consideration of the elephant's moral qualities that have a direct
bearing upon our subject. In India, excepting the professional
"rogue," the elephant bears a spotless reputation for patience,
amiability and obedience. The "rogue" is an individual afflicted
with either an incorrigible disposition, or else is afflicted with
insanity, either temporary or permanent. I know of no instance on
record wherein a _normal elephant_ with a _healthy mind_
has been guilty of unprovoked homicide, or even of attempting it.
I have never heard of an elephant in India so much as kicking,
striking or otherwise injuring either human beings or other
domestic animals. There have been several instances, however, of
persons killed by elephants which were temporarily insane, or
"_must,_" and also by others permanently insane. In America
several persons have been killed in revenge for ill treatment. In
Brooklyn a female elephant once killed a civilian who burned her
trunk with a lighted cigar. It is the misfortune but not the fault
of the elephant that in advanced age or by want of necessary
exercise, he is liable to be attacked by _must,_ or sexual
insanity, during which period he is clearly irresponsible for his
acts.
So many men have been killed by elephants in this country that of
late years the idea has been steadily gaining ground that
elephants are naturally ill-tempered, and vicious to a dangerous
extent. Under fair conditions, nothing could be farther from the
truth. We have seen that in the hands of the "gentle Hindu" the
elephant is safe and reliable, and never attacks man except under
the circumstances already stated. In this country, however, many
an elephant is at the mercy of quick-tempered and sometimes
revengeful showmen, who very often do not understand the
temperaments of the animals under their control, and who during
the traveling season are rendered perpetually ill-tempered and
vindictive by reason of overwork and insufficient sleep. With such
masters as these it is no wonder that occasionally an animal
rebels, and executes vengeance. In Minneapolis in December an
elephant once went on a rampage through the freezing of its ears.
I am quite convinced that an elephant could by ill treatment be
driven to insanity, and I have no doubt that this has been done
many times. Our bad elephant, Gunda, was bad by nature, but
finally he became afflicted with sexual insanity, for which there
was no cure. When commanded by man, the elephant will tear a
criminal limb from limb, or crush him to death with his knees, or
go out to battle holding a sword in his trunk. He will, when told
to do so, attack his kind with fury and persistence; but in the
course of many hours, and even days, spent in watching wild herds,
I never yet saw a single individual show any signs of impatience
or ill-temper toward his fellows.
It is safe to say that, thus far, not one half the elephant's
mental capabilities have been developed, or even understood. It
would be of great interest to determine by experiment the full
educational capacity of this interesting quadruped. It would be
equally interesting to determine the limit of its reasoning
powers in applied mechanics. An animal that can turn a hand-organ
at the proper speed, or ring a telephone and go through the
motions of listening with a receiver, can be taught to push a
smoothing-plane invented purposely for him; but whether he would
learn of himself to plane the rough surface smooth, and let the
smooth ones remain untouched, is an open question.
While it is generally fruitless and unsatisfactory to enter the
field of speculation, I can not resist the temptation to assert my
belief that an elephant can be taught to read written characters,
and also to express some of his own thoughts or states of feeling
in writing. It would be a perfectly simple matter to prepare
suitable appliances by which the sagacious animal could hold a
crayon in his trunk, and mark upon a surface adapted to his
convenience. Many an elephant has been taught to make chalk-marks
on a blackboard. In Julian's work on "The Nature of Animals," the
eleventh chapter of the second book, he describes in detail the
wonderful performances of elephants at Rome, all of which he saw.
One passage is of peculiar interest to us, and the following has
been given as a translation: "...I saw them writing letters on
Roman tablets with their trunks, neither looking awry nor turning
aside. The hand, however, of the teacher was placed so as to be a
guide in the formation of the letters; and, while it was writing,
the animal kept its eye fixed down in an accomplished and scholar-
like manner."
I can conceive how an elephant may be taught that certain
characters represent certain ideas, and that they are capable of
intelligent combinations. The system and judgment and patient
effort which developed an active, educated, and even refined
intellect in Laura Bridgman--deaf, dumb and blind from birth--
ought certainly to be able to teach a clear-headed, intelligent
elephant to express at least _some_ of his thoughts in
writing.
I believe it is as much an act of murder to wantonly take the life
of a healthy elephant as to kill a native Australian or a Central-
African savage. If it is more culpable to kill an ignorant human
savage than an elephant, it is also more culpable to kill an
elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are both morally and
intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, and are, in my opinion,
as wholly destitute of that indefinable attribute called soul as
all the lower animals commonly are supposed to be.
If an investigator like Dr. Yerkes, and an educator like Dr. Howe,
should take it in hand to develop the mind of the elephant to the
highest possible extent, their results would be awaited with
peculiar interest, and it would be strange if they did not
necessitate a revision of the theories now common among those who
concede an immortal soul to every member of the human race, even
down to the lowest, but deny it to all the animals below man.
Curvature in the Brain of an Elephant. There is curvature of the
spine; and there is curvature in the brain. It afflicts the human
race, and all other vertebrates are subject to it.
In the Zoological Park we have had, and still have, a persistent
case of it in a female Indian elephant now twenty-three years of
age, named "Alice." Her mental ailment several times manifested
itself in Luna Park, her former home; but when we purchased the
animal her former owners carelessly forgot to mention it.
Four days after Alice reached her new temporary home in our
Antelope House, and while being marched around the Park for
exercise, she heard the strident cry of one of our mountain lions,
and immediately turned and bolted.
Young as she was at that time, her two strong and able-bodied
keepers, Thuman and Bayreuther, were utterly unable to restrain
her. She surged straight forward for the front door of the Reptile
House, and into that building she went, with the two keepers
literally swinging from her ears.
As the great beast suddenly loomed up above the crowd of
sightseers in the quiet building, the crowd screamed and became
almost panic-stricken.
Partly by her own volition and partly by encouragement, she
circumnavigated the turtle-bank and went out.
Once outside she went where she pleased, and the keepers were
quite unable to control her. Half an hour later she again headed
for the Reptile House and we knew that she would again try to
enter.
In view of the great array of plate glass cases in that building,
many of them containing venomous cobras, rattlesnakes, moccasins
and bushmasters, we were thoroughly frightened at the prospect of
that crazy beast again coming within reach of them.
With our men fighting frantically, and exhausted by their
prolonged efforts to control her, Alice again entered the Reptile
House. As she attempted to pass into the main hall,--the danger
zone,--our men succeeded in chaining her front feet to the two
steel posts of the guard rail, set solidly in concrete on each
side of the doorway. Alice tried to pull up those posts by their
roots, but they held; and there in front of the Crocodile Pool the
keepers and I camped for the night. We fed her hay and bread, to
keep her partially occupied, and wondered what she would do in the
morning when we would attempt to remove her.
Soon after dawn a force of keepers arrived. Chaining the
elephant's front feet together so that she could not step more
than a foot, we loosed the chains from the two posts and ordered
her to come to an "about face," and go out. Instead of doing that
she determinedly advanced toward the right, and came within reach
of twelve handsome glazed cases of live reptiles that stood on a
long table. Frantically the men tried to drive her back. For
answer she put her two front feet on the top bar of the steel
guard rail and smashed ten feet of it to the floor. Then she began
to butt those glass snake cages off their table, one by one.
_"Boom!" "Bang!" "Crash!"_ they went on the floor, one after
another. Soon fourteen banded rattlesnakes of junior size were
wriggling over the floor. "Smash" went more cases. The Reptile
House was in a great uproar. Soon the big wall cases would be
reached, and then--I would be obliged to shoot her dead, to avoid
a general delivery of poisonous serpents, and big pythons from
twenty to twenty-two feet long. The room resounded with our
shouts, and the angry trumpeting of Alice.
At last, by vigorous work with the elephant hooks, Alice was
turned and headed out of the building. A foot at a time she passed
out, then headed toward the bear dens. Midway, we steered her in
among some young maple trees, and soon had her front legs chained
to one of them. Alice tried to push it over, and came near to
doing so.
Then we quickly tied her hind legs together,--and she was all
ours. Seeing that all was clear for a fall, we joyously pushed
Alice off her feet. She went over, and fell prone upon her side.
In three minutes all her feet were securely anchored to trees, and
we sat down upon her prostrate body.
At that crowning indignity Alice was the maddest elephant in the
world for that day. We gave her food, and the use of her trunk,
and left her there twenty-four hours, to think it over. She
deserved a vast beating with canes; but we gave her no punishment
whatever. It would have served no good purpose.
During the interval we telephoned to Coney Island, and asked Dick
Richards, the former keeper of Alice, to come and reason with her.
Promptly he came,--and he is still guiding as best he can the
checkered destinies of that erring female.
When Alice was unwound and permitted to arise,--with certain
limitations as to her progress through the world,--it was evident
that she was in a chastened mood. She quietly marched to her
quarters at the Antelope House, and there we interned her. But
that was not all of Alice. Very soon we had to move her to the
completed Elephant House, half a mile away. Keeper Richards said
that two or three times she had bolted into buildings at Luna
Park; so we prepared to overcome her idiosyncrasies by a
combination of force and strategy. I had the men procure a strong
rope about one hundred feet long, in the middle of which I had
them fix a very nice steel hook, large enough to hook suddenly
around a post or a tree.
One end of that rope we tied to the left foot of Charming Alice,
and the remainder of the rope was carried out at full length in
front of her.
Willingly enough she started from the Antelope House, and Richards
led her about three hundred feet. Then she stopped, and
disregarding all advice and hooks, started to come about, to
return to the Antelope House. Quickly the anchor was hooked around
the nearest fence post, and Alice fetched up against a force
stronger than herself. She was greatly annoyed, but in a few
minutes decided to go on.
Another lap of two hundred feet, and the same act was repeated,
without the slightest variation.
This process continued for nearly half a mile. By that time we
were opposite the Elk House and Alice had become wild with baffled
rage. She tried hard to smash fences and uproot trees.
At last she stood still and refused to move another foot; and then
we played our ace of trumps. Near by, twenty laborers were
working. Calling all hands, they took hold of that outstretched
rope, and heading straight for the new Elephant House started a
new tug of war. Every "heave-ho" of that hilarious company meant a
three-foot step forward for Gentle Alice,--willy-nilly. As she
raged and roared, the men heaved and laughed. A yard at a time
they pulled that fatal left foot, into the corral and into the
apartment of Alice; and she had to follow it.
Ever since that time, Alice has been permanently under arrest, and
confined to her quarters; but within the safe precincts of two
steel-bound yards she carries children on her back, and in summer
earns her daily bread.
Elephant Mentality in the Jungle. Mr. A. E. Ross, while
Commissioner of Forests in Burma, had many interesting experiences
with elephants, and he related the following:
A bad-tempered mahout who had been cruel to his work-elephant
finally so enraged the animal that it attempted to take revenge.
To forestall an accident, the mahout was discharged, and for two
years he completely disappeared. After that lapse of time he
quietly reappeared, looking for an engagement. As the line of
elephants stood at attention at feeding time, with a score of
persons in a group before them, the elephant instantly recognized
the face of his old enemy, rushed for him, and drove him out of
the camp.
An ill-tempered and dangerous elephant, feared by everybody, once
had the end of his trunk nearly cut off in an accident. While the
animal was frantic with the pain of it, Mr. Ross ordered him to
lie down. As the patient lay in quiet submission, he dressed the
wound and put the trunk in rude bamboo splints. The elephant
wisely aided the amateur elephant doctor until the wound healed;
and afterward that once dangerous animal showed dog-like affection
for Mr. Ross.
XII
THE MENTAL AND MORAL TRAITS OF BEARS
Considered as a group, the bears of the world are supremely
interesting animals. In fact, no group surpasses them save the
Order Primates, and it requires the enrollment of all the apes,
baboons and monkeys to accomplish it.
From sunrise to sunrise a bear is an animal of original thought
and vigorous enterprise. Put a normal bear in any new situation
that you please, he will try to make himself master of it. Use any
new or strange material that you please, of wood, metal, stone or
concrete, and he will cheerfully set out to find its weakest
points and destroy it. If one board in a wall happens to be of
wood a little softer than its fellows, with wonderful quickness
and precision he will locate it. To tear his way out of an
ordinary wooden cage he asks nothing better than a good crack or a
soft knot as a starting point.
Let him who thinks that all animals are mere machines of heredity
and nothing more, take upon himself the task of collecting,
yarding, housing and KEEPING a collection of thirty bears from all
over the world, representing from ten to fifteen species. In a
very short time the believer in bear knowledge by inheritance
only, will begin to see evidences of new thought.
In spite of our best calculations, in twenty-two years and a total
of about seventy bears, we have had three bear escapes. The
species involved were an Indian sloth bear, an American black bear
and a Himalayan black bear. The troublesome three laboriously
invented processes by which, supported by surpassing acrobatics,
they were able to circumvent our overhanging bars. Now, did the
mothers of those bears bequeath to them the special knowledge
which enabled them to perform the acrobatic mid-air feat of
warping themselves over that sharp-pointed overhang barrier? No;
because none of their parents ever saw steel cage-work of any
kind.
Universal Traits. The traits common to the majority of bear
_species_ as we see them manifested in captivity are the
following:
First, playfulness; second, spasmodic treachery; third,
contentment in comfortable captivity; fourth, love of water;
fifth, enterprise in the mischievous destruction of things that
can be destroyed.
The bears of the world are distributed throughout Asia, Borneo,
the heavy forests of Europe, all North America, and the
northwestern portion of South America. In view of their
wonderfully interesting traits, it is surprising that so few books
have been written about them. The variations in bear character
and habit are almost as wide as the distribution of the species.
There are four books in English that are wholly devoted to
American bears and their doings. These are "The Grizzly Bear" and
"The Black Bear," by William H. Wright, of Spokane(Scribner's),
"The Grizzly Bear," by Enos A. Mills, and "The Adventures of James
Capen Adams." In 1918 Dr. C. Hart Merriam published as No. 41 of
"North American Fauna" a "Review of the Grizzly and Brown Bears of
North America" (U.S. Govt.). This is a scientific paper of 135
pages, the product of many years of collecting and study, and it
recognizes and describes eighty-six species and sub-species of
those two groups in North America. The classification is based
chiefly upon the skulls of the animals.
It is unfortunate that up to date no bear student with a tireless
pen has written The Book of Bears. But let no man rashly assume
that he knows "all about bears." While many bears do think and act
along certain lines, I am constantly warning my friends, "Beware
of the Bear! You never can tell what he will do next." I hasten to
state that of all the bears of the world, the "pet" bear is the
most dangerous.
A Story of a "Pet" Bear. In one of the cities of Canadaa
gentleman greatly interested in animals kept a young bear cub, as
a pet; and once more I say--if thine enemy offend thee, present
him with a black-bear cub. The bear was kept in a back yard,
chained to a post, and after his first birthday that alleged "pet"
dominated everything within his circumpolar region.
One day a lady and gentleman called to see the pet, to observe how
tame and good-natured it was. The owner took on his arm a basket
of tempting apples, and going into the bear's territory proceeded
to show how the Black One would eat from his owner's hand.
The bear was given an apple, which was promptly eaten. The owner
reached for a second, but instead of accepting it, the bear
instantly became a raging demon. He struck Mr. C. a lightning-
quick and powerful blow upon his head, ripping his scalp open.
With horrible growls and bawling, the beast, standing fully erect,
struck again and again at his victim, who threw his arms across
his face to save it from being torn to pieces. Fearful blows from
the bear's claw-shod paws rained upon Mr. C.'s head, and his scalp
was almost torn away. In the melee he fell, and the bear pounced
upon him, to kill him.
The visiting gentleman rushed for a club. Meanwhile the lady
visitor, rendered frantic by the sight of the bear killing her
host, did a very brave but suicidally dangerous thing. She
_seized the hindquarters_ of the bear, gripping the fur in
her bare hands, and actually dragged the animal off its victim!
Fortunately at that dangerous juncture the lady's husband rushed
up with a club, beat the raging animal as it deserved, and
mastered it.
The owner of the bear survived his injuries, and by a great effort
the surgeons saved his scalp. A "pet" bear in its second year
may become the most dangerous of all wild animals. This is
because it _seems_ so affectionate and docile, and yet is
liable to turn in one second,--and without the slightest warning,
--into a deadly enemy.
Scores of times we have seen this quick change in temper take
place in bears inhabiting our dens. Four bears will be quietly and
peacefully consuming their bread and vegetables when,--
"_biff!_" Like a stroke of lightning a hairy right arm shoots
out and lands with a terriffic jolt on the head of a peaceful
companion. The victim roars,--in surprise, pain and protest, and
then a fight is on. The aggressor roars and bawls, and follows up
his blow as if to exterminate his perfectly inoffensive cage-mate.
Mean and cruel visitors are fond of starting bear fights by
throwing into the cages tempting bits of fruit, or peanuts; and
sometimes a peach stone kills a valuable bear by getting jammed in
the pyloric orifice of the stomach.
The owners of bears should NEVER allow visitors to throw food to
them. Unlimited feeding by visitors will spoil the tempers of the
best bears in the world.
Power of Expression in Bears. Next to the apes and monkeys, I
regard bears as the most demonstrative of all wild animals. The
average bear is proficient in the art of expression. The position
of his ears, the pose of his head and neck, the mobility of his
lips and his walking or his resting attitudes all tell their
story.
To facial and bodily expression the bear adds his voice; and
herein he surpasses most other wild animals! According to his mood
he whines, he threatens, or warns by loud snorting. He roars with
rage, and when in pain he cries, or he bawls and howls. In
addition to this he threatens an enemy by snapping his jaws
together with a mighty ominous clank, accompanied by a warning
nasal whine. An angry bear will at times give a sudden rake with
his claws to the ground, or the concrete on which he stands.
Now, with all this facility for emotional expression, backed by an
alert and many-sided mind, boundless energy and a playful
disposition, is it strange that bears are among the most
interesting animals in the world?
Bears in Captivity. With but few exceptions the bears of the world
are animals with philosophic minds, and excellent reasoning power,
though rarely equal to that of the elephant. One striking proof of
this is the promptness with which adult animals accept
_comfortable_ captivity, and settle down in contentment.
What we mean by comfortable captivity very shortly will be
defined.
No bear should be kept in a cage with stone walls and an uneven
floor; nor without a place to climb; and wherein life is a daily
chapter of inactive and lonesome discomfort and unhappiness. The
old-fashioned bear "pit" is an abomination of desolation, a sink-
hole of misery, and all such means of bear torture should be
banished from all civilized countries.
He who cannot make bears comfortable, contented and happy should
not keep any.
A large collection of bears of many species properly installed may
be relied upon to reveal many variations of temperament and
mentality, from the sanguine and good-natured stoic to the
hysterical demon. Captivity brings out many traits of character
that in a wild state are either latent or absent.
Prominent Traits of Prominent Species. After twenty years of daily
observation we now know that
The grizzly is the most keen-minded species of all bears.
The big Alaskan brown bears are the least troublesome in
captivity.
The polar bear lives behind a mask, and is not to be trusted.
The black bear is the nearest approach to a general average in
ursine character.
The European brown bears are best for training and performances.
The Japanese black bear is nervous, cowardly and hysterical; the
little Malay sun bear is the most savage and unsatisfactory.
The Lesson of the Polar and Grizzly. The polar bears of the north,
and the Rocky Mountain grizzlies, a hundred years ago were bold
and aggressive. That was in the days of the weak, small-bore,
muzzle-loading rifles, black powder and slow firing. Today all
that is changed. All those bears have recognized the fearful
deadliness of the long-range, high-power repeating rifle, and the
polar and the grizzly flee from man at the first sight of him,
fast and far. No grizzly attacks a man unless it has been
attacked, or wounded, or cornered, or _thinks_ it is
cornered. As an exception, Mr. Stefansson observed two or three
polar bears who seemed to be quite unacquainted with man, and but
little afraid of him.