MILITARY TACTICS OF ANIMALS.
THE training of dogs to act as messengers and sentries in war, reminds us that many animals are themselves in the habit of using methods and means to secure their own safety against surprise, or the success of attacks on the lives or property of others, which in some cases exhibit a high degree of military training and organisation.
Regular sentries, duly relieved at intervals, are employed by so many of the gregarious quadrupeds and larger birds, that their use seems to be rather the rule than the exception. Chamois, wild sheep, ibex, and other mountain antelopes, as well as the guanacos of South America, always post a sentinel. So do seals when sleeping on the rocks ; and the peccaries, the small wild pigs of South America, which are fond of lying in the hollow trunks of fallen trees, are said to leave a guard at the entrance, whose place, if he be shot, is occupied almost mechanically by the next in order within the trunk. This instinct survives even with animals in captivity. When the prairie-dogs at the Zoo occupied a small paddock, instead of the den with earth-filled boxes which is now their home,.
they always kept a sentinel on duty, though he seldom uttered his warning whistle, having learnt, probably, that the visitors would not come inside the railings. The prairie-dogs at the dardin d'Acclimatation at Paris observe the same precaution.. Wild geese and wild swans take turns at "sentry-go," the former when feeding on land, the latter on the water. Of the former birds, St. John says : "They seem to act in so organised and cautious a manner when feeding or roosting as to defy all danger. When a flock of wild geese has fixed on a field of newly sown grain to feed in, before alighting they make- numerous circling flights, and the least suspicious object prevents them from pitching. Supposing that all is right and they do alight, the whole flock for the space ora, minute or two- remains motionless, with erect head and neck, reconnoitring the
country round They now appear to have made up,
their minds that all is safe, and are contented to leave one sentry, who either stands on some elevated part of the field, or walks slowly with the rest—never, however, venturing to pick up a single grain of corn, his whole energies being employed in watching." After describing the march of the geese across the field with "a firm, active, light-infantry step," St.. John says : "When the sentry thinks that be has performed a fair share of duty, he gives the nearest bird to him a
sharp peck. I have seen him sometimes pull out a bunch of feathers if the first hint is not immediately attended to, and at the same time uttering a querulous kind of .cry." St. John was constantly baulked of a shot by these sentinel geese, and when stalking wild swans on a loch, he noticed that the whole-
flock would sometimes have their heads under water except a. sentry, who was relieved from time to time. The Port Meadow geese near Oxford prefer to roost, except in floods, on a mud-bank in the river, where they are perfectly safe from, attack. It is necessary that the sentry should be able to give. a signal of danger which shall be universally understood, and it will be found that most of the animals named have a special alarm-note. Ibex, mountain, sheep, and prairie-dogs whistle,. elephants trumpet, wild geese and swans have a kind of bugle-call, rabbits stamp on the ground, sheep do the same, and wild ducks, as the writer noticed during the late frost,.
utter a very low, cautious quack to signal The enemy in sight." Tactics of offence are rare among the larger gre- garious animals. Deer, antelopes, sheep, and even wild horses are generally peaceable creatures, and if a dispute.
arises between two herds, the leaders fight a duel, and the conqueror annexes the rival's following, When Lady Florence Dixie's horses were attacked by a wild drove, the biggest of the tame animals fought the wild leader and was beaten. None of the others attempted resistance, and their owners. could with difficulty prevent their being driven off by the- conqueror. But horses have a natural taste for drill. The riderless chargers at Balaclava ranged themselves in line with the surviving troopers ; and Byron's fine lines in " Mazeppa :" "In one vast squadron they advance, A thousand horse, the wild, the free, Like waves that follow o'er the sea.
They stop, they start, they snuff the air, Gallop a moment here and there, Approach, retire, wheel round and round," do not seem' to exaggerate the natural military instinct of the' horse. The writer remembere to have read of a number of cavalry horses abandoned on the coast in a retreat, ranging themselves in squadrons and fighting a battle on the sands- The stories of their forming a ring to resist the attacks of wolves may be true ; but it is difficult to find any reliable account of such combination. Indian wolves have been seen to leave some of their number in ambush at points on the edge of the jungle, while others drove in antelopes feeding in the open ground beyond. But wolves, as a rule, hunt alone m- in families, except when pressed by hunger. Wild dogs, however, habitually combine to hunt ; and Baldwin, in his. "Game of Bengal," mentions a case of four or five martens. hunting a fawn of the " muntja.c," or barking deer. But in real military organisation and strategy, monkeys are far ahead
of all other animals, and notably the different kinds of baboon. Mansfield Parkins gives an excellent account of the tactics of the dog-faced Hamadryads, that lived in large colonies in the cracks in the cliffs of the Abys- sinian Mountains. These creatures used occasionally to plan a foraging expedition into the plain below, and the order of attack was most carefully organised, the old males marching in front and on the flanks, with a few to close up the rear and keep the rest in order. They had a code of signals, halting -or advancing according to the barks of the scouts. When they reached the corn-fields, the main body plundered while the old males watched on all sides, but took nothing for them- -selves. The others stowed the corn in their cheek-pouches and under their armpits. They are also said to dig wells with their hands, and work in relays. The Gelad.a baboons .sometimes have battles with the Hamadryads, especially when the two species have a mind to rob the same field, and if fighting in the hills, will roll stones on to their enemies. Not long ago, a colony of Gelada baboons, which had been fired at by some black soldiers attending a Duke of Coburg- Gotha on a hunting expedition on the borders of Abyssinia, blocked a pass for some days by rolling rocks on all comers. This seems to give some support to a curious objection raised by a Chinese local Governor in a report to his superior on the difficulties in the way of opening to steamers the waters .of the Upper Yangtze, which was quoted in the Times. The report, after noting that the inhabitants on the upper waters were ignorant men who might quarrel with strangers, went on to allege that monkeys inhabited the banks which would roll doivn stones on the steamers. "The two last facts," the report added, "would lead to complaint from the English, and ,embroil the Celestials with them, especially if the men or the monkeys kill any English."
The facility with which large herds of animals or flocks of birds travel for great distances in close array without crowding, 'confusion, or delay, has always struck the writer as the neces- aary result of some system and method well understood by them, though in many cases not yet ascertained by us. There -are some exceptions to the general smoothness which marks the evolutions of these animal regiments and army corps : the blind rush of the migrating bison has been known to force -thousands into the bottomless mud of American rivers, and the swarms of lemmings are said to march into the sea. But, as a rule, herds of antelopes, of deer, or even flocks of mountain-sheep, will travel for days • without disaster, arriving simultaneously at the point desired, and "keeping distance," that great difficulty of the march, throughout the journey. A large herd of deer will gather in column, or break into file, and disappear through a mountain-pass in less time than the same number of trained troopers would take to "form fours ;" and a flock of half- wild sheep on a Yorkshire moor will assemble, descend into the valley, cross a river in single file, and form upon the -opposite bank without a false movement by any one of their 'number. The military precision with which flocks of birds wheel or advance is even more remarkable, because, in the ,case of some birds at least, a regular geometrical formation is always observed. Wild geese, wild ducks, and their relations adopt the V formation; and not only adhere to this, with -certain modifications to suit circumstances, but also to a regular scale of distances between the different birds in the flock, so closely, that we are forced to infer that they have some strong motive for observing such an order. The old- fashioned explanation, that by advancing in a wedge the front bird acted as a kind of pioneer, to break the force of the wind, is, however, probably the exact reverse of the truth. Wind, in moderation, is almost a necessity to the sustained flight of birds, and the probable object of the wedge-formation when advancing against the wind is, that each bird avoids the "wake" of its neighbour, while at the same time the flock has a leader. When the wind blows on the side of the V, it has been noticed that one limb is generally much longer than the -other, or that the birds forming one limb occupy positions which coincide with the spaces between the birds on the windward side, and are thus exposed to the wind-current. But often with a strong side-wind the wedge-formation is abandoned altogether, and the ducks fly in single file, though the " distances " are always accurately kept. If these dis- tances could be measufed, they would probably be found to bear some relation to the space required by the particular
species to make a turn, more or less complete, to either side. The sudden changes in the method of flight, from steady beats of the wing to gliding or sailing, which takes place with such wonderful uniformity of time and action in the flight of flocks of starlings or plovers, are probably due to corresponding changes in the force or direction of the wind, affecting simultaneously all the birds of the flock. But for deter- mining the causes of these ordered changes in the aerial tactics of birds, a body of observation has yet to be obtained, for which London, with its parks and lakes and wild fowl, offers unusual facilities.
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