The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals Part 15

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 att.i.tudes all tell their story.

To facial and bodily expression the bear adds his voice; and herein he surpa.s.ses 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 j.a.panese 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.

The great California grizzly is now believed to be totally extinct. The campaign of Mr. J. A. McGuire, Editor of _Outdoor Life_ Magazine, to secure laws for the reasonable protection of bears, is wise, timely and thoroughly deserving of success because such laws are now needed. The bag limit on grizzlies this side of Alaska should be one per year, and no trapping of grizzlies should be permitted anywhere.

The big brown bears of Alaska have not yet recognized the true deadliness of man. They have vanquished so many Indians, and injured or killed so many white men that as yet they are unafraid, insolent, aggressive and dangerous. They need to be shot up so thoroughly that they will learn the lesson of the polars and grizzlies,--that man is a dangerous animal, and the only safe course is to run from him at first sight.

Bears Learn the Principles of Wild Life Protection. Ordinarily both the grizzlies and black bears are shy, suspicious and intensely "wild" creatures; and therefore the quickness and thoroughness with which they learn that they are in sanctuary is all the more surprising. The protected bears of the Yellowstone Park for years have been to tourists a source of wonder and delight. The black bears are recklessly trustful, and familiar quite to the utmost limits. The grizzlies are more reserved, but they have done what the blacks have very wisely not done. They have broken the truce of protection, and attacked men on their own ground.

Strange to say, of several attacks made upon camping parties, the most serious and most nearly fatal was that of 1917 upon Ned Frost, the well-known guide of Cody, Wyoming, and his field companion. They were sleeping under their wagon, well wrapped from the cold in heavy blankets and comfortables, and it is to their bedding alone that they owe their lives. They were viciously attacked by a grizzly, dragged about and mauled, and Frost was seriously bitten and clawed. Fortunately the bedding engaged the activities of their a.s.sailant sufficiently that the two men finally escaped alive.

How Buffalo Jones Disciplined a Bad Grizzly. The most ridiculous and laughable performance ever put up with a wild grizzly bear as an actor was staged by Col. C. J.("Buffalo") Jones when he was superintendent of the wild animals of the Yellowstone Park. He marked down for punishment a particularly troublesome grizzly that had often raided tourists' camps at a certain spot, to steal food.

Very skilfully he roped that grizzly around one of his hind legs, suspended him from the limb of a tree, and while the disgraced and outraged silver-tip swung to and fro, bawling, cursing, snapping, snorting and wildly clawing at the air, Buffalo Jones whaled it with a bean-pole until he was tired. With commendable forethought Mr. Jones had for that occasion provided a moving-picture camera, and this film always produces roars of laughter.

Now, here is where we guessed wrongly. We supposed that whenever and wherever a well-beaten grizzly was turned loose, the angry animal would attack the lynching party. But not so. When Mr.

Jones' chastened grizzly was turned loose, it thought not of reprisals. It wildly fled to the tall timber, plunged into it, and there turned over a new leaf. I once said: "C. J., you ought to shoot some of those grizzlies, and teach all the rest of them to behave themselves."

[Ill.u.s.tration with caption: WILD BEARS QUICKLY RECOGNIZE PROTECTION The truce of the black bears of the Yellowstone Park. The grizzlies are not nearly so trustful.

Photographed by Edmund h.e.l.ler, 1921. (All rights reserved.)]

"I know it!" he responded, "I know it! But Col. Anderson won't let me: He says that if we did, some people would make a great fuss about it; and I suppose they would."

Recently, however, it has been found imperatively necessary to teach the Park grizzlies a few lessons on the sanct.i.ty of a sanctuary, and the rights of man.

We will now record a few cases that serve to ill.u.s.trate the mental traits of bears.

Case I. The Steel Panel. Two huge male Alaskan brown bears, Ivan and Admiral, lived in adjoining yards. The part.i.tion between them consisted of panels of steel. The upper panels were of heavy bar iron. The bottom panels, each four feet high and six feet long, were of flat steel bars woven into a basket pattern. The ends of these flat bars had been pa.s.sed through narrow slots in the heavy steel frame, and firmly clinched. We would have said that no land animal smaller than an elephant could pull out one of those panels.

By some strange aberration in management, one day it chanced that Admiral's grizzly bear wife was introduced for a brief s.p.a.ce into Ivan's den. Immediately Admiral went into a rage, on the ground that his const.i.tutional rights had been infringed. At once he set to work to recover his stolen companion. He began to test those part.i.tion panels, one by one. Finally he found the one that seemed to him least powerful, and he at once set to work to tear it out of its frame.

The keepers knew that he could not succeed; but he thought differently. Hooking his short but very powerful claws into the meshes he braced backward and pulled. After a fierce struggle an upper corner yielded. Then the other corner yielded; and at last the whole upper line gave way.

I reached the scene just as he finished tearing both ends free. I saw him bend the steel panel inward, crush it down with his thousand pounds of weight, and dash through the yawning hole into his rival's arena.

Then ensued a great battle. The two huge bears rose high on their hind legs, fiercely struck out with their front paws, and fought mouth to mouth, always aiming to grip the throat. They bit each other's cheeks but no serious injuries were inflicted, and very soon by the vigorous use of pick-handles the two bear keepers drove the fighters apart.

Case 2. Ivan's Begging Scheme. Ivan came from Alaska when a small cub and he has long been the star boarder at the Bear Dens. He is the most good-natured bear that we have, and he has many thoughts.

Having observed the high arm motion that a keeper makes in throwing loaves of bread over the top of the nine-foot cage work, Ivan adopted that motion as part of his sign language when food is in sight outside. He stands up high, like a man, and with his left arm he motions, just as the keepers do. Again and again he waves his mighty arm, coaxingly, suggestively, and it says as plain as print: "Come on! Throw it in! Throw it!"

If there is too much delay in the response, he motions with his right paw, also, both arms working together. It is irresistible.

At least 500 times has he thus appealed, and he will do it whenever a loaf of bread is held up as the price of an exhibition of his sign language. Of course Ivan thought this out himself, and put it into practice for a very definite purpose.

Case 3. Ivan's Invention for Cracking Beef Bones. Ivan invented a scheme for cracking large beef bones, to get at the ultimate morsels of marrow. He stands erect on his hind feet, first holds the picked bone against his breast, then with his right paw he poises it very carefully upon the back of his left paw. When it is well balanced he flings it about ten feet straight up into the air. When it falls upon the concrete floor a sufficient number of times it breaks, and Ivan gets his well-earned reward. This same plan was pursued by Billy, another Alaskan brown bear. Case 4. A Bear's Ingenious Use of a Door. When Admiral is annoyed and chased disagreeably by either of his two cage-mates he runs into his sleeping-den, slams the steel door shut from the inside, and thus holds his tormentors completely at bay until it suits him to roll the door back again and come out. At night in winter when he goes to bed he almost always shuts the door tightly from within, and keeps it closed all night. He does not believe in sleeping- porches, nor wide-open windows in sleeping-quarters.

Case 5. Admiral Will Not Tolerate White Boots. Recently our bear keepers have found that Admiral has violent objections to boots of white rubber. Keeper Schmidt purchased a pair, to take the place of his old black ones, but when he first wore them into the den for was.h.i.+ng the floor the bear flew at him so quickly and so savagely that he had all he could do to make a safe exit. A second trial having resulted similarly, he gave the boots a coat of black paint. But one coat was not wholly satisfactory to Admiral. He saw the hated white through the one coat of black, promptly registered "disapproval," and the patient keeper was forced to add another coat of black. After that the new boots were approved.

Case 6. The Mystery of Death. Once upon a time we had a j.a.panese black bear named j.a.ppie, quartered in a den with a Himalayan black bear,--the species with long, black side-whiskers and a white tip to its chin. The j.a.panese bear was about one-third smaller than the Himalayan black.

One night the j.a.panese bear died, and in the morning the keepers found it lying on the level concrete top of the sleeping dens.

At once they went in to remove the body; but the Himalayan black bear angrily refused to permit them to touch it. For half an hour the men made one effort after another to coax, or entice or to drive the guardian bear away from the dead body, but in vain. When I reached the strange and uncanny scene, the guardian bear was in a great rage. It took a position across the limp body, and from that it fiercely refused to move or to be driven. As an experiment we threw in a lot of leaves, and the guardian promptly raked them over the dead one and stood pat.

We procured a long pole, and from a safe place on the top of the nearest overhang, a keeper tried to prod or push away the guardian of the dead. The living one snarled, roared, and with savage vigor bit the end of the pole. By the time the bear was finally enticed with food down to the front of the den, and the body removed, seven hours had elapsed.

Now, what were the ideas and emotions of the bear? One man can answer about as well as another. We think that the living bear realized that something terrible had happened to its cage-mate,-- in whom he never before had manifested any guardians.h.i.+p interest,--and he felt called upon to defend a friend who was very much down and out. It was the first time that he had encountered the great mystery, Death; and whatever it was, he resented it.

Case 7. A Terrible Punishment. Once we had a particularly mean and vicious young Adirondack black bear named Tommy. In a short time he became known as Tommy the Terror. We put him into a big yard with Big Ben, from Florida, and two other bears smaller than Ben, but larger than himself.

In a short time the Terror had whipped and thoroughly cowed Bruno and j.a.ppie. Next he tackled Ben; but Ben's great bulk was too much for him. Finally he devoted a lot of time to bullying and reviling _through the bars_ a big but good-natured cinnamon bear, named Bob, who lived in the next den. In all his life up to that time, Bob had had only one fight. Tommy's treatment of Bob was so irritating to everybody that it was much remarked upon; and presently we learned how Bob felt about it.

One morning while doing the cage work, the keeper walked through the part.i.tion gate from Bob's den into Tommy's. He slammed the iron gate behind him, as usual, but this time the latch did not catch as usual. In a moment Bob became aware of this unstable condition.

Very innocently he sauntered up to the gate, pushed it open, and walked through into the next den. The keeper was then twenty feet away, but a warning cry from without set him in motion to stop the intruder.