THE BITES OF CARNIVOROUS ANIMALS.
ACORRESPONDENT of the Morning Post revives a discussion which has for some time engaged the attention of correspondents of American newspapers deal- ing with sport and natural history. Quoting from a book on ranch life, of which he does not give the title, he says :— "The bite of the small plains polecat he (the cow-boy) dreaded above all things, for he knew that it was prac- tically certain to result in hydrophobia and death. Many cowboys lost their lives in this way, being bitten by this animal when it had crawled into their blankets at night. At the least move of the sleeper the venomous creature would bite, and its bite was accounted almost certainly fatal. One United States Army Regiment stationed at an Arizona port lost thirteen men in one season through bites of the polecat." This story is evidently a revival of the curious muddle of
fact and fancy which has produced the myth current in some parts of America of the existence of "skunk rabies." The " polecat " is not found on the American plains ; but the story of the "skunk rabies" has flourished there ex- ceedingly, and takes the form given above,—that the bite of a healthy skunk produces rabies. Believers in this story even go so far as to limit the fatal results of the bite by arbitrary lines of latitude, north and south, of a certain region !
The origin of the story was probably this, that at some time there was an epidemic of rabies among the small car- nivora of Arizona. Such an epidemic is quite possible; for between 1803 and 1837 there were no less than nine epidemics of rabies among wild foxes in different parts of Europe, and two among cats, and some of the fox epidemics were very fatal to human life, as the rabid creatures left the woods and came into the villages. But Mr. Pugin Thornton, writing on the same subject, very properly calls attention to the serious effects of bites by animals which are not rabid :— "Having now been kept to my room for over a month from the bite of a healthy dog, I can personally speak to the serious after-effects of an animal's bite. And during my illness I have learnt that a number of my friends have suffered for weeks together from having been bitten, sometimes when helping to free their own animals which were wedged under a gate, &c. And what is more surprising to me is that any of us may have hands crippled for some time, the result of bites from a man's teeth. In one case a friend violently dragged his hand against his own front teeth, and his hand was bad for some weeks after." No one who has any acquaintance with cases of wounds inflicted by the bites, even of non-carnivorous animals, will doubt Mr. Thornton's view that the after-effects are not limited to the injuries caused by the actual cutting and bruising caused by the teeth, though these are serious enough. His instance of the poisoning caused accidentally by human teeth is curious but not singular. Such cases were well known in the days of the prize-ring ; and Grantley Berkeley mentions a case in which the risk was so great that some ruffian of his acquaintance reckoned it among his personal advantage that no one cared to risk the chance of matting his knuckles against his incisors. Dog bites are always dangerous. This is mainly due, not to poisoning, though this often results, but to the frightful wound which any large dog, thoroughly in earnest, can inflict. Human beings get off lightly in many cases, because, as a rule, a dog only "snaps" at them when irritated, and there is as much difference between a " snap " and a bite as there is between a fillip with the back of the fingers and a knock-down blow. Animals, it is known, recover from wounds more easily than men do. Yet Lord Ebrington states that on Exmoor a deer bitten by one of the large hounds almost never recovers. The wound is almost invariably mortal, and the animal wastes and dies. But when a large dog loses self- control the injuries inflicted are fearful. Children are the usual victims of these brutes. Every year sees one or two accounts of children crippled for life by such attacks. Quite recently a case was repented in which a savage dog had been handed over to another person for sale. This creature bit a child so badly as to maim her for life. Thirty-six bites were inflicted on its poor little body. In cases which have come under the writer's notice the bites were always in the leg. Four deep holes into which a pencil might be pushed, and a bad bruise, were the immediate result, followed by intense
inflammation, suppuration, and pain. One of the worst recorded instances of poisoning from the bite of a non- carnivorous animal occurred recently at the Zoo. It is well known that llamas and guanacos, in addition to a bad and vicious temper, have a disgusting habit of spitting at persons they dislike. This is nasty enough, but an unintended experi- ment shows that there is every reason to believe that this saliva is sometimes poisonous. It was intended to remove a male guanaco from its enclosure, and several persons were occupied in its transfer. The guanaco bit one of these in the wrist, and spat its saliva on to the ear of another. The bite caused severe blood-poisoning, the person injured being ill several months in consequence, while a young man, one of the keepers, on whose ear the creature's saliva had fallen, had a minor form of blood-poisoning affecting the ear and neck.
Most poisoning caused by bites is, however, probably due to the state of the creature's teeth. The dog tribe, which have very wet mouths and wet tongues, keep their teeth fairly clean, while herbivorous animals do not. A dog's teeth are nearly always beautifully white, those of a horse or a camel yellow and dirty. Captain Christie, in some notes on sport in Somaliland, recently published in Country Life, states that a native cook who served him had been disabled for two years by a camel bite received during our former Soudan Expedi- tion. The work done by the tongue and saliva in constantly cleaning the carnivorous animal's teeth is proved to some extent by the different results of being "clawed" and bitten respectively by the same creature. Wounds made by the claws of leopards are poisonous, while those caused by the teeth are less frequently septic. Sir Samuel Baker notes that "the wounds from the claws of a leopard are exceedingly dangerous, as the animal is in the habit of feeding upon carcasses some days after they have been killed; the flesh is at that time beginning to decompose, and the claws, which are used to hold it as it is torn by the teeth and Jaws, become tainted and poisoned sufficiently to ensure gangrene by inoculation." He recommends that all wounds caused by leopards or tigers should be thoroughly syringed with cold water mixed with a thirty-sixth part of carbolic acid, when. ever the wound is dressed. Probably modern treatment can improve upon this recipe.
Apart from all concomitant danger of blood-poisoning, the severity of the bites of flesh-eating animals is out of all pro- portion to the weapons by which they are inflicted. The teeth, even of the largest carnivora, are merely the " spear- head ; " but the force which " works " these instruments is prodigious. It seems as if for the moment the animal threw all its bodily energy into the combination of muscular action which we call a " bite." In most cases the mere shock of impact, as the animal hurls itself on its enemy, is entirely demoralising, or inflicts physical injury. A muzzled mastiff will hurl a man to the ground in the effort to fasten its teeth in his throat or shoulder. Then, the driving and crushing force of the jaw muscles is astonishing. The snapping power of an alligator's jaws is more or less intelligible. They are long, and furnished with a row of pointed teeth from end to end. But the jaws of the lion, leopard, tiger, otter, ferret, or baboon are short, and the long and pointed teeth are few. Yet each of their species has a biting power which in proportion to its size is almost incredible. Sir Samuel Baker, who had a long and varied acquaintance with the bites of the earnivora, noticed that the tiger usually seized an Indian native by the shoulder, and with one jaw on one side and the other on the other bit clean through chest and back. "The fatal wound was the bite, which, through back and chest, penetrated to the lungs." Europeans are killed by the tiger's bite, as well as lacerated by the claws. A Mr. Lawes, son of a missionary of that name, was killed after being shaken for a few moments by a tigress, which then left him. He died next day. In nearly all cases the bite penetrates to the lungs. This kind of wound is characteristic of the attacks of many of the felidx. Scarcely any bird recovers from a cat's bite, for the same reason. The canine teeth are almost instantly driven through the lung, under the wing. The cheetah, which has a very small mouth, always bites through the black-buck's throat. The leopard, when seizing smaller animals, such as dogs, crushes the head; when attacking men it aims at biting through the lungs. Sir Samuel Baker must again be quoted. In Africa a native boy was firing reeds, accompanied by his
brother. A leopard seized one boy and was almost instantly killed by the other, who hurled his spear so accurately that it separated the vertebrm of the leopard's neck. "The boy was carried to my hut," save Sir Samuel, "but there was no chance of recovery, as the fangs had torn open the chest and injured the lungs; these were exposed to view through the cavity between his ribs. He died during the night." The worst of the " snapping " bites of mammals is that of the wolf. The jaws, unlike those of the felicke, are very long. A male wolf's head often seems to be more than a quarter of its length, without the tail. Some judges set it at nearly a third of the total length of its body. The bite is always a snap, which will tear away a mass of flesh from a still running animal, or inflict a mortal wound on the lower parts of the body. The crocodile bite is the most formidable of the snapping order. Though its teeth are only a row of spikes, it can cut off a limb, or bite a fish weighing 70 lb. into two pieces as cleanly as if they were divided by a knife.
Among the minor forms of bite to which persons in this country are liable are those of the fox, the ferret, the rat, and the stoat. The writer has seen a large greyhound which coursed a fox completely disabled by two bites inflicted instantaneously, one across the greyhound's muzzle, the other --an its thigh. He has been bitten through the finger by a ferret,—a most painful experience; and has seen a 6 lb. pike dying apparently dead on the grass, spring up and bite a person's hand, cutting the fore-finger to the bone. This pike .did not "bark like a dog," as did that which Mr. Briggs -caught; but it certainly bit like a cat. Adder's fat is still sold in the New Forest as an antidote to rat-bites. Horses .usually seize a person by the arm or shoulder when they bite. The result is more often a very bad bruise, like a jam in a -door, than a wound. But the great offender in this respect "our friend the dog," and the greatest sufferers are young .children. We have known a little girl of ten almost bitten to 'death by a petted St. Bernard dog which was jealous of her ; and a boy of six mauled and lacerated by a bulldog for the same reason. As most persons keep dogs for their own amusement, it is incumbent on them to remember that -though the best of domesticated animals, they are, poten- tially, dangerous wild beasts, and if they show signs of vice .should be dismissed by euthanasia; not sold to some one else.
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