COURTSHIP IN ANIMALS AND MAN
THE German poet Schiller arrived long ago at the conclusion that the
machinery of the world is driven by hunger and by love. If we join with
hunger, which is the craving of the individual for nourishment, the
activities which aim at self-defence,--whether against competitors for
food, against would-be devourers, or against dangers to life and limb,
from storm, flood, and temperature,--we may accept Schiller's statement
as equivalent to this, namely, that the activities and the mechanisms
of living things are related to two great ends--the preservation of the
individual and the preservation of the race. "Love," or what we should
call in more discriminating language "amorousness," or the "mating
hunger," is the absolute and inherent attribute of living things upon
which the preservation of the race depends. The preservation of the
individual is of less importance in the scheme of Nature than the
preservation of the race, and we find that food-hunger and the risk of
dangers of all kinds to the continuance of an individual life are made
of no account when satisfaction of mate-hunger and the preservation
and perpetuation of the race requires the sacrifice or the shortening
of the life, or the permanent distortion or self-immolation of the
individual. Eccentric behaviour and strange exaggeration of form and
colour, as judged by the standard of preservation of the individual,
are found to be explained as due to structures (nervous or other)
implanted in the race by natural selection, because, and in consequence
of, the fact that they tend to the satisfaction of mate-hunger, and
consequently to the preservation of the race.
The fact that the male animal seeks out the female in order to mate
with her leads to a competition amongst males in "courtship," both
in man and in the higher and lower grades of the animal series.
"Courtship" comprises many procedures. Among them are the seizing and
sometimes carrying off of the female by the mate-seeking male; or else
the attraction of the attention of the female by the male, and her
subsequent fascination by him, followed by her responsive excitement
and assent to union. Fighting, often to the death, between rival
suitors not unfrequently occurs.
Any animal practising the first of these arts of courtship must have
developed greater strength and size than the female, and special
claws or jaws or prehensile limbs which will become emphasized and
increased in size by the success of the better-endowed males, and their
consequent "natural selection" as parents. This elementary and violent
form of courtship is found in primitive man, and is inferred to exist
amongst the higher apes. It is also seen in many mammals, and in frogs
and toads, and in some of the Crustacea and insects which are provided
with powerful claws, jaws, or limbs.
The second set of "courtship" activities mentioned above, which are of
a persuasive (often hypnotic) and non-violent nature, are more widely
distributed and varied. They include a number which come under the
general head of "display," whether the appeal be by sound (the voice),
by odour, or by strange antics and gorgeous colour. They involve the
production of the most remarkable special structures; and by their
appeal to the human sense of hearing, smell, and sight are in many
cases well known and familiar to us. Following upon "display" are what
may be classed as "caresses"--attempts to soothe and to subjugate the
female by the sense of touch.
The third kind of activity developed in "courtship" is that of
fighting--fighting to the death with other suitors. It involves the
production of all those natural weapons, horns, tusks, and special
claws or spurs with which male animals fight one another at the
breeding season. It also involves that perfection of muscular strength,
rapidity, and skill in action which have enabled one male to triumph
over others, and whilst destroying or banishing his less perfect
opponent to transmit his own superior qualities to his offspring.
It seems that to this incessantly recurring and relentless struggle
between males, in courtship for the favour of the female, more rapid
and important changes and developments of animal structure and
endowments are due than to the more obvious competition for food,
safety from enemies, and shelter. Thus muscular power, grasping and
aggressive weapons, wonderful colours, forms and patterns which catch
the eye, perfumes and powers of song and arresting cries, instinctive
antics and caresses, have been developed in the males and transmitted
to some extent to both sexes, but predominantly to the males.
Mr. Pycraft, in his book on this subject,[5] remarks that the
tremendous power of "mate-hunger" has been overlooked by a strange
confusion of cause and effect. Almost universally its sequel, the
production of offspring, has been regarded as the dominant instinct in
the higher animals, but this view has no foundation in fact. Desire,
for the sake of the pleasure which its gratification affords, and not
its consequences, is the only hold on life which any race possesses.
And this is true both in the case of man himself and of the beasts
that perish. Those whose business it is, for one reason or another, to
study these emotions, know well that "mate-hunger" may be as ravenous
as food-hunger, and that, with some exceptions, it is immensely more
insistent in the males than in the females. But for this appetite,
reproduction in many species could not take place, for the sexes
often live far apart, and mates are only to be won after desperate
conflict with powerful rivals no less inflamed. It is idle to speak
of an equality between the sexes in this matter, either in regard to
animals or in the human race. The male is dominated by the desire to
gratify the sexual appetite; in the female this is modified by the
stimulation of other instincts concerned with the care of offspring.
Amorousness is the underlying factor which has shaped and is sustaining
human society, and is no less powerful among the lower animals. Much
that is considered contrary to human nature, and either outrageous or
ridiculous, would be understood and wisely dealt with if knowledge of
nature, including man's nature, were cultivated, and took the place of
vain assertions as to "what should be," accompanied by ignorance of
"what is."
[5] "The Courtship of Animals," Hutchinson, 1913.
An excellent sample of the more violent method of "courtship by
seizure" is found in the proceedings of the northern fur-seal as
described by Mr. Pycraft. The old bulls, after spending the greater
part of the year in the open sea, arrive at the rocks which serve as
the breeding grounds a full month before the cows arrive. The younger
bulls attempt, but fail, to get a place on the rocks. The bull holding
the most advantageous place--the nearest to the landing-place--starts
the collecting of cows. Having seized the first arrival, he places
her by his side. As the later females arrive he proceeds in the same
way. He soon has "herded" more cows than he can control. He cannot
be in two places at once, and in scuttling off to chastise some
covetous neighbour who is eloping with one of his wives, one or more
bulls on the opposite side of his harem proceed to make captures from
his horde. This sort of thing goes on till all the cows have been
appropriated, according to the herding and holding capacities of the
bulls, leaving a crowd of envious bachelors in the background not
strong enough or courageous enough to fight. Each bull is master of
the situation, whether his harem consists of five cows or fifty. If a
cow is restless he growls at her. If she tries to escape he fiercely
bites her, and if she tries to outrun him he seizes her by the skin of
the neck and tosses her back, often torn and bleeding, into the family
circle. Sometimes a cow is killed by the struggle of two bulls to pull
her in opposite directions, and in this way the more querulous and
discontented cows are eliminated in each generation, and the peculiarly
gentle and passive nature characteristic of the cow seals has been
developed. For three long months the bull seal has to keep watch and
ward fasting. This is a most exceptional strain and effort, for in
other animals fasting is associated with absolute rest and sleep. The
bull fur-seal arrives at the breeding ground fat and in fine condition;
he leaves it, though triumphant, a starved and battered wreck.
The more agreeable arts of courtship are exhibited by birds in greatest
variety and in more familiar examples than in any other animals. The
use of odours secreted by special glands as attractions to the females
is frequent in the mammals--such as the musk-deer, the musk-rat,
the civet, and many common hoofed animals, such as deer, antelopes,
goats, and sheep--but has not been noticed in birds, though known in
butterflies and moths. It is in the use of the voice in singing and in
the special display of gorgeous plumage, grown, so to speak, for the
purpose at the breeding season, and in strutting, fantastic posturing,
and in dancing that the male bird excels. Not all birds do all these
things, and female birds do none of them as a rule.
I must break off for a moment here to warn the reader that whilst we
find it difficult not to speak of these activities of the male bird and
male animals generally in the same terms as we speak of such behaviours
in human beings, there is yet a fundamental difference between the
two cases which is apt to be lost sight of in consequence of the
language used. When the musk-deer and other mammals attract the female
by a scent, they have no consciousness or understanding of what they
are doing. They do not as a matter of thought and intention produce
their perfume any more than the birds produce their gay breeding
plumage by "taking thought," or the stag his great antlers or the
boar his tusks. Man is, on the contrary, in these matters, as in many
others, ill-provided with natural automatically-growing mechanisms of
life-saving or race-perpetuating importance. Though the behaviour of
man in courtship is singularly like that of many animals, he has not
inherited an automatically-produced bundle of charms to allure the
other sex. He has had to think the matter out and to consciously and
deliberately "make" or procure from external sources both perfumes
and coloured decorations and arresting (often absurd and astounding)
"costumes." The males of the most savage and primitive races of men are
like the bigger apes, devoid of natural "charms"; they do not allure by
sweet odours, by brilliant colours, nor by caressing musical voices.
They have not these possessions as natural growths of their own bodies,
and they have not yet learned--probably not yet desired--to "make" or
to "procure" them. There is consequently a great gulf in kind between
many of the details of animal and human courtship. We have no knowledge
of how the extinct creatures between ape and man stood in this respect.
In the matter of forcible seizure the conduct of the primitive man
is on precisely the same footing as that of the fur-seal. As to when
he began to learn from the birds and to do consciously what they do
unconsciously--no one knows. In regard to the fighting with other
males--man appears at a very early period to have given up the use of
his natural weapons, the teeth, and to have discovered the greater
utility of sharp stones and heavy clubs, and thus to have again
placed himself apart from male animals, which depend on and develop
automatically their tusks, horns, and claws in consequence of their
value in fighting. The great interest of the jaw of the man-like
Eoanthropus from Piltdown is that it was still fitted with a large
canine tooth like that of a gorilla, big enough to be useful in a fight
with another Piltdowner (see p. 287). But it dwindled, and in the
course of time very early man-like extinct creatures were developed who
had ceased to have big canines. They made use of chipped flints instead.
This substitution by man of "extraneous" weapons, decorations, and
alluring appeals to the senses in place of those "intrinsic" to the
animal body is all the more interesting, since we find that such
substitution is already made by a number of birds, as, for instance,
the magpie and the jackdaw, who collect all sorts of bright objects.
The allied bower-bird of Australia makes a "play-run" or reception-room
in which he places shells and bits of bone to attract the female, and
the gardener bird of New Guinea clears a space in the scrub, roughly
fences it and decorates it daily with bright-coloured flowers and
mushrooms, freshly gathered and placed there by him, as any human
bachelor may decorate his sitting-room for the delectation of his
lady friends! It is a very noteworthy fact that these birds, which
use extraneous decorative objects as lures, are themselves of dull
plumage, but are allied to the wonderful group of Birds of Paradise,
which show the greatest variety and brilliance of intrinsic decorative
plumage known among birds. The love of brilliant decoration is equally
keen in both groups, and is gratified in the one case by the use of
extrinsic objects, in the other by the growth of intrinsic plumage. It
appears that that strangely anthropoid bird--the penguin--or rather one
species of penguin, familiar to Captain Scott and his companions in
the Antarctic, has a similar habit of using an extraneous object as a
gift or, shall we say, an excuse for an introduction when courting. The
male penguin is shown in Mr. Poynting's wonderful cinema films of the
Antarctic, picking up a well-shaped stone of some size and advancing
with it in his beak to the lady penguin whom he has selected for his
addresses. He places the stone at her feet, and retires a pace or two
watching her. It is as though he said, "I am ready to build for you a
first-class nest; best stones only used, of which this is a sample."
If he is fortunate she looks at the stone and then at him, and without
a word waddles to his side. Without more ado she accepts his proposal,
and the work of constructing the stone-built nest is rapidly pushed on.