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

In the jungle and the heavily wooded wilderness, one hears really little of vocal wild-animal language. Through countless generations the noisiest animals have been the first ones to be sought out and killed by their enemies, and only the more silent species have survived. All the higher animals, as we call the higher vertebrates, have the ability to exchange thoughts and convey ideas; and that is language. At the threshold of this subject we are met by two interesting facts. Excepting the song-birds, the wild creatures of today have learned through instinct and accumulated experience that silence promotes peace and long life. The bull moose who bawls through a mile of forest, and the bull elk who bugles not wisely but too well, soon find their heads hanging in some sportsman's dining- room, while the silent Virginia deer, like the brook, goes on forever. Association with man through countless generations has taught domestic animals not only the fact of their safety when giving voice, but also that very often there is great virtue in a vigorous outcry. With an insistent staccato neigh, the hungry horse jars the dull brain of its laggard master, and prompts him to "feed and water the stock." But how different is the cry of a lost horse, which calls for rescue. It cannot be imitated in printed words; but every plainsman knows the shrill and prolonged trumpet-call of distress that can be heard a mile or more, understandingly. And think of the vocabulary of the domestic chicken! Years of life in fancied security have developed a highly useful vocabulary of language calls and cries. The most important, and the best known, are the following: