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

XXIV WILD ANIMAL CRIMINALS AND CRIME Many human beings are "good" because they never have been under the harrow of circumstances, nor sufficiently tempted to do wrong. It is only under the strain of strong temptation that human character is put through the thirty-third degree and tried out. No doubt a great many of us could be provoked to join a mob for murder, or forced to steal, or tortured into homicidal insanity. It is only under the artificial conditions of captivity, with loss of freedom, exemption from the daily fear of death, abundant food without compensating labor, and with every want supplied, that the latent wickedness of wild creatures comes to the surface. A captive animal often reveals traits never recognized in the free individual. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." These manifestations are of many kinds; but we propose to consider the criminal tendencies of wild animals both free and captive. The persistence of the mental and moral parallelism between men and wild animals is a source of constant surprise. In a state of freedom, untrammeled by anything save the fear of death by violence, the deer or the mountain sheep works out in his own way his chosen scheme for the survival of the fittest,--himself. In the wilds we see very few manifestations of the criminal instinct. A fight between wild elk bulls for the supremacy of a herd is not a manifestation of murder lust, but of obedience to the fundamental law of evolution that the largest, the strongest and the most courageous males of every herd shall do the breeding. The killing of natural prey for daily food is not murder. A starving wolf on the desolate barren grounds may even kill and devour a wounded pack-mate without becoming a criminal by that act alone. True, such a manifestation of hard-heartedness and bad taste is very reprehensible; but its cause is hunger, not sheer blackness of heart. Among wild animals, the wanton killing of a member of the killer's own species would constitute murder in the first degree, and so is all unnecessary and wanton killing outside the killer's own species.