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

XXI COURAGE IN WILD ANIMALS Either in wild animals or tame men, courage is the moral impulse that impels an individual to fight or to venture at the risk of bodily harm. Like Theodore Roosevelt, the truly courageous individual engages his adversary without stopping to consider the possible consequences to himself. The timid man shrinks from the onset while he takes counsel of his fears, and reflects that "It may injure me in my business," or that "It may hurt my standing;" and in the end he becomes a slacker. Among the mental traits and passions of wild creatures, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of courage becomes a highly interesting study. We can easily fall into the error of considering that fighting is the all-in-all measure of courage; which very often is far from being true. The mother quail that pretends to be wounded and feigns helplessness in order to draw hostile attention unto herself and away from her young, thereby displays courage of a high order. No quail unburdened by a helpless brood requiring her protection ever dreams of taking such risks. The gray gibbons of Borneo, who quite successfully made their escape from us, but promptly returned close up to my party in response to the S. O. S. cries of a captured baby gibbon, displayed the sublime courage of parental affection, and of desperation. Wary, timid and fearfully afraid of man, at the first sight of a biped they swing away. At the first roar of a gun they literally fly down hill through the treetops, and vanish in a wild panic. And yet, the leading members of that troop halted and swiftly came back, piercing the gloom and silence of the forest with their shrill cries of mingled encouragement and protest. It was quite as courageous and heroic as the act of a father who rushes into a burning building to save his child, at the imminent risk of his own life.