Appendix IV: Sociability of Animals

That the sociability of animals was greater when they were less hunted by man, is confirmed by many facts showing that those animals who now live isolated in countries inhabited by man continue to live in herds in uninhabited regions. Thus on the waterless plateau deserts of Northern Thibet Prjevalsky found bears living in societies. He mentions numerous “herds of yaks, khulans, antelopes, and even bears.” The latter, he says, feed upon the extremely numerous small rodents, and are so numerous that, “as the natives assured me, they have found a hundred or a hundred and fifty of them asleep in the same cave” (Yearly Report of the Russian Geographical Society for 1885, p. 11; Russian). Hares (Lepus Lehmani) live in large societies in the Transcaspian territory (N. Zarudnyi, Recherches zoologiques dans la contrée Transcaspienne, in Bull. Soc. Natur. Moscou, 1889, 4). The small Californian foxes, who, according to E.S. Holden, live round the Lick observatory “on a mixed diet of Manzanita berries and astronomers’ chickens” (Nature, Nov. 5, 1891), seem also to be very sociable.

Some very interesting instances of the love of society among animals have lately been given by Mr. C.J. Cornish (Animals at Work and Play, London, 1896). All animals, he truly remarks, hate solitude. He gives also an amusing instance of the habit of the prairie dogs of keeping sentries. It is so great that they always keep a sentinel on duty, even at the London Zoological Garden, and in the Paris Jardin d’Acclimatation (p. 46).

Professor Kessler was quite right in pointing out that the young broods of birds, keeping together in autumn, contribute to the development of feelings of sociability. Mr. Cornish (Animals at Work and Play) has given several examples of the plays of young mammals, such as, for instance, lambs playing at “follow my leader,” or at “I’m the king of the castle,” and their love of steeplechases; also the fawns playing a kind of “cross-touch,” the touch being given by the nose. Altogether we have, moreover, the excellent work by Karl Gross, The Play of Animals.