And how they cursed him, reviled him, and made hideous faces at him! The long-armed yellow baboons barked and roared until they were heard half a mile away. The ugly-tempered macaques and rhesus monkeys nearly burst with hatred and indignation. The row was kept up for a long time, and the monkey language that was lost to science on that occasion was, both in quantity and quality, beyond compare.
Bear Language. In their native haunts bears are as little given to loud talk as other animals; but in roomy and comfortable captivity, where many are yarded together, they rapidly develop vocal powers. Our bears are such cheerful citizens, and they do so many droll things, that the average visitor works overtime in watching them. I have learned the language of our bears sufficiently that whenever I hear one of them give tongue I know what he says. For example:
In warning or threatening an enemy, the sloth bear says: "Ach! Ach! Ach!" and the grizzly says: "Woof! Woof!" A fighting bear says: "Aw-aw-aw!" A baby's call for its mother is "Row! Row!" A bear's distress call is: "Err-wow-oo-oo-oof!"
But even in a zoological park it is not possible for everyone to recognize and interpret the different cries of bears, although the ability to do so is sometimes of value to the party of the second part. For example:
One day in February I was sitting in my old office in the Service Building, engrossed in I know not what important and solemn matter. The park was quiet; for the snow lay nine inches deep over all. There were no visitors, and the maintenance men were silently shovelling. Over the hill from the bear dens came the voice of a bear. It said, as plainly as print: "Err-wow!" I said to myself: "That sounds like a distress call," and listened to hear it repeated.
Again it came: "Err-wow!"
I caught up my hat and hastened over the hill toward the bear dens. On the broad concrete walk, about a hundred feet from the dens, four men were industriously shovelling snow, unaware that anything was wrong anywhere except on the pay-roll, opposite their names.
Guided by the cries that came from "The Nursery" den, where six yearling cubs were kept, I quickly caught sight of the trouble. One of our park-born brown bear cubs was hanging fast by one forefoot from the top of the barred partition. He had climbed to the top of the ironwork, thrust one front paw through between two of the bars (for bears are the greatest busybodies on earth), and when he sought to withdraw it, the sharp point of a bar in the overhang of the tree-guard had buried itself in the back of his paw, and held him fast. It seemed as if his leg was broken, and also dislocated at the shoulder. No wonder the poor little chap squalled for help. His mother, on the other side of the partition, was almost frantic with baffled sympathy, for she could do nothing to help him.
It did not take more than a quarter of a minute to have several men running for crowbars and other things, and within five minutes from the discovery we were in the den ready for action. The little chap gave two or three cries to let us know how badly it hurt his leg to hang there, then bent his small mind upon rendering us assistance.
First we lifted him up bodily, and held him, to remove the strain. Then, by good luck, we had at hand a stout iron bar with a U- shaped end; and with that under the injured wrist, and a crowbar to spring the treacherous overhang, we lifted the foot clear, and lowered little Brownie to the floor. From first to last he helped us all he could, and seemed to realize that it was clearly "no fair" to bite or scratch. Fortunately the leg was neither broken nor dislocated, and although Brownie limped for ten days, he soon was all right again.
After the incident had been closed, I gave the men a brief lecture on the language of bears, and the necessity of being able to recognize the distress call.
You can chase bison, elephants and deer all day without hearing a single vocal utterance. They know through long experience the value of silence.
The night after I shot my second elephant we noted an exception. The herd had been divided by our onslaught. Part of it had gone north, part of it south, and our camp for the night (beside the dead tusker) lay midway between the two. About bedtime the elephants began signalling to each other by trumpeting, and what they sounded was "The assembly." They called and answered repeatedly; and finally it became clear to my native followers that the two herds were advancing to unite, and were likely to meet in our vicinity. That particular trumpet call was different from any other I have ever heard. It was a regular "Hello" signal- call, entirely different from the "Tal-loo-e" blast which once came from a feeding herd and guided us to it.
But it is only on rare occasions that elephants communicate with each other by sound. I once knew a general alarm to be communicated throughout a large herd by the sign language, and a retreat organized and carried out in absolute silence. Their danger signals to each other must have been made with their trunks and their ears; but we saw none of them, because all the animals were concealed from our view except when the two scouts of the herd were hunting for us.
In captivity an elephant trumpets in protest, or through fear, or through rage; but I am obliged to confess that as yet I cannot positively distinguish one from the other.
Once in the Zoological Park I heard our troublesome Indian elephant, Alice, roaring continuously as if in pain. It continued at such a rate that I hurried over to the Elephant House to investigate. And there I saw a droll spectacle. Keeper Richards had taken Alice out into her yard for exercise and had ordered her to follow him. And there he was disgustedly marching around the yard while Alice marched after him at an interval of ten paces, quite free and untrammeled, but all the while lustily trumpeting and roaring in indignant protest. The only point at which she was hurt was in her feelings.
Two questions that came into public notice concerning the voices of two important American animals have been permanently settled by "the barnyard naturalists" of New York.
The Voice of the American Bison. In 1907 the statement of George Catlin, to the effect that in the fall the bellowing of buffalo bulls on the plains resembled the muttering of distant thunder, was denied and severely criticized in a sportsman's magazine. On October 4 of that year, while we were selecting the fifteen bison to be presented to the Government, to found the Wichita National Bison Herd, four of us heard our best bull bellow five times, while another did the same thing four times.
The sound uttered was a deep-voiced roar,—not a grunt,—rising and falling in measured cadence, and prolonged about four or five seconds. It was totally different from the ordinary grunt of hunger, or the menace of an angry buffalo, which is short and sharp. In discussing the quality of the bellow, we agreed that it could properly be called a low roar. It is heard only in the rutting season,—the period described by Catlin,—and there is good reason to believe that Caitlin's description is perfectly correct.
The Scream of the Puma. This is a subject that will not lie still. I presume it will recur every five years as long as pumas endure. Uncountable pages of controversial letters have been expended upon the question: "Does the puma ever scream, like a woman in distress?"
The true answer is easy, and uncontestable by people whose minds are open to the rules of evidence.
Yes; the adult female puma DOES scream,-in the mating season, whenever it comes. It is loud, piercing, prolonged, and has the agonized voice qualities of a boy or a woman screaming from the pain of a surgical operation. To one who does not know the source or the cause, it is nerve-racking. When heard in a remote wilderness it must be truly fearsome. It says "Ow-w-w-w!" over and over. We have heard it a hundred times or more, and it easily carries a quarter of a mile.
The language of animals is a long and interesting subject,—so much so that here it is possible only to sketch out and suggest its foundations and scope. On birds alone, an entire volume should be written; but animal intelligence is a subject as far reaching as the winds of the earth.
No man who ever saw high in the heavens a V-shaped flock of wild geese, or heard the honk language either afloat, ashore or in the air, will deny the spoken language of that species.