CARNIVORA--CATS AND DOGS.
Five species of carnivorous animals (exclusive of menagerie specimens)
have been introduced into New Zealand. Cats and dogs are domestic
animals of which numerous individuals have gone wild from time to time;
while ferrets, stoats, and weasels have been liberated and are now
common.
One of the most characteristic features of the land carnivora is “the
looseness of their skin, which, instead of being stretched on the
body as tightly as a drum-parchment, as it is in grass-eaters--for
instance, the ox or hippopotamus--is quite ‘baggy,’ having between it
and the flesh of the beast a layer of the loosest possible fibres.
It is for this reason that the skin of any but a very fat dog can be
pinched up so readily, while of an herbivore it may be said, in the
words of eulogy uttered by Mr. Squeers of his son Wackford, ‘Here’s
firmness, here’s solidness! Why, you can hardly get up enough of him
between your fingers and thumb to pinch him anywheres.’” As Parker
says, “The use of this loose skin will be very evident to any one who
will take the trouble to watch the great cats playing together at the
Zoological Gardens. They are continually scratching one another, but
the loose skin is dragged round by the claws, which in consequence can
get no hold and do no harm; with a tight skin, on the other hand, the
slightest scratch of such a claw as a tiger’s would cause a serious
wound. The looseness of the skin is very evident in the puma and
jaguar, in which it hangs in a fold along the middle of the belly, like
a great dewlap.”
The skull is very strongly developed, and has great bony ridges for the
attachment of the jaw-muscles. In herbivorous animals the brain-case
is small and the face much prolonged; but in carnivores--especially
cats--the face is very short relatively to the cranial portion of
the skull. The higher carnivora cannot chew or grind their food;
they only tear it and mince it. Cats and dogs walk on the toes, the
under-surfaces of which are covered with soft leathery pads, so as to
ensure a soft, silent footstep. What looks like the knee is really the
wrist, and what looks like a backward-turned knee in the hind leg is
the heel, the true elbow and knee being almost hidden by the skin. In
all carnivores the canine teeth are relatively very large. All of them
have the senses of sight and hearing very well developed. The young are
always born in a comparatively helpless condition, and are generally
blind for some time after their birth.
THE CAT.
There is no record as to the first introduction of cats into New
Zealand; but no doubt they were brought here by the very first
settlers--perhaps earlier even, by the crews of vessels which called
at Kororareka and other parts of this county in the very early whaling
days. They do not seem to have strayed far from the haunts of men until
rabbits began to multiply. Then, when the sheep-farmers found that
the capacity of the country for carrying sheep was being seriously
reduced by the vast increase of rabbits, they resorted to all sorts of
devices to cope with the pest. One method was to purchase cats in the
towns, take them out to the back country, feed them for a time till
they became somewhat habituated to the locality, and then turn them
loose. No doubt some died, but most of them became more or less wild,
and learned to subsist on the smaller animals of the neighbourhood.
Probably native ground-birds suffered most from their presence. They
certainly destroyed many young rabbits, but it is also true that
they were frequently found living and rearing their young in burrows
alongside families of rabbits. They cleared off the rats, which were
formerly so common, and they also largely exterminated lizards. My
son, Dr. Allan Thomson, tells me that in the Awatere Valley, in
Marlborough, rabbit-hunting cats are greatly esteemed by the settlers,
and are believed to be much more efficient than stoats and weasels.
They are only partly wild, as frequently the domestic cats feed their
young on rabbits and interbreed freely with wild cats living near the
homesteads. He observed a cat at Awapiri teaching two kittens to kill.
She would leave the house, and in about ten minutes’ time would return
with a baby rabbit, evidently obtained from a stop. When the kittens
were very young she killed the rabbit and skinned it. A week or two
later she would give them the dead rabbit with the skin just
partially turned back, and they quickly learned to complete the skinning.
Still later she gave them the live rabbit, with which at first they
played, but in a very short time they learned to approach the rabbit
from behind and grip it by the neck, lying practically on top of it
and pinching the gullet until the rabbit was strangled. Cats, in his
opinion, become rabbit-killers only when they are thus taught by their
mothers, but once they acquire the habit they feed on little else.
Dieffenbach, writing of the Piako district in Auckland Province in
1839, says, “The cats, which, on becoming wild, have assumed the
streaky grey colour of the original animal while in a state of nature,
form a great obstacle to the propagation of any new kinds of birds,
and also tend to the destruction of many indigenous species.” This
statement about the colour of wild cats has been made much of. It
is true to only a very limited extent, and I have always felt that
such statements--coming from a traveller who had only limited means
of observing the facts, and apparently founded his conclusions on a
few isolated observations of the settlers--are not always safe to
generalize from. In the present instance they led Darwin (in “The
Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication”) to quote him, and
to use the statement as a proof of the strong tendency to reversion
shown by the cat when it escaped from domestication. At the time
Dieffenbach wrote settlement was quite in its infancy, and cats had not
long been introduced. It is probable, therefore, that his statement,
whether the result of his own or other people’s observations, referred
to cats which were themselves progeny of grey animals. It certainly is
the case that in Central Otago, where cats were freely liberated to
cope with the rabbit pest, animals of many and varied colours are now
found wild. Mr. Robert Scott, formerly M.P. for Central Otago, who had
exceptional opportunities for observing the facts, has recently given
me most interesting information regarding this question. He says, “The
wild cat was, no doubt, the descendant of the shepherd’s and miner’s
tame cat. The predominating colour was grey-striped (or tiger-striped,
as some people called them), occasionally yellow, and rarely black or
black-and-white. The time I write of was the ‘seventies’--say, from
1870 on to the time when poisoning the rabbits with phosphorized grain
came in. The cats, though not numerous, were fairly common, especially
in districts where cover, such as fern and scrub, was plentiful. They
grew to an immense size, and were game to the last if attacked; in
fact, no dog would tackle one single-handed. They were always in the
pink of condition, which may be accounted for by the abundance of feed
available in the shape of wekas, ducks, and rats, with perhaps a dead
sheep or bullock occasionally. When the rabbit-poisoning came in that
class or variety of cat disappeared along with the wild pig and weka.
The reason for the extermination of the cat is because it prefers
the entrails to the flesh. Since that time, up to the present, cats
have been turned out in considerable numbers, but the rabbit-trapping
has effectually prevented their increase, and the survivors still
retain their original colours--that is, black, black-and-white, grey,
grey-and-white, &c.; but they are much smaller than the wild cat of
forty years ago. My opinion is that had the original cat survived
till to-day the colour would have invariably been grey, or, rather,
grey-striped.”
Mr. H. C. Weir, of Ida Valley Station, Otago, states that on high
country, where rabbit-traps are seldom if ever used, they grow to a
very considerable size, and are most commonly of a grey colour; but
yellow, grey-and-white, and black are also to be met with. He adds,
“I cannot say I ever saw any approaching the tiger-like stripe of the
Home-country wild cat, and I have seen a good few of them in the wilds
of Sutherlandshire, Scotland.”
Some people consider that wild cats are responsible for much of
the failure which has followed the constantly renewed attempts to
naturalize game birds. At the annual meeting of the Wellington
Acclimatization Society in 1898 a member said, “Cats are more
destructive to game than all the hawks, weasels, and stoats in the
colony. Most of the bush coverts are full of these cats, a fact which I
myself proved near Feilding, where, with the assistance of traps baited
with smoked fish, I caught many.” I think they may have contributed to
some extent to this failure, but only in a few parts of the country,
and then chiefly in the neighbourhood of settlements. Personally, I do
not think that wild cats have had much to do with the extermination
of introduced game. The whole question is a difficult one to get any
definite knowledge upon, opinions differ so much. Thus Mr. Charles
J. Peters, of Mount Somers, considers that wild cats are far more
effective in keeping down rabbits than are stoats or weasels, and
estimates that cats will kill more rabbits in a month than one of the
others will in six months.
Mr. B. C. Aston, in a paper on the Kaikoura Mountains, speaks of the
half-wild cats which are found about deserted fencers’ and musterers’
camps as retaining “all their love for man’s comradeship if encouraged,
but they invariably refuse to eat anything that they have not killed
themselves. They probably exist on rabbits, birds, and mice. As a
result of their hunting habits their chest and forelegs are largely
developed, and they have a look different from the ordinary cat, being
leaner, and quicker in action.”
Wild cats, so my son Dr. Allan Thomson tells me, are the bane of the
island sanctuaries of New Zealand, being present on Kapiti Island,
Little Barrier Island, and Stephen Island, in which last they kill and
eat the tuatara. They have been reduced to small numbers by shooting,
but their complete extermination has not yet been accomplished.
When the Russian Commander Bellingshausen visited the Macquaries in
1820 he found numbers of wild cats hid among the foliage. There were
at the time, however, two parties of traders (seal-hunters?) on the
island, one of thirteen and the other of twenty-seven men, and these
probably accounted for the cats.
Captain Musgrave, who was a castaway from the schooner “Grafton,” when
she was wrecked on the Auckland Islands in 1864, found a cat in a trap
more than a year after the date of the wreck. “She soon cleared the hut
of mice, which were dreadfully common.”
In 1868 Mr. H. H. Travers, in his account of a visit to the Chatham
Islands, states that wild cats were very abundant, and that they
destroyed a great number of the indigenous birds.
WILD DOGS.
It may seem strange to speak of dogs as wild animals in New Zealand,
and it is questionable whether there are any wild dogs at the present
time, but in the early days of settlement they were fairly abundant,
and were truly feral. Dogs are the most thoroughly domesticated of
animals, and in none has the moral and intellectual faculties been
more highly developed. But just as some men degrade these faculties to
the basest uses and become a menace to the rest of their race, so some
dogs--only a few, it must be admitted--go wild and become a menace to
their human companions and masters.
It is of interest to remember that when Captain Cook came to New
Zealand the Natives had dogs, which they had brought with them from
their original homes in Polynesia. Most of the histories of the
migrations of the Maori refer to the fact of their bringing dogs with
them, so that they had probably been in the country for some centuries
before the date of Cook’s visit in 1769. Crozet, who visited these
Islands in 1772, saw these dogs, and described them as follows: “The
dogs are a sort of domesticated fox, quite black or white, very low on
the legs, straight ears, thick tail, long body, full jaws, but more
pointed than that of the fox, and uttering the same cry. They do not
bark like our dogs. These animals are only fed on fish, and it appears
that the savages only raise them for food. Some were taken on board our
vessels, but it was impossible to domesticate them like our dogs: they
were always treacherous, and bit us frequently. They would have been
dangerous to keep where poultry was raised or had to be protected: they
would destroy them just like true foxes.”
Forster, in his account of Cook’s second voyage, writing of the Queen
Charlotte Sound Natives in 1773, says, “A good many dogs were observed
in their canoes, which they seemed very fond of, and kept tied with
a string round their middle. They were of a rough, long-haired sort,
with pricked ears, and much resembled the common shepherd’s cur or
Count Buffon’s _chien de berger_. They were of different colours, some
quite black and others perfectly white. The food which these dogs
receive is fish, or the same as their masters live on, who afterwards
eat their flesh and employ the fur in various ornaments and dresses.”
Later on in the same journal he says, “The officers had ordered their
black dog to be killed, and sent to the captain one-half of it. This
day (June 9), therefore, we dined for the first time on a leg of it
roasted, which tasted so exactly like mutton that it was absolutely
undistinguishable.... In New Zealand and in the tropical isles of the
South Sea the dogs are the most stupid, dull animals imaginable, and
do not seem to have the least advantage in point of sagacity over our
sheep. In the former country they are fed upon fish; in the latter, on
vegetables.”
Bellingshausen, who visited New Zealand in 1820, says, “We saw no
quadrupeds except dogs of a small species. Captain Lazarew bought a
couple. They are rather small, have a woolly tail, erect ears, a large
mouth, and short legs.”
Dieffenbach, writing nearly seventy years after Cook’s visit, remarks
that “the native dog was formerly considered a dainty, and great
numbers of them were eaten; but the breed having undergone an almost
complete mixture with the European, their use as an article of food
has been discontinued, as the European dogs are said by the Natives to
be perfectly unpalatable. The New Zealand dog is different from the
Australian dingo; the latter resembles in size and shape the wolf,
while the former rather resembles the jackal.”
The Rev. Richard Taylor, author of “Te Ika a Maui,” who is not always
a reliable authority where natural history is concerned, says, “The
New Zealand dog was small and long-haired, of a dirty white or yellow
colour, with a bushy tail. This the Natives say they brought with
them when they first came to these Islands.” Then he adds, “It is
not improbable, however, that they found another kind already in the
country, brought by the older Melanesian race, with long white hair and
black tail: it is said to have been very quiet and docile.”
The Maori dog has totally disappeared. Mr. S. Percy Smith, of New
Plymouth, tells me that the last one he heard of was about 1896. But
I have mentioned it here because it was in part the progenitor of
the wild dogs which afterwards became such a dangerous nuisance to
sheep-breeders.
When settlement began European dogs must have crossed freely with the
native animal, and many, both of the introduced and crossed dogs,
became truly wild, especially as there were sheep and goats to worry,
and pigs to chase and kill.
Dr. Lyall, who was surgeon on H.M.S. “Acheron” during the survey of
the coast of New Zealand in 1844, says of the kakapo, or owl-parrot,
that “at a very recent period it was common all over the west coast
of the Middle Island; but _there is now a race of wild dogs_ said to
have overrun all the northern part of this shore, and to have almost
exterminated the kakapo wherever they have reached.” Brunner, who
visited the West Coast a few years later, makes a similar statement in
his Journal. The early settlers could not distinguish between Maori
dogs and these wild, half-bred curs. Thus R. Gillies, writing in
after-years of the early days of the Otago settlement, which was formed
in 1848, says, “For some years after the settlers arrived here the wild
dog was the terror of the flockmaster, and the object of his inveterate
hostility.” W. D. Murison, formerly editor of the _Otago Daily Times_,
writing at the same period (1877), tells how in 1858 he and his
brother took up country in the Maniototo Plains, which they reached
by the valley of the Shag River. The wild dogs were very troublesome.
The first was caught by a kangaroo-dog, apparently imported from
Australia for the purpose of hunting them. “This particular wild dog
was yellow in colour, and so was the second killed; but the bulk of
those ultimately destroyed by us were black-and-white, showing a
marked mixture of the collie. The yellow dogs looked like a distinct
breed. They were low-set, with short pricked ears, broad forehead,
sharp snout, and bushy tail. Indeed, those acquainted with the dingo
professed to see little difference between that animal and the New
Zealand yellow wild dog. It may be remarked, however, that most of the
other dogs we killed, although variously coloured, possessed nearly
all the other characteristics of the yellow dog. The wild dogs were
generally to be met with in twos and threes; they fed chiefly on quail,
ground-larks, young ducks, and occasionally on pigs. On one occasion,
when riding through the Idaburn Valley, we came across four wild dogs
baiting a sow and her litter of young ones in a dry, tussocky lagoon.
To our annoyance our own dogs joined in the attack upon the sow, and
the wild dogs got away without our getting one of them.... In all we
destroyed fifty-two dogs between September, 1858, and December, 1860.”
Taylor White, writing in 1889, says, “I consider these dogs entirely
distinct from the European dog. For the wild dogs met with on the
Waimakariri River, in the alpine ranges of Canterbury, during the
year 1856, were in colour and markings identical with those found in
the alpine region of Lake Wakatipu in 1860, a distance of several
hundred miles apart. There seems little room to doubt that they were an
original Maori dog. The fact of their wanting the two tan spots over
the eyes mostly seen in European dogs of approximate colour is a very
strong evidence also in favour of this opinion.”
At one time wild dogs were so common in Marlborough and did so much
damage on the sheep-runs that packs of hunting-dogs were bred for the
special purpose of running them down. As settlement proceeded and the
country became opened up wild dogs were gradually exterminated. The
only ones which are now met with are curs which have taken to rabbits
or to sheep-killing, and have managed to escape from their owners.
Bellingshausen reported wild dogs on the Macquaries in 1820, but
it is improbable that they long survived the sealers, who probably
generally brought them to the islands. As soon as the killing of seals
and sea-lions stopped the dogs in all probability died out. Captain
Musgrave, who was wrecked on Auckland Island in 1864, discovered wild
dogs, like sheep-dogs, on the island. Their case, however, was probably
similar to those on the Macquaries, for I am not aware that any
subsequent visitor to the island has seen them.
In a reprint from the Auckland _Herald_ of the 18th November, 1866, we
read, “It is not generally known that about Otamatea and the Wairoa
the bush is infested with packs of wild dogs, as ferocious, but more
daring, than wolves. These dogs hunt in packs of from three to six
or eight. They are strong, gaunt, large animals, and dangerous when
met by a man alone. Not long since a Maori, when travelling from one
settlement to another through the forest, was attacked by three of
these animals at dusk, and only saved himself by climbing into a tree,
where he was kept prisoner until late the next day. The extensive
district over which these packs roam was once well stocked with wild
pigs, but most of these have fallen victims to the dogs, and since
this supply of food has failed the dogs have ventured after dark to
the neighbourhood of Native settlements and the homesteads of European
settlers in quest of prey.”