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The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals - A Book of Personal Observations by William Temple Hornaday
page 34 of 393 (08%)
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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