I suppose every reader of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE has seen an elephant eat
pea-nuts. Of course every boy who goes to a show has pea-nuts in his
pocket, because pea-nuts seem somehow to be a part of the show.
Sometimes I think they are almost a part of the boy, for that matter.
Well, having pea-nuts in one's pocket, and being inside the show, it is
quite a matter of course to feed pea-nuts to the elephant. The fun lies
in the ridiculous difference of size between the pea-nut and the
elephant; it seems in a high degree absurd that so huge a creature
should care for so small a thing to eat, and the wonder is that the
elephant does not lose the nut somewhere in his great mouth. If he could
get pea-nuts by the pint, instead of singly, the wonder would be less.
But how many boys and girls ever saw the baby elephant eat pea-nuts? He
does it in a way entirely different from that of his father and mother.
He does not like the shells, and so he cracks the nuts as carefully as
any boy does, and his method of doing this is as curious as anything
about him. I found out his trick by accident one day, when the baby
elephant was a very little fellow indeed, weighing not more than five
hundred pounds or so. I had taken three boys with me to the show, and of
course each of us had a pocket full of pea-nuts. When we came to inspect
the baby elephant, we offered him a nut. He took it with the fingers at
the end of that wonderful trunk of his, but did not place it in his
mouth, as his father or mother would have done. He laid it on the ground
instead, and raising one of his great clumsy-looking feet, swept it
backward so near the ground as to catch the nut between the foot and the
hard earth, cracking it very neatly without crushing it. He knew enough
not to step on the nut, and he used his foot so dextrously that a single
stroke separated the kernel from the shell. Then he picked up the kernel
with his trunk, put it in his mouth, and ate it with as keen a relish as
if he had been a boy at recess.
This performance was so entertaining that we repeated it again and
again. The elephant was willing enough, and before long all the boys and
girls in that part of the show had gathered around us to see the
strangely intelligent act. We boys (for I am always a boy when I am with
boys at a show) fed Master Baby Elephant all the pea-nuts we had--there
was a quart of them distributed among us--and when we got through,
others took our places.
We had to go through that show without any pea-nuts to eat, but we had
found out how the baby elephant manages to use his great clumsy-looking
foot for a nut-cracker.
Now there are two or three things that puzzle me about this matter. I
want to know how the baby elephant learned to crack his pea-nuts.
Instinct? Well, that is a good word with which to pretend that we
explain things that we do not understand, but it will scarcely answer in
this case. In their wild state elephants have no boys to give them
pea-nuts, and as a matter of fact they have no instinct about pea-nuts.
The baby elephant did not learn this from the grown-up elephants, for
they do not crack their nuts. I wonder if he imitated some boy whom he
saw cracking a nut with his heel.
Another thing I am curious about. Will the baby elephant go on cracking
his nuts in this way when he becomes a grown-up elephant? The grown-up
elephants do nothing of the kind. If he does not continue the practice,
and so become an exceptional fellow, but leaves it off after a while, at
what age will he make the change, and why will he change? If he prefers
cracked to uncracked nuts one day, why should he prefer the uncracked
ones the next day? I wish I could work this puzzle out by going to the
show every day, and feeding the baby elephant with pea-nuts until he
grows up or changes his way of eating them. Perhaps the members of the
Young People's Natural History Society through the country will keep up
a series of observations until the matter is settled.