King Solomon's Ring Read online

  The fact that many birds have developed special “signal organs” for eliciting this type of social inhibition, shows convincingly the blind instinctive nature and the great evolutionary age of these submissive gestures. The young of the water-rail, for example, have a bare red patch at the back of their head which, as they present it meaningly to an older and stronger fellow, takes on a deep red colour. Whether, in higher animals and man, social inhibitions of this kind are equally mechanical, need not for the moment enter into our consideration. Whatever may be the reasons that prevent the dominant individual from injuring the submissive one, whether he is prevented from doing so by a simple and purely mechanical reflex process or by a highly philosophical moral standard, is immaterial to the practical issue. The essential behaviour of the submissive as well as of the dominant partner remains the same: the humbled creature suddenly seems to lose his objections to being injured and removes all obstacles from the path of the killer, and it would seem that the very removal of these outer obstacles raises an insurmountable inner obstruction in the central nervous system of the aggressor.

  And what is a human appeal for mercy after all? Is it so very different from what we have just described? The Homeric warrior who wishes to yield and plead mercy, discards helmet and shield, falls on his knees and inclines his head, a set of actions which should make it easier for the enemy to kill, but, in reality, hinders him from doing so. As Shakespeare makes Nestor say of Hector:

  Thou hast hung thy advanced sword i’ the air,

  Not letting it decline on the declined.

  Even to-day, we have retained many symbols of such submissive attitudes in a number of our gestures of courtesy: bowing, removal of the hat, and presenting arms in military ceremonial. If we are to believe the ancient epics, an appeal to mercy does not seem to have raised an “inner obstruction” which was entirely insurmountable. Homer’s heroes were certainly not as soft-hearted as the wolves of Whipsnade! In any case, the poet cites numerous instances where the supplicant was slaughtered with or without compunction. The Norse heroic sagas bring us many examples of similar failures of the submissive gesture and it was not till the era of knight-errantry that it was no longer considered “sporting” to kill a man who begged for mercy. The Christian knight is the first who, for reasons of traditional and religious morals, is as chivalrous as is the wolf from the depth of his natural impulses and inhibitions. What a strange paradox!

  Of course, the innate, instinctive, fixed inhibitions that prevent an animal from using his weapons indiscriminately against his own kind are only a functional analogy, at the most a slight foreshadowing, a genealogical predecessor of the social morals of man. The worker in comparative ethology does well to be very careful in applying moral criteria to animal behaviour. But here, I must myself own to harbouring sentimental feelings: I think it a truly magnificent thing that one wolf finds himself unable to bite the proffered neck of the other, but still more so that the other relies upon him for this amazing restraint. Mankind can learn a lesson from this, from the animal that Dante calls “la bestia senza pace”. I at least have extracted from it a new and deeper understanding of a wonderful and often misunderstood saying from the Gospel which hitherto had only awakened in me feelings of strong opposition: “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other.” (St Luke VI, 26). A wolf has enlightened me: not so that your enemy may strike you again do you turn the other cheek toward him, but to make him unable to do it.

  When, in the course of its evolution, a species of animals develops a weapon which may destroy a fellow-member at one blow, then, in order to survive, it must develop, along with the weapon, a social inhibition to prevent a usage which could endanger the existence of the species. Among the predatory animals, there are only a few which lead so solitary a life that they can, in general, forego such restraint. They come together only at the mating season when the sexual impulse outweighs all others, including that of aggression. Such unsociable hermits are the polar bear and the jaguar; owing to the absence of these social inhibitions, animals of these species, when kept together in Zoos, hold a sorry record for murdering their own kind. The system of special inherited impulses and inhibitions, together with the weapons with which a social species is provided by nature, form a complex which is carefully computed and self-regulating. All living beings have received their weapons through the same process of evolution that moulded their impulses and inhibitions; for the structural plan of the body and the system of behaviour of a species are parts of the same whole.

  If such be Nature’s holy plan,

  Have I not reason to lament

  What man has made of man?

  Wordsworth is right: there is only one being in possession of weapons which do not grow on his body and of whose working plan, therefore, the instincts of his species know nothing and in the usage of which he has no correspondingly adequate inhibition. That being is man. With unarrested growth his weapons increase in monstrousness, multiplying horribly within a few decades. But innate impulses and inhibitions, like bodily structures, need time for their development, time on a scale in which geologists and astronomers are accustomed to calculate, and not historians. We did not receive our weapons from nature. We made them ourselves, of our own free will. Which is going to be easier for us in the future, the production of the weapons or the engendering of the feeling of responsibility that should go along with them, the inhibitions without which our race must perish by virtue of its own creations? We must build up these inhibitions purposefully, for we cannot rely upon our instincts. Fourteen years ago, in November 1935, I concluded an article on “Morals and Weapons of Animals”, which appeared in a Viennese journal, with the words, “The day will come when two warring factions will be faced with the possibility of each wiping the other out completely. The day may come when the whole of mankind is divided into two such opposing camps. Shall we then behave like doves or like wolves? The fate of mankind will be settled by the answer to this question.” We may well be apprehensive.

  INDEX

  Alsatian xviii, 71, 76, 117–19

  anteaters (Myrmecophaga Tridactyla Linn.) 39

  antelope 101

  ape, anthropoid 54–5, 178

  avocet (Recurvirostra avocetta Linn.) 90

  bears, cave 109; polar 186

  beaver 97

  beetle, water (Dytiscus) 16–18, 100; whirligig (Gyrinus) 91, 97–8

  bird 160–1; Odin’s 6; song 2, 137, 140, 145, 163, see also individual species

  blackbird 56, 69

  black-cap xix boar, wild 170

  buffalo 101

  bullfinch 56, 58, 61

  buzzard 44, 51

  canary 22, 39, 57, 150

  caterpillar 38

  catfish (Amiurus Nebulosus) xvii, 100

  cat 6, 64, 110, 116, 123; Angora 57; reactions of birds to 132–3, 138; Siamese 118

  chaffinch 56, 68–9

  chameleon 19, 39

  chicken 30, 127–8, 139–40, 155, 176

  chimpanzee 55

  cichlid 22, 30–1, 35, 173; South American (Herichthys cyanoguttatus) 31–4

  cockatoo xii, 1, 4, 51, 54; yellow-crested (Cocatoe galerita Linn.) 4, 43–7

  condor, Andean 52

  coot (Falica atra Linn.) 98

  cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo Linn.) xvi, 37

  coypu (Myocastor coypu Linn.) 97

  crake, little (Torzana parva Linn.) 92

  cranes 61

  crayfish (Astacus) 14

  crow 136–7, 163, 167, 177; hooded 83–4, 125–7

  dabchick 56, 67, 68, 94

  deer, red xvi, 180; roe xvi, 63, 180–1

  dipper (Cinclus cinclus Linn.) 99

  dog 6, 21; buying 56–9, 61; fighting between 175–7; as friends 110; language 75–7, 79; playing 64; social order 142

  dog types/breeds: Airedale terrier 77, 117; Alsatian xviii 71–2, 76, 117–19; Aureus 111–17, 120; bulldog, miniature French 109; chow xviii, 111, 114, 116–19; dachshu
nd 78, 98; Esquimaux 111; great Dane 111; husky 110–11; jackal 109–10; Lapland 163; Lupus 112–14, 116–18, 120; malemut 111; mongrel 138, 175; Russian lajka 111; samoyede 111; sheep 159; sledge 110, 113, 116, 140; turf (Canis familiaris palustris) 108; wolfhound 111

  dolphin 93

  dove 21, 150, 174, 187; ring (Streptopelia risoria Pall.) 172–3, 179–82; turtle (Turtur turtur Linn.) xi, 27, 51, 172–3

  dragonfly xix, 17; great (Aeschna) 18–20

  duck xii, xvii, 94, 97, 99, 146; farmyard 40; golden-eye 6; mallard xvi, xix, 40–1, 132–3; Pekin 41

  eagle 48, 50–2, 172–3; American bald-headed 52; golden 50–1; imperial (Aquila heliaca Sav.) 50

  finch 69

  fish, aquarium and 9, 11–12; disease and 21–2; shrews, food for 91–3, 99–100, 107; ‘symbolic inferiorism’ 148

  fish, fighting (Betta splendens) xi, ix, 22–5, 27–30; goldfish 57; jewel (Hemichromis bimaculatus) 35–7; land-climbing (Periophthalmus) 39; trout 14

  flea 138

  fox 21, 50, 52, 70, 132–3, 172

  frog (Rana esculenta Linn.) xix 91, 92, 93, 100–1

  goldfinch 56, 62, 63, 162

  goose ix, 61, 74, 79, 145; barnyard 127; bean 6; Egyptian xviii, xix; greylag xviii, xix, 1–3, 6–8, 38, 40–1, 73, 75, 90, 120, 146, 150, 154; white-fronted 6; wild 139, 146

  goshawk 136 grasshopper 92

  grebe 94, 97–8

  gull x, 182

  hamster, golden 64–6, 72

  hare 171–2, 174

  hawfinch 56, 61

  hedgehog 89, 101

  hen 142

  heron xvii, 90, 145, 182

  hoopoe 81

  horse 77, 109

  ibis, glossy (Plegadis falcinellus Linn.) 90

  jackal 108–9, 112; golden (Canis aureus) 108, 111

  jackdaw ix, x, 8, 42–3, 86; at play 122–4; language and 73–6, 79, 83, 178, 182; as pets 124–69

  jaguar 186

  leech 90–1

  lemur 4, 70

  leopard 170

  lion 16, 48–50, 101, 172, 180

  lizard x

  magpie 80, 132–3, 158 human 75, 126–7; hares, watching 171–3; jackdaws and 145–6, 149–50, 153–4; mercy and 184–5

  marten 162

  martin, sand (Riparia riparia Linn.) 56, 70

  merganser 6

  minnow 14

  mole 89, 93

  mongoose 70–1

  monkey 2, 4, 45, 54, 70–1, 142, 178; capuchin (Cebos capucinus Linn.) 4–5, 54; Javanese (Macacas cynomolgus Linn. or Pithecus fascicularis Raffi) 140; Nemestrinus 140; new world (Platyrrhinae) 4

  mosquito 90–1

  mouse 64, 96, 123

  Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata Linn.) 4

  muskrat xvii

  nightingale 48, 56, 70, 162

  oriole xvii

  otter 97

  owl 39; dwarf (Otus Scops Linn.) 64; little 56, 64

  panther, black xx

  parakeet, Blumenau’s (Bratogerys tirica Gmell) 85

  parrot 2, 50, 53, 80–2, 85, 129; keeping 57, 61, 69–70; language and 80–3, 85

  passerine 50, 70

  peacock 128, 146, 183

  penguin 93, 98

  perch, American sun (Eupomotis gibbosus) xvii

  pheasant 84

  pigeon 85

  pig 44; guinea 57, 64–5

  pike xvii

  puffer (Diodon hystrix) 39

  python 101

  quail 56, 69

  rabbit 27, 51–2, 65

  rail, water (Rallus aquaticus Linn.) 184

  rat 1, 18, 64, 104

  raven 4, 6, 8, 51, 135, 163; behaviour of 177–9, 181; keeping as pets 70–1, 85–7

  redstart, common 163

  robin 56, 60–1, 132, 162

  rodent 18, 64, 70, 96, 101

  rook 158

  seal 97

  sheep 139

  sheldrake, ruddy (Casarca ferruginea Linn.) xviii

  shrew (Insectivora) 88; water (Neomys fodiens Pall.) 91–107

  shrike, red-backed 80

  shrimp freshwater (Carinogammarus) 14

  siskin 56, 60–2

  skylark 146

  smew 6

  snail 38

  sparrow, house 70, 127, 129, 147

  spoonbill 90

  squirrel 65, 132

  stag, wild 109

  starling 56, 58–62, 71, 80, 82

  stickleback x, xi, 22, 25–8

  stork 44

  swan 52–3, 143, 153

  tadpole 17, 99–100, 107

  thrush 56

  tiger 16, 180

  tit, bearded 56, 66, 145–6

  tortoise 5; Greek (Testudo graeca Linn.) 61

  turkey 182–3

  vulture 81

  wapiti xvii

  warbler 69, 150; yellow (Hippolais icterina Vieill.) 80

  whale, killer (orca orca Linn.) 16, 93

  whitethroat 55

  wolf ix, 16, 18, 21, 50, 52, 112, 187; behaviour of 140, 172, 174, 179, 181–2, 185; Mowgli and 127; northern (Canis lupus) 111, 113; timber 174–7

  worms 36, 89, 92; feeding author with 129–30, 147; feeding birds with 59–60, 67

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Contents

  Foreword by Julian Huxley

  Preface

  1. Animals as a Nuisance

  2. Something that does no Damage: The Aquarium

  3. Robbery in the Aquarium

  4. Poor Fish

  5. Laughing at Animals

  6. Pitying Animals

  7. Buying Animals*

  8. The Language of Animals

  9. The Taming of the Shrew

  10. The Covenant

  11. The Perennial Retainers

  12. Morals and Weapons

  Index