Encounters With Animals Read online

  I awoke just as the horizon was paling into dawn, and the hippos were quiet. Apparently the fight was over. I hoped that the old male had won, but I very much doubted it. The answer was given to me later that morning by one of my hunters; the corpse of the old male, he said, was about two miles downstream, lying where the current of the river had carried it into the curving arms of a sandbank. I went down to examine it and was horrified at the havoc the young male’s teeth had wrought on the massive body. The shoulders, the neck, the great dewlaps that hung under the chin, the flanks and the belly: all were ripped and tattered, and the shallows around the carcase were still tinged with blood. The entire village had accompanied me, for such an enormous windfall of meat was a red-letter day for them. They stood silent and interested while I examined the old male’s carcase, and when I had finished and walked away they poured over it like ants, screaming and pushing with excitement, vigorously wielding their knives and machetes. It seemed to me, watching the huge hippo’s carcase disintegrate under the pile of hungry humans, that it was a heavy price to pay for love.

  A notably romantic member of the human race is described as hot-blooded; yet in the animal world it is among the cold-blooded creatures that you find some of the best courtship displays. The average crocodile looks as though he would prove a pretty cold-blooded lover as he lies on the bank, watching with his perpetual, sardonic grin and unwinking eyes the passing pageant of river life. Yet when the time and the place and the lady are right, he will fling himself into battle for her hand; and the two males, snapping and thrashing, will roll over and over in the water. At last the winner, flushed with victory, proceeds to do a strange dance on the surface of the water, whirling round and round with his head and tail thrust into the air, bellowing like a foghorn in what is apparently the reptilian equivalent of an old-fashioned waltz.

  It is among the terrapins or water-tortoises that we find an example of the ‘treat ’em rough and they’ll love you’ school of thought. In one of these little reptiles the claws on the front flippers are greatly elongated. Swimming along, the male sees a suitable female and starts to head her off. He then beats her over the head with his long fingernails, an action so quickly performed that his claws are a mere blur. This does not seem to make the female suffer in any way; it may even give her pleasure. But at any rate, even a female terrapin cannot succumb at the very first sign of interest on the part of the male. She must play hard to get, even if only for a short time, and she therefore breaks away and continues swimming in the stream. The male, now roused to a frenzy, swims after her, heads her off again, backs her up to the bank and proceeds to give her another beating. And this may happen several times before the female agrees to take up housekeeping with him. Whatever one may say against this reptile, he is certainly no hypocrite; he starts as he means to go on. And the female does not appear to mind these somewhat hectic advances. In fact, she seems to find them a pleasant and rather original form of approach. But there is no accounting for tastes – even among human beings.

  However, for bewildering variety and ingenuity in the management of their love affairs, I think one must give pride of place to the insects.

  Taking the praying mantis – mind you, one look at their faces and nothing would surprise you about their private lives. The small head, the large, bulbous eyes dominating a tiny, pointed face that ends in a little quivering moustache; and the eyes themselves, a pale watery straw colour with black cat-like pupils that give them a wild and maniacal look. Under the chest a pair of powerful, savagely barbed arms are bent in a permanent and hypocritical attitude of prayer, being ready at a moment’s notice to leap out and crush the victim in an embrace as though he had been caught in a pair of serrated scissors. Another unpleasant habit of the mantis is the way it looks at things, for it can turn its head to and fro in the most human manner and, if puzzled, will cock its little chinless face on one side, staring at you with wild eyes. Or, if you walk behind it, it will peer at you over its shoulder with an unpleasant air of expectancy. Only a male mantis, I feel, could see anything remotely attractive in the female, and you would think he would be sensible enough not to trust a bride with a face like that. But no, I have seen one, his heart overflowing with love, clasp a female passionately, and while they were actually consummating their marriage his spouse leaned tenderly over her shoulder and proceeded to eat him, browsing with the air of a gourmet over his corpse still clasped to her back, while her whiskers quivered and twitched as each delicate, glistening morsel was savoured to the full.

  Female spiders, of course, have this same rather anti-social habit of eating their husbands; and the male’s approach to the web of the female is thus fraught with danger. If she happens to be hungry, he will hardly have a chance to get the first words of his proposal out, as it were, before he finds himself a neatly trussed bundle being sucked of his vital juices by the lady. In one such species of the spider, the male has worked out a method to make certain he can get close enough to the female to tickle and massage her into a receptive frame of mind, without being eaten. He brings her a little gift – it may be a bluebottle or something of the sort – neatly wrapped up in silk. While she is busily devouring this, he creeps up behind her and strokes her into a sort of trance with his legs. Sometimes, when the nuptials are over, he manages to get away, but in most cases he is eaten at the end of the honeymoon, for it appears that the only true way to a female spider’s heart is through her stomach.

  In another species of spider the male has evolved an even more brilliant device for subduing his tigerish wife. Having approached her, he then starts to massage her gently with his legs until, as is usual with female spiders, she enters a sort of hypnotic state. Then the male, as swiftly as he can, proceeds to bind her to the ground with a length of silken cord, so that, when she awakes from her trance in the marriage bed, she finds herself unable to turn her husband into a wedding breakfast until she has set about the tedious business of untying herself. This generally saves the husband’s life.

  But if you want a really exotic romance you need not go to the tropical jungle to find it: just go into your own back-garden and creep up on the common snail. Here you have a situation as complex as the plot of any modern novel, for snails are hermaphrodite, and so each one can enjoy the pleasure of both the male and female side of courtship and mating. But apart from this dual sex, the snail possesses something even more extraordinary, a small sack-like container in its body in which is manufactured a tiny leaf-shaped splinter of carbonate of lime, known as the love-dart. Thus when one snail – who, as I say, is both male and female – crawls alongside another snail, also male and female, the two of them indulge in the most curious courtship action. They proceed to stab each other with their love-darts, which penetrate deeply and are quite quickly dissolved in the body. It seems that this curious duel is not as painful as it appears; in fact, the dart sinking into its side seems to give the snail a pleasant feeling, perhaps an exotic tickling sensation. But, whatever it is, it puts both snails into an enthusiastic frame of mind for the stern business of mating. I am no gardener, but if I were I would probably have a soft spot for any snails in my garden, even if they did eat my plants. Any creature who has dispensed with Cupid, who carries his own quiverful of arrows around with him, is, in my opinion, worth any number of dull and sexless cabbages. It is an honour to have him in the garden.

  Animal Architects

  Some time ago I received a small parcel from a friend of mine in India. Inside the box I found a note which read: ‘I bet you don’t know what this is.’ Greatly intrigued, I lifted off the top layer of wrapping paper, and underneath I found what appeared to be two large leaves which had been rather inexpertly sewn together.

  My friend would have lost his bet. As soon as I saw the large and rather amateur stitches, I knew what it was: the nest of a tailor bird, a thing I had always wanted to see. The two leaves were about six inches long, shaped rather like laurel leaves, and only the edges had been sewn together, so t
hat it formed a sort of pointed bag. Inside the bag was a neat nest of grass and moss, and inside that were two small eggs. The tailor bird is quite small, about the size of a tit, but with a rather long beak. This is its needle. Having found the two leaves it likes, hanging close together, it then proceeds to sew them together, using fine cotton as thread. The curious thing about it is not so much that the tailor bird stitches the leaves together as that nobody seems to know where he finds the cotton material with which to do the sewing. Some experts insist that he weaves it himself, others that he has some source of supply that has never been discovered. As I say, the stitches were rather large and inartistic, but then how many people could make a success of sewing up two leaves, using only a beak as a needle?

  Architecture in the animal world differs a great deal. Some animals, of course, have only the haziest idea of constructing a suitable dwelling, while others produce most complicated and delightful homes. It is strange that even among closely related animals there should be such a wide variety of taste in the style, situation and size of the home and the choice of materials used in its construction.

  In the bird world, of course, one finds homes of every shape and size. They range from the tailor bird’s cradle of leaves to the emperor penguin, who, with nothing but snow for his building, has dispensed with the idea of a nest altogether. The egg is simply carried on the top of the large flat foot, and the skin and feathers of the stomach form a sort of pouch to cover it. Then you have the edible swift who makes a fragile, cup-shaped nest of saliva and bits of twigs and sticks it to the wall of a cave. Among the weaver-birds of Africa, too, the variety of nests is bewildering. One species lives in a community which builds a nest half the size of a haystack, rather like a block of flats, in which each bird has its own nesting-hole. In these gigantic nests you sometimes get an odd variety of creatures living as well as the rightful occupants. Snakes are very fond of them; so are bush-babies and squirrels. One of these nests, if taken to pieces, might display an extraordinary assortment of inmates. No wonder that trees have been known to collapse under the weight of these colossal nests. The common weaver-bird of West Africa builds a neat, round nest, like a small basket woven from palm fibres. They also live in communities and hang their nests on every available branch of a tree, until it seems festooned with some extraordinary form of fruit. In the most human way the brilliant and shrill-voiced owners go about the business of courting, hatching the eggs, feeding their young and bickering with their neighbours, so that the whole thing rather resembles an odd sort of council estate.

  To construct their nests, the weaver-birds have become adept not only at weaving but at tying knots, for the nest is strapped very firmly to the branch and requires considerable force to remove it. I once watched a weaver-bird starting its nest, a fascinating performance. He had decided that the nest should hang from the end of a delicate twig half-way up a tree, and he arrived on the spot carrying a long strand of palm fibre in his beak. He alighted on the branch, which at once swung to and fro so that he had to flap his wings to keep his balance. When he was fairly steady he juggled with the palm fibre until he got to the centre of it. Then he tried to drape it over the branch, so that the two ends hung one side and the loop hung the other. The branch still swayed about, and twice he dropped the fibre and had to fly down to retrieve it, but at last he got it slung over the branch to his satisfaction. He then placed one foot on it to keep it in position and leaning forward precariously he pulled the two dangling ends from one side of the branch through the loop on the other and tugged it tight. After this he flew for some more fibre and repeated the performance. He went on in this way for the whole day, until by evening he had twenty or thirty pieces of fibre lashed to the branch, the ends dangling down like a beard.

  Unfortunately I missed the following stages in the construction of this nest, and I next saw it empty, for the bird had presumably reared its young and moved off. The nest was flask-shaped – a small round entrance, guarded by a small porch of plaited fibre. I tried to pull the nest off the branch, but it was impossible, and in the end I had to break the whole branch off. Then I tried to tear the nest in half so that I could examine the inside. But so intricately interlaced and knotted were the palm fibres that it took me a long time and all my strength before I could do so. It was really an incredible construction, when you consider the bird had only its beak and its feet for tools.

  When I went to Argentina four years ago I noticed that nearly every tree-stump or rail-post in the pampa was decorated with a strange earthenware construction about the size and shape of a football. At first, I believed they were termite nests, for they were very similar to a common feature of the landscape in West Africa. It was not until I saw, perched on top of one of them, a small tubby bird about the size of a robin with a rusty-red back and grey shirt-front that I realized they were the nests of the oven-bird.

  As soon as I found an unoccupied nest, I carefully cut it in half and was amazed at the skill with which it had been built. Wet mud had been mixed with tiny fragments of dried grass, roots and hair to act as reinforcement. The sides of the nest were approximately an inch and a half thick. The outside had been left rough – unrendered, as it were – but the inside had been smoothed to a glass-like finish. The entrance to the nest was a small arched hole, rather like a church door, which led into a narrow passage-way that curved round the outer edge of the nest and eventually led into the circular nesting-chamber lined with a pad of soft roots and feathers. The whole thing rather resembled a snail-shell.

  Although I searched a large area, I was never lucky enough to find a nest that had been newly started, for it was fairly well into the breeding season. But I did find one half-completed. Oven-birds are very common in Argentina, and in the way they move and cock their heads on one side and regard you with their shining dark eyes, they reminded me very much of the English robin. The pair building this nest took no notice of me whatever, provided I remained at a distance of about twelve feet, though occasionally they would fly over to take a closer look at me, and after inspecting me with their heads on one side, they would flap their wings as though shrugging, and return to their building work. The nest, as I say, was half-finished: the base was firmly cemented on to a fence-post and the outer walls and inner wall of the passage-way were already some four or five inches high. All that remained now was for the whole thing to be covered with the domed roof.

  The nearest place for wet mud was about half a mile away at the edge of a shallow lagoon. They would hop round the edge of the water in a fussy, rather pompous manner, testing the mud every few feet. It had to be of exactly the right consistency. Having found a suitable patch, they would hop about excitedly, picking up tiny rootlets and bits of grass until their beaks were full and they looked as though they had suddenly sprouted large walrus moustaches. They would carry these beakfuls of reinforcement down to the mud patch, and then, by skilful juggling, without dropping the material, pick up a large amount of mud as well. By a curious movement of the beak they matted the two materials together until their walrus moustaches looked distinctly bedraggled and mudstained. Then, with a muffled squeak of triumph, they flew off to the nest. Here the bundle was placed in the right position and pecked and trampled on and pushed until it had firmly adhered to the original wall. Then they entered the nest and smoothed off the new patch, using their beaks, their breasts and even the sides of their wings to get the required shining finish.

  When only a small patch on the very top of the roof needed to be finished, I took some bright scarlet threads of wool down to the edge of the lagoon and scattered them around the place where the oven-birds gathered their material. On my next trip down there, to my delight, they had picked them up, and the result, a small russet bird apparently wearing a bright scarlet moustache, was quite startling. They incorporated the wool into the last piece of building on the nest, and it was, I feel sure, the only Argentinian oven-bird’s nest on the pampa flying what appeared to be a small red flag at half-mas
t.

  If the oven-bird is a master-builder, whose nest is so solid that it takes several blows of a hammer to demolish it, members of the pigeon family go to the opposite extreme. They have absolutely no idea of proper nest-making. Four or five twigs laid across a branch: that is the average pigeon’s idea of a highly complicated structure. On this frail platform the eggs, generally two, are laid. Every time the tree sways in the wind this silly nest trembles and shakes and the eggs almost fall out. How any pigeon ever reaches maturity is a mystery to me.

  I knew that pigeons were stupid and inefficient builders, but I never thought that their nests might prove an irritating menace to a naturalist. When I was in Argentina I learned differently. On the banks of a river outside Buenos Aires I found a small wood. The trees, only about thirty feet high, were occupied by what might almost be called a pigeon colony. Every tree had about thirty or forty nests in it. Walking underneath the branches you could see the fat bellies of the young, or the gleam of the eggs, through the carelessly arranged twigs. The nests looked so insecure that I felt like walking on tip-toe for fear that my footsteps would destroy the delicate balance.