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

With all but the predatory wild animals and man, the prevailing disposition is to live, and let live. One of the few recorded murders of young animals by an old one of the same species concerned the wanton killing of two polar bear cubs in northern Franz Joseph Land, as observed by Nansen. The Seventh Law. Man is the deadliest enemy of all the wild creatures; and the instant a man appears the whole herd must fly from him, fast and far. In some of the regions to which man and his death-dealing influence have not penetrated, this law is not yet on the statute books of the jungle and the wilderness. Sir Ernest Shackleton and Captain Scott found it unknown to the giant penguins and sea leopards of the Antarctic Continent, I have seen a few flocks and herds by whom the law was either unknown or forgotten; but the total number is a small one. There was a herd of mountain sheep on Pinacate Peak, a big flock of sage grouse in Montana, various flocks of ptarmigan on the summits of the Elk River Mountains, British Columbia,--and out of a long list of occurrences that is all I will now recall. It is fairly common for the members of a vast assemblage of animals, like the bison, barren-ground caribou, fur seal, and sea birds on their nesting cliffs, to assume such security from their numbers as to ignore man; and all such cases are highly interesting manifestations of the influence of the fourth law when carried out to six decimal places.