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

"Beware the hawk!"--"Coor! Coor!" "Murder! Help!"--"Kee- owk! Kee-owk! Kee-owk!" "Come on"--"Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!" "Food here! Food!"--"Cook-cook-cook-cook!" Announcement, or alarm--"Cut-cut-cut-dah-cut!" But does the wild jungle-fowl, the ancestor of our domestic chicken, indulge in all those noisy expressions of thought and feeling? By no means. I have lived for months in jungles where my hut was surrounded by jungle-fowl, and shot many of them for my table; but the only vocal sound I ever heard from their small throats was the absurdly shrill bantam-like crow of the cock. And even that led to several fatalities in the ranks of Gallus stanleyi. Domestic cattle, swine and fowls have each a language of their own, and as far as they go they are almost as clear-cut and understandable as the talk of human beings. Just how much more is behind the veil that limits our understanding we cannot say; but no doubt there is a great deal. But it is with the language of wild animals that we are most concerned. As already pointed out, wild creatures, other than song-birds, do not care to say much, because of the danger of attracting enemies that will exterminate them. Herein lies the extreme difficulty of ascertaining how wild beasts communicate. In the Animallai Hills of southern India I hunted constantly for many weeks through forests actually teeming with big game. There were herds upon herds of elephants, gaur, axis deer, sambar deer, monkeys by the hundred, and a good sprinkling of bears, wild hogs and tigers.