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

Not once, however, did the bogey bear pay the slightest attention to her, and his sleepy manner was anything but terrifying. These spells of hysteria (without real cause) at last became so frequent that they seemed likely to injure the growth of a valuable animal, and finally the bogey bear was removed to another den. XXIII FIGHTING AMONG WILD ANIMALS Quarrels and combats between wild animals in a state of nature are almost invariably due to one of two causes--attack and defense in a struggle for prey, or the jealousy of males during the mating season. With rare exceptions, battles of the former class occur between animals of different Orders,--teeth and claws against horns and hoofs, for instance; and it is a fight to the death. Hunger forces the aggressor to attack something, and the intended victim fights because it is attacked. The question of good or ill temper does not enter in. On both sides it is a case of "must," and neither party has any option. Such combats are tests of agility, strength, and staying powers, and, in a few cases, of thickness of bone and hide. How Orang-Utans Fight. Of the comparatively few animals which do draw blood of their own kind through ill temper or jealousy, I have never encountered any more given to internecine strife than orang-utans. Their fighting methods, and their love of fighting, are highly suggestive of the temper and actions of the human tough. They fight by biting, and usually it is the fingers and toes that suffer. Of twenty-seven orang-utans I shot in Borneo, and twelve more that were shot for me by native hunters, five were fighters, and had had one or more fingers or toes bitten off in battle. Those specimens were taken in the days when the museums of America were one and all destitute of anthropoid apes.