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

The startled and helpless keeper stood still, and said in a calm voice, without batting an eye. "Hello, Sultan." Sultan calmly looked at him, wonderingly and inquiringly, but without even a trace of excitement; and feeling sure that the keeper did not mean to harm him, he seemed to have no thought of attacking. The keeper quietly backed through the low doorway, and gently closed the door. Had the keeper lost his nerve, and shown it, there might have been a tragedy. Lions are the best of all carnivorous performing animals, because of their courage, serenity, self-confidence and absence of jumpy nerves. Leopards are the worst, and polar bears stand next, with big chimpanzees as a sure third. Beware of all three. Exceptions to the Rule of Fear. Fortunately for the wild animal world, there are some exceptions to the rule of fear. I will indicate the kinds of them, and students can supply the individual cases. Whenever a wild animal species inhabits a spot so remote and inaccessible that man's blighting hand never has fallen upon it, nor in any way influenced its life or its fortunes, that species knows no fear save from the warring elements, and from predatory animals. The wonderful giant penguins found and photographed near the south pole by Sir Ernest Shackleton never had seen nor heard of men, never had been attacked by predatory animals or birds. You may search this wide world over, and you will not find a more striking example of sublime isolation. Those penguins had been living in a penguin's paradise. The sea-leopard seals harmed them not, and until the arrival of the irrepressible British explorer the spell of that antarctic elysium was unbroken.