not return. Seven days later the poor boy was found, at a great distance from the house, lying on the grass, where he had died of exhaustion. The dog was lying coiled up at his side, and appeared to be sleeping; but, when spoken to, he did not stir, and was presently found to be dead too. The dog could have gone back at any moment to the estancia, but his instinct of attachment overcame all others; he kept guard over his little master, who slept so soundly and so long, until he, too, slept in the same way.

A still more remarkable case of this kind was given in one of my books, of a gaucho, accompanied by his dog, who was chased and overtaken by a troop of soldiers during one of the civil wars in Uruguay. Suspecting him of being a spy, or, at all events, an enemy, his captors cut his throat, then rode away, calling to the dog to follow them; but the animal refused to leave his dead master's side. Returning to the spot a few days later, they saw the body of the man they had killed surrounded by a large number of vultures, which the dog, in a frenzy of excitement, was occupied in keeping at a respectable distance. It was observed that the dog, after making one of his sallies, driving the birds away with furious barkings, would set out at a run to a small stream not far from the spot; but when half way to it he would look back, and, seeing the vultures advancing once more to the corpse, would rush back to protect it. The soldiers watched him for some time with great interest, and once more they tried in vain to get him to follow them. Two days afterwards they revisited the spot, to find the dog lying dead by the side of his dead master. I had this story from the lips of one of the witnesses.

In all such cases, whether the dog watches over, conceals, or buries a dead body, he is doubtless moved by the same instinct which leads him to safeguard the animal he is attached to--another dog or his human master. But, as the dead animal is past help, it is, of course, a blunder of the instinct; and the blunder must be of very much less frequent occurrence among wild than among domestic animals. In a state of nature, when a gregarious animal dies, he dies, as a rule, alone; his body is not seen by his former companions, and he is not missed. When he dies by violence--which is the common fate--the body is carried off or devoured by the killer. This being the usual order, there is no instinct, except in a very few species, relating to the disposal of the dead among mammals and other vertebrates, such as is found in ants and other social insects. There are a few mammalians that live together in small communities, in a habitation made to last for many generations, in which such an instinct would appear necessary, and it accordingly exists, but is very imperfect. This is the case with the vizcacha, the large rodent of the pampas, which lives with its fellows, to the number of twenty or thirty, in a cluster of huge burrows. When a vizcacha dies in a burrow, the body is dragged out and thrown on to the mound among the mass of rubbish collected on it--but not until he has been dead a long time, and there is nothing left of him but the dry bones held together by the skin. In that condition the other members of the community probably cease to look on him as one of their companions who has fallen into a long sleep; he is no more than so much rubbish, which must be cleared out of an old disused burrow. Probably the beaver possesses some rude instinct similar to that of the vizcacha.

_Apropos_ of animals burying their treasures (or connections) for safety, it is worth mentioning that the skunk of the pampas occasionally buries her young in the kennel, when hunger compels her to go out foraging. I had often heard of this habit of the female skunk from the gauchos, and one day had the rare good fortune to witness an animal engaged in obliterating her own kennel. The senses of the skunk are so defective that one is able at times to approach very near to without alarming them. In this instance I sat on my horse at a distance of twenty yards, and watched the animal at work, drawing in the loose earth with her fore feet until the entrance to the kennel was filled up to within three inches of the surface; then, dropping into the shallow cavity, she pressed the loose mould down with her nose. Her task finished, she trotted away, and the hollow in the soil, when I examined it closely, looked only like the mouth of an ancient choked-up burrow. The young inhabit a circular chamber, lined with fine dry grass, at the end of a narrow passage from 3 ft. to 5 ft. long, and no doubt have air enough to serve them until their parent returns; but I believe the skunk only buries her young when they are very small.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Naturalist in La Plata, by W. H. Hudson