The Human Side of Animals, by Royal Dixon pdf

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Side of Animals, by Royal DixonThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.. You may copy

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Human Side of Animals, by Royal Dixon

This eBook is for the use of anyone

anywhere at no cost and with

almost no restrictions whatsoever You may copy it, give it away or

re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

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Title: The Human Side of Animals

Author: Royal Dixon

Release Date: November 17, 2006 [EBook

#19850]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUMAN SIDE OF ANIMALS ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Janet Blenkinship and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

cover

RECREATION IS AS COMMON

AMONG ANIMALS

AS IT IS AMONG CHILDREN.

THE HUMAN SIDE

OF ANIMALS

BY

ROYAL DIXON

AUTHOR OF "THE HUMAN SIDE

OF PLANTS," "THE HUMAN SIDE

OF TREES," "THE HUMAN SIDE OF

BIRDS," ETC.

WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS AND

THIRTY-TWO IN

BLACK-AND-WHITE

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1918, by

Frederick A Stokes Company

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages

MADE IN U S A

TO MARCELLUS E.

FOSTER

WHO BELIEVED

The author wishes to acknowledge

his indebtedness to his

fellow-naturalist and friend, Mr Franklyn Everett Fitch, for

carefully reading the entire manuscript and making many scholarly and

valuable criticisms and corrections.

XIV As the Allies of

XVThe Future Life of

The Indians claim

that the mother

bison forced her

calf to roll often in

against its clay

stripes of his body

give the effect of

sunlight passing

through bushes

7

Monkeys are the

most musical of all

animals When they

congregate for

"concerts," as

some of the tribes

20

do, the air is filled

with weird strains

of monkey-music

Cats, unlike dogs,

are very fond of

music And it has

been proved that

polar bears The

young cubs wrestle

and tumble, as

playfully as two

puppies This play 34

their play time,

with games and

she has her little

ones playing

hide-and-seek over her

back

38

This young fox

came from his

home in the woods

daily to play with a

To the polar bear

the ice and snow of

the Far North

means warmth and

throughout the

winter

The sharp claws of

the ground squirrel

an agile body and a

quick, alert mind

animals, like the

beavers, seemingly

take great pride in

their toilets Their

fur is always sleek

they will seek a

clay bath to heal

defence, not the

Wild boars are

among the most

ferocious of

animals By means

of their great

strength alone they

are well able to

strong horns but

with a shield back

as frogs and toads,

so that her young

may never go

hungry

172

The porcupine and

the hedgehog have

a unique method of

collecting food for

their young After

shaking down

berries or grapes,

they roll in them,

then hurry home

with the food

attached to their

quills

173

The black bear is

not one of the great

worst type, feeding

on rats and mice

and snakes, and

man's wild friends,

and they even seem

the lives of these

denizens of the

wildwood,

rejoicing in their

slaughter, but the

animal soul they

cannot kill

244

Two pals There is

between man and

dog a kinship of

spirit that cannot

be denied

245

"And in the lion or the frog—

In all the life of moor or fen—

In ass and peacock, stork and dog,

He read similitudes of men."

More and more science is being taught in

a new way More and more men arebeginning to discard the lumber of thebrain's workshop to get at real facts, realconclusions Laboratories, experiments,tables, classifications are all very vitaland all very necessary but sometimes theirnet result is only to befog and confuse.Occasionally it becomes important for us

to cast aside all dogmatic restraints andapproach the wonders of life from a newangle and with the untrammelled spirit of

a little child

In this book I have attempted to bringtogether many old and new observationswhich tend to show the human-likequalities of animals The treatment isneither formal nor scholastic, in fact I donot always remain within the logicalconfines of the title My sole purpose is tomake the reader self-active, observative,free from hide-bound prejudice, andreborn as a participant in the wonderfulexperiences of life which fill the universe

I hope to lead him into a new wonderland

of truth, beauty and love, a land where hisheart as well as his eyes will be opened

In attempting to understand the animals Ihave used a method a great deal like that

of the village boy, who when questioned

as to how he located the stray horse forwhich a reward of twenty dollars hadbeen offered, replied, "I just thought what

I would do if I were a horse and where Iwould go—and there I went and foundhim." In some such way I have tried tothink why animals do certain things, I havestudied them in many places and under allconditions, and those acts of theirs which,

if performed by children, would comeunder the head of wisdom andintelligence, I have classified as such.Life is one throughout The love that fills amother's heart when she sees her first-born babe, is also felt by the mother bear,

only in a different way, when she sees herbaby cubs playing before her humble cavedwelling The sorrow that is felt by thehuman heart when a beloved one dies isexperienced in only a little less degree by

an African ape when his mate is shot dead

by a Christian missionary Thegrandmother sheep that watches hernumerous little lamb grandchildren on thehillside, while their mothers are awaygrazing, is just as mindful of their care asany human grandparent could be Onedrop of water is like the ocean; and love

is love

The trouble with science is that too often

it leaves out love If you agree that wecannot treat men like machines, whyshould we put animals in that class? Why

should we fall into the colossal ignoranceand conceit of cataloging every human-like action of animals under the word

"instinct"? Man delights in thinking ofhimself as only a little lower than theangels Then why should he not considerthe animals as only a little lower thanhimself? The poet has truly said that "thebeast is the mirror of man as man is themirror of God." Man had to battle withanimals for untold ages before hedomesticated and made servants of them

He is just beginning to learn that they werenot created solely to furnish material forsermons, nor to serve mankind, but thatthey also have an existence, a life of theirown

Man has long preached this doctrine that

he is not an animal, but a kinsman of thegods For this reason, he has claimeddominion over animal creation and a right

to assert that dominion without restraint.This anthropocentric conceit is the samething that causes one nation to think itshould rule the world, that the sun andmoon were made only for the laudablepurpose of giving light unto a chosen few,and that young lambs playing on a grassyhillside, near a cool spring, are just somuch mutton allowed to wander overman's domain until its flavour isimproved

It is time to remove the barriers, oncebelieved impassable, which man's egotismhas used as a screen to separate him fromhis lower brothers Our physical bodies

are very similar to theirs except that oursare almost always much inferior Merelybecause we have a superior intellectwhich enables us to rule and enslave theanimals, shall we deny them all intellectand all feeling? In the words of thatremarkable naturalist, William J Long,

"To call a thing intelligence in onecreature and reflex action in another, or tospeak of the same thing as love orkindness in one and blind impulse in theother, is to be blinder ourselves than theimpulse which is supposed to governanimals Until, therefore, we have somenew chemistry that will ignore atoms andthe atomic law, and some new psychologythat ignores animal intelligence altogether,

or regards it as under a radically differentlaw from our own, we must apply what

we know of ourselves and our ownmotives to the smaller and weaker livesthat are in some distant way akin to ourown."

It is possible to explain away all themarvellous things the animals do, but afteryou have finished, there will still remainsomething over and above, which quitedefies all mechanistic interpretation Anold war horse, for instance, lives over andover his battles in his dreams He neighsand paws, just as he did in real battle; andcavalrymen tell us that they can sometimesunderstand from their horses when theyare dreaming just what command they aretrying to obey This is only one of themyriads of animal phenomena which mandoes not understand If you doubt it, try to

explain the striking phenomena ofluminescence, hybridization, of eelssurviving desiccation for fourteen years,post-matrimonial cannibalism, Nature'svast chain of unities, the suicide oflemmings, why water animals cannot getwet, transparency of animals, why thehorned toad shoots a stream of blood fromhis eye when angry If you are able toexplain these things to humanity, you will

be classed second only to Solomon Yetthe average scientist explains them away,with the ignorance and loquaciousness of

a fisher hag

By a thorough application ofpsychological principles, it is possible toshow that man himself is merely amachine to be explained in terms of

neurones and nervous impulses, heredityand environment and reactions to outsidestimuli But who is there who does notbelieve that there is more to a man thanthat?

Animals have demonstrated long ago thatthey not only have as many talents ashuman beings, but that under the influence

of the same environment, they form thesame kinds of combinations to defendthemselves against enemies; to shelterthemselves against heat and cold; to buildhomes; to lay up a supply of food for thehard seasons In fact, all through the agesman has been imitating the animals inburrowing through the earth, penetratingthe waters, and now, at last, flying throughthe air

When a skunk bites through the brains offrogs, paralysing but not killing them, inorder that he may store them away in hisnursery-pantry so that his babes may havefresh food; when a mole decapitates earth-worms for the same reason and storesthem near the cold surface of the ground

so that the heads will not regrow, as theywould under normal conditions, only adeeply prejudiced man can claim that noelements of intelligence have beenemployed

There are also numerous signs, sounds andmotions by which animals communicatewith each other, though to man thesesymbols of language may not always beunderstandable Dogs give barksindicating surprise, pleasure and all other

emotions Cows will bellow for dayswhen mourning for their dead The motherbear will bury her dead cub and silentlyguard its grave for weeks to prevent itsbeing desecrated The mother sheep willbleat most pitifully when her lamb straysaway Foxes utter expressive cries whichtheir children know full well Thechamois, when frightened, whistle; theymight be termed the policemen of theanimal world The sentinel will continue along, drawn-out whistle, as long as he canwithout taking a breath He then stops for

a brief moment, looks in all directions,and begins blowing again If the dangercomes too near, he scampers away

In their ability to take care of theirwounded bodies, in their reading of the

weather and in all forms of woodcraft,animals undoubtedly possess superhumanpowers Even squirrels can prophesy anunusually long and severe winter and thusmake adequate preparations Someanimals act as both barometers andthermometers It is claimed that whilefrogs remain yellow, only fair weathermay be expected, but if their colourchanges to brown, ill weather is coming.There is no limit to the marvellous thingsanimals do Elephants, for example, carryleafy palms in their trunks to shadethemselves from the hot sun The ape orbaboon who puts a stone in the openoyster to prevent it from closing, or liftsstones to crack nuts, or beats his fellowswith sticks, or throws heavy cocoanuts

from trees upon his enemies, or builds afire in the forest, shows more than aglimmer of intelligence In the sly fox thatputs out fish heads to bait hawks, orsuddenly plunges in the water andimmerses himself to escape hunters, orholds a branch of a bush over his head andactually runs with it to hide himself; in thewolverine who catches deer by droppingmoss, and suddenly springing upon themand clawing their eyes out; in the bear,who, as told in the account of Cook's thirdvoyage, "rolls down pieces of rock tocrush stags; in the rat when he leads hisblind brother with a stick" is actualreasoning Indeed, there is nothing whichman makes with all his ingenious use oftools and instruments, of which somesuggestion may not be seen in animal

Great thinkers of all ages are not wantingwho believe that animals have a portion ofthat same reason which is the pride ofman Montaigne admitted that they hadboth thought and reason, and Popebelieved that even a cat may consider aman made for his service Humboldt,Helvitius, Darwin and Smellie claimedthat animals act as a definite result ofactual reasoning Lord Broughampertinently observes, "I know not why somuch unwillingness should be shown bysome excellent philosophers to allowintelligent faculties and a share of reason

to the lower animals, as if our ownsuperiority was not quite sufficientlyestablished to leave all jealousy out of

view by the immeasurably higher placewhich we occupy in the scale of being."From the facts enumerated in this book Ifind that animals are possessed of love,hate, joy, grief, courage, revenge, pain,pleasure, want and satisfaction—that allthings that go to make up man's life arealso found in them In the attempt toestablish this thesis I have been ledmentally and physically into some ofNature's most fascinating highways andhedges, where I have had many occasions

to wonder and adore I will be happy if Ihave at least added something to the depth

of love and appreciation with which mostmen look upon the animal world

Royal Dixon