King Solomon's Ring Read online

  It was at that very moment that the thought of writing a book first crossed my mind. There was nobody to appreciate the joke, Alfred being far too preoccupied with his work. I wanted to tell it to somebody and so it occurred to me to tell it to everybody.

  And why not? Why should not the comparative ethologist who makes it his business to know animals more thoroughly than anybody else, tell stories about their private lives? Every scientist should, after all, regard it as his duty to tell the public, in a generally intelligible way, about what he is doing.

  There are already many books about animals, both good and bad, true and false, so one more book of true stories cannot do much harm. I am not contending, though, that a good book must unconditionally be a true one. The mental development of my own early childhood was, without any doubt, influenced in a most beneficial way by two books of animal stories which cannot, even in a very loose sense, be regarded as true. Neither Selma Lagerlof’s Nils Holgersson, nor Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books contain anything like scientific truth about animals. But poets such as the authors of these books may well avail themselves of poetic licence to present the animal in a way far divergent from scientific truth. They may daringly let the animal speak like a human being, they may even ascribe human motives to its actions, and yet succeed in retaining the general style of the wild creature. Surprisingly enough, they convey a true impression of what a wild animal is like, although they are telling fairy tales. In reading those books, one feels that if an experienced old wild goose or a wise black panther could talk, they would say exactly the things which Selma Lagerlof’s Akka or Rudyard Kipling’s Bagheera say.

  The creative writer, in depicting an animal’s behaviour, is under no greater obligation to keep within the bounds of exact truth than is the painter or the sculptor in shaping an animal’s likeness. But all three artists must regard it as their most sacred duty to be properly instructed regarding those particulars in which they deviate from the actual facts. They must indeed be even better informed on these details than on others which they render in a manner true to nature. There is no greater sin against the spirit of true art, no more contemptible dilettantism than to use artistic licence as a specious cover for ignorance of fact.

  I am a scientist and not a poet and I shall not aspire, in this little book, to improve on nature by taking any artistic liberties. Any such attempt would certainly have the opposite effect, and my only chance of writing something not entirely devoid of charm lies in strict adherence to scientific fact. Thus, by modestly keeping to the methods of my own craft, I may hope to convey, to my kindly reader, at least a slight inkling of the infinite beauty of our fellow creatures and their life.

  KONRAD Z. LORENZ

  Aitenberg, January 1950

  1

  ANIMALS AS A NUISANCE

  Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

  Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,

  And even spoiled the women’s chats,

  By drowning their speaking

  With shrieking and squeaking

  In fifty different sharps and flats.

  Robert Browning

  Why should I tell first of the darker side of life with animals? Because the degree of one’s willingness to bear with this darker side is the measure of one’s love for animals. I owe undying gratitude to my patient parents who only shook their heads or sighed resignedly when, as a schoolboy or young student, I once again brought home a new and probably yet more destructive pet. And what has my wife put up with, in the course of the years? For who else would dare ask his wife to allow a tame rat to run free around the house, gnawing neat little circular pieces out of the sheets to furnish her nests, which she built in even more awkward places than men’s Sunday hats?

  Or what other wife would tolerate a cockatoo who bit off all the buttons from the washing hung up to dry in the garden, or allow a greylag goose to spend the night in the bedroom and leave in the morning by the window? (Greylag geese cannot be house-trained.) And what would she say when she found out that the nice little blue spots with which song birds, after a repast of elderberries, decorate all the furniture and curtains, just will not come out in the wash? What would she say, if … I could go on asking for twenty pages!

  Is all this absolutely necessary? Yes, quite definitely yes! Of course one can keep animals in cages fit for the drawing room, but one can only get to know the higher and mentally active animals by letting them move about freely. How sad and mentally stunted is a caged monkey or parrot, and how incredibly alert, amusing and interesting is the same animal in complete freedom. Though one must be prepared for the damage and annoyance which is the price one has to pay for such house-mates, one obtains a mentally healthy subject for one’s observations and experiments. This is the reason why the keeping of higher animals in a state of unrestricted freedom has always been my speciality.

  In Altenberg the wire of the cage always played a paradoxical role: it had to prevent the animals entering the house or front garden. They were also strictly forbidden to go within the wire netting that fenced in our flower beds; but forbidden things have a magnetic attraction for intelligent animals, as for little children. Besides, the delightfully affectionate greylag geese long for human society. So it was always happening that, before we had noticed it, twenty or thirty geese were grazing on the flower beds, or, worse still, with loud honking cries of greeting, had invaded the closed-in veranda. Now it is uncommonly difficult to repel a bird which can fly, and has no fear of man. The loudest shouts, the wildest waving of arms have no effect whatever. Our only really effective scarecrow was an enormous scarlet garden umbrella. Like a knight with lance at rest, my wife would tuck the folded umbrella under her arm and spring at the geese who were again grazing on her freshly planted beds; she would let out a frantic war-cry and unfold the umbrella with a sudden jerk; that was too much even for our geese who, with a thundering of wings, took to the air.

  Unfortunately, my father largely undid all my wife’s efforts in goose education. The old gentleman was very fond of the geese and he particularly liked the ganders for their courageous chivalry; so nothing could prevent him from inviting them, each day, to tea in his study adjoining the glass veranda. As, at this time, his sight was already failing, he only noticed the material result of such a visit when he trod right into it. One day, as I went into the garden, towards the evening, I found, to my astonishment, that nearly all the grey geese were missing. Fearing the worst, I ran to my father’s study and what did I see? On the beautiful Persian carpet stood twenty-four geese, crowded round the old gentleman who was drinking tea at his desk, quietly reading the newspaper and holding out to the geese one piece of bread after another. The birds were somewhat nervous in their unaccustomed surroundings and this, unfortunately, had an adverse effect on their intestinal movements, for, like all animals that have to digest much grass, the goose has a caecum or blind appendage of the large intestine in which vegetable fibre is made assimilable for the body by the action of cellulose-splitting bacteria. As a rule, to about six or seven normal evacuations of the intestine there occurs one of the caecum and this has a peculiar pungent smell and a very bright dark green colour. If a goose is nervous, one caecum evacuation follows after another. Since this goose tea-party more than eleven years have elapsed; the dark green stains on the carpet have meanwhile become pale yellow.

  So the animals lived in complete freedom and yet in great familiarity with our house. They always strove towards us instead of away from us. In other households, people might call: “The bird has escaped from its cage, quick, shut the window!” But, with us, the cry was: “For goodness’ sake, shut the window, the cockatoo (raven, monkey, etc.) is trying to get in!” The most paradoxical use of the “inverse cage principle” was invented by my wife when our eldest son was very small. At that time, we kept several large and potentially dangerous animals—some ravens, two greater yellow crested cockatoos, two Mongoz Lemurs, and two capuchin monkeys, none of which could safely be left
alone with the child. So my wife improvised, in the garden, a large cage and inside it she put … the pram.

  In the higher animals the ability and inclination to do damage is, unfortunately, in direct proportion to the degree of their intelligence. For this reason, it is impossible to leave certain animals, particularly monkeys, permanently loose and without supervision. With lemurs, however, this is possible, since they lack that searching curiosity which all true monkeys display in respect of household implements. True monkeys, on the other hand, even the genealogically lower-standing new world monkeys (Platyrrhinae), have an insatiable curiosity for every object that is new to them and they proceed to experiment with it. Interesting though that may be from the standpoint of the animal psychologist, for the household it soon becomes a financially unbearable state of affairs. I can illustrate this with an example.

  As a young student, I kept, in my parents’ flat in Vienna, a magnificent specimen of a female capuchin monkey named Gloria. She occupied a large, roomy cage in my study. When I was at home and able to look after her, she was allowed to run freely about the room. When I went out, I shut her in the cage, where she became exceedingly bored and exerted all her talents to escape as quickly as possible. One evening, when I returned home after a longer absence and turned the knob of the light switch, all remained dark as before. But Gloria’s giggle, issuing not from the cage but from the curtain rod, left no doubt as to the cause and origin of the light defect. When I returned with a lighted candle, I encountered the following scene: Gloria had removed the heavy bronze bedside lamp from its stand, dragged it straight across the room (unhappily without pulling the plug out of the wall), heaved it up on to the highest of my aquaria, and, as with a battering ram, bashed in the glass lid so that the lamp sank in the water. Hence the short circuit! Next, or perhaps earlier, Gloria had unlocked my bookcase—an amazing achievement considering the minute size of the key—removed volumes 2 and 4 of Strumpel’s textbook of medicine and carried them to the aquarium stand where she tore them to shreds and stuffed them into the tank. On the floor lay the empty book covers, but not one piece of paper. In the tank sat sad sea-anemones, their tentacles full of paper. …

  The interesting part of these proceedings was the strict attention to detail with which the whole business had been performed: Gloria must have dedicated considerable time to her experiments: physically alone, this accomplishment was, for such a small animal, worthy of recognition: only rather expensive.

  But what are the positive values that redeem all this endless annoyance and expense? We have already mentioned that it is necessary, for certain observations, to have an animal that is not a prisoner. Apart from this, the animal that could escape and yet remains with me affords me undefinable pleasure, especially when it is affection for myself that has prompted it to stay.

  On one occasion, while walking near the banks of the Danube, I heard the sonorous call of a raven, and when, in response to my answering cry, the great bird, far up in the sky, folded its wings, came whizzing down at breathless speed, and with a rush of air checked his fall on outstretched pinions, to land on my shoulder with weightless ease, I felt compensated for all the torn-up books and all the plundered duck nests that this raven of mine had on his conscience. The magic of such an experience is not blunted by repetition; the wonder of it remains, even when it is an everyday occurrence and Odin’s bird has become, for me, as natural a pet as, to anyone else, a dog or cat. Real friendship with wild animals is to me so much a matter of course that it takes special situations to make me realize its uniqueness. One misty spring morning I went down to the Danube. The river was still shrunk to its winter proportions, and migrating goldeneyes, mergansers, smews and here and there a flock of bean- or white-fronted geese came flying along its dark and narrowed surface. Among these migrants, quite as if they belonged to them, a flock of greylag geese winged its way. I could see that the goose flying second on the left of the triangular phalanx had lost a primary. And in this moment there flashed across my inward eye vivid reminiscences of this goose with its missing primary and of all that had happened when it was broken. For, of course, these were my greylag geese; there are indeed no others on the Danube even at migration time. The second bird on the left wing of the triangle was the gander Martin. He had just got engaged to my pet goose Martina and was therefore christened after her (formerly he was just a number, because only the geese reared by myself received names, while those that were brought up by their parents were numbered). In greylag geese, the young bridegroom follows literally in the footsteps of his bride, but Martina wandered free and fearless through all the rooms of our house, without stopping to ask the advice of her bridegroom who had grown up in the garden; so he was forced to venture into realms unknown to him. If one considers that a greylag goose, naturally a bird of open country, must overcome strong instinctive aversions in order to venture even between bushes or under trees, one is forced to regard Martin as a little hero as, with upstretched neck he followed his bride through the front door into the hall and then upstairs into the bedroom. I see him now standing in the room, his feathers flattened against his body with fear, shivering with tension, but proudly erect and challenging the great unknown by loud hisses. Then suddenly the door behind him shut with a bang. To remain steadfast now was too much to ask even of a greylag goose hero. He spread his wings and flew, straight as a die, into the chandelier. The latter lost a few appendages, but Martin lost a primary.

  So that is how I know about the missing feather of the goose flying second in the left wing of the triangle; but I know, too, something that is truly comforting: when I come home from my walk, these grey geese, now flying in company with wild migrants, will be standing on the steps in front of the veranda and they will come to greet me, their necks outstretched in that gesture which, in geese, means the same as tail-wagging in a dog. And, as my eyes follow the geese which, flying low over the water, disappear round the next bend of the river, I am all at once gripped by amazement as, with that wonderment which is the birth-act of philosophy, I suddenly start to query the familiar. We have all experienced that deeply moving sensation in which the most everyday things suddenly stare us in the face with altered mien as though we were seeing them for the first time. Wordsworth became conscious of this one day while contemplating the Lesser Celandine:

  I have seen thee, high and low

  Thirty years or more, and yet

  ’Twas a face I did not know;

  Thou hast now, go where I may,

  Fifty greetings in a day.

  As I watched the geese, it appeared to me as little short of a miracle that a hard, matter-of-fact scientist should have been able to establish a real friendship with wild, free-living animals, and the realization of this fact made me strangely happy. It made me feel as though man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden had thereby lost some of its bitterness.

  To-day the ravens are gone, the greylag geese were scattered by the war. Of all my free-flying birds, only the jackdaws remain; they were the first of all the birds that I installed in Altenberg. These perennial retainers still circle round the high gables, and their shrill cries whose meaning I understand in every detail, still echo through the shafts of the central heating into my study. And every year they stop up the chimneys with their nests and infuriate the neighbours by eating their cherries.

  Can you understand that it is not only scientific results that are the recompense for all this trouble and annoyance, but more, much, much more?

  2

  SOMETHING THAT DOES NO DAMAGE: THE AQUARIUM

  Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt

  Eins in dem anderen wirkt und lebt.

  Goethe, Faust

  It costs almost nothing and is indeed wonderful: cover the bottom of a glass tank with clean sand, and insert in this foundation a few stalks of ordinary water plants. Pour in carefully a few pints of tap water and stand the whole thing on a sunny window-sill. As soon as the water has cleared and the plants have begun to grow, put
in some little fishes, or, better still, go with a jam jar and a small net to the nearest pond—draw the net a few times through the depth of the pool, and you will have a myriad interesting organisms.

  The whole charm of childhood still lingers, for me, in such a fishing net. This should preferably not be a complicated contraption with brass rim and gauze bag, but, according to Altenbergian tradition, should rather be home-made in a matter of ten minutes: the rim an ordinary bent wire, the net a stocking, a piece of curtain or a baby’s napkin. With such an instrument, I caught, at the age of nine, the first Daphnia for my fishes, thereby discovering the wonder-world of the freshwater pond which immediately drew me under its spell. In the train of the fishing net came the magnifying glass; after this again a modest little microscope, and therewith my fate was sealed; for he who has once seen the intimate beauty of nature cannot tear himself away from it again. He must become either a poet or a naturalist and, if his eyes are good and his powers of observation sharp enough, he may well become both.