The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

In the mating season, there is fighting in many wild animal species between the largest and finest male individuals for the honor of overlordship in increasing and diffusing the species. These encounters are most noticeable in the various species of the deer family, because the fatal interlocking of antlers occasionally causes the death of both contestants. We have in our National Collection of Heads and Horns sets of interlocked antlers of moose, caribou, mule deer and white-tailed deer. Otherwise than from the accidental interlocking of antlers,--due to the fact that an animal can push forward with far greater force than it can pull back,--I have never seen, heard or read of a wild animal having been killed outright in a fight over the possession of females. Fur seal and Stellar sea-lion bulls, and big male orang-utans, frequently are found badly scarified by wounds received in fighting during the breeding season, but of actual deaths we have not heard. The first law of the jungle is: "Live, and let live." Leaving out of account the carnivorous animals who must kill or die, all the wild vertebrate species of the earth have learned the logic that peace promotes happiness, prosperity and long life. This fundamentally useful knowledge governs not only the wild animal individual, but also the tribe, the species, and contiguous species. Do the brown bears and grizzlies of Alaska wage war upon each other, species against species? By no means. It seems reasonably certain that those species occasionally intermarry. Do the big sea-lions and the walruses seek to drive away or exterminate the neighboring fur seals or the helpless hair seals? Such warfare is absolutely unknown. Do the moose and caribou of Alaska and Yukon Territory attack the mountain sheep and goats? Never. Does the Indian elephant attack the gaur, the sambar, the axis deer or the muntjac? The idea is preposterous. Does any species of giraffe, zebra, antelope or buffalo attack any other species on the same crowded plains of British East Africa? If so, we have yet to learn of it.