The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals - A Book of Personal Observations by William Temple Hornaday
page 34 of 393 (08%)
page 34 of 393 (08%)
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rogue develops in the ranks, and sets out to make things
interesting by the commission of lawless acts. A professional rogue is about everything that an orthodox elephant should not be, and he soon makes of himself so great a nuisance that he is driven out of the herd. The temperament of the standardized and normal elephant is distinctly sanguine, _but a nervous or hysterical individual is easily developed by bad conditions or abuse_. Adult male elephants are subject to various degrees of what we may as well call sexual insanity, which is dangerous in direct proportion to its intensity. This causes many a "bad" show elephant to be presented to a zoological garden, where the dangers of this mental condition can at least be reduced to their lowest terms. Our Indian elephant who was known as Gunda was afflicted with sexual insanity, and he gradually grew worse, and increasingly dangerous to his keepers, until finally it was necessary to end his troubles painlessly with a bullet through his brain. _The Rhinoceros_ is a sanguine animal, of rather dull vision and slow understanding. In captivity it gives little trouble, and lives long. Adults individually often become pettish, or peevish, and threaten to prod their keepers without cause, but I have never known a keeper to take those lapses seriously. The average rhino is by no means a dull or a stupid animal, and they have quite enough life to make themselves interesting to visitors. In British East Africa a black rhinoceros often trots briskly toward a caravan, and seems to be charging, when in reality it is only desiring a "close-up" to satisfy its legitimate curiosity. |
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