CHAPTER XVIISEALS AND THEIR WAYS—BREEDING HABITS OF THE SEA-BEAR—SEA-ELEPHANTS—THE WALRUS AND THE POLAR BEAR—MATERNAL AFFECTION UTILISED—A WINTER SLEEP IN A SNOW-HOUSE—A DANGEROUS INTRUSION—BREAKFAST WITH AN ALLIGATOR—THE CROCODILE AND THE TROCHILUS.
SEALS AND THEIR WAYS—BREEDING HABITS OF THE SEA-BEAR—SEA-ELEPHANTS—THE WALRUS AND THE POLAR BEAR—MATERNAL AFFECTION UTILISED—A WINTER SLEEP IN A SNOW-HOUSE—A DANGEROUS INTRUSION—BREAKFAST WITH AN ALLIGATOR—THE CROCODILE AND THE TROCHILUS.
If the beaver has been to some extent structurally modified in relation to its water-loving habits, we have in the seals a group of marine carnivorous animals whose ancestors, as we plainly see, must at one time have been terrestrial, but whose limbs and bodies have become almost entirely adapted for an aquatic existence, and who are never found far from the vicinity of the water. They lie, however, on the rocks or ice to rest, and at certain seasons of the year repair to remote, but, unfortunately, not inaccessible islands, for the purpose of bringing forth their young. Seals are most numerous in the arctic and antarctic regions, and to render them impervious to the great cold of these latitudes their bodies are covered with a thick, dense fur, which, as with the beaver, is of two kinds, forming an upper and an under coating. The under fur of some species is very much sought after, and to obtain it, vast multitudes of these poor animals are, every year, slaughtered under circumstances of great barbarity. As the value of sealskin is far more artificial than real, inasmuchas there are few ladies who could not be quite warm enough without wearing it, it is to be hoped that as they become aware that almost every jacket represents a seal that has been skinned alive, they will cease to make these cruel purchases, and thus save millions of innocent and interesting creatures from perishing off the face of the earth.
These fur-bearing seals—or sea-bears as they are called—are polygamous, and their breeding habits when assembled on their far-off island nurseries are very curious and interesting. The male sea-bears—or bulls as they are called—are very much larger than the females—in fact, they weigh almost six times as much. They are, therefore, able to seize them in their teeth, and lift them about almost as easily as a cat does its kittens, and each bull gets for himself, in this way, as many females or cows as he can, and guards them on a certain spot of ground, which he looks upon as his own, and from which he never stirs. If he were to stir from it he would be attacked by some of the bulls round about, into whose territory he would have to intrude—for they are all packed very closely together. Each bull does his best to keep his harem of cows to himself, but they all try to steal from each other’s harems, and thus fights between the bulls are continually taking place. They bite fiercely at one another, and the whole air is full of the loud, harsh roarings which they utter. Sometimes two males will each seize hold of the same female, and then they both pull and tug at her, until sometimes—as neither will relax his hold—the poor animal is almost torn in half. The bullsfight most on first landing on the island, and before the harems have been got together by them. Afterwards things grow quieter, but each bull is continually occupied in guarding his harem.
One of the most interesting accounts of the breeding habits of the fur-seal is given by a Mr. Elliott, who spent a long time at their breeding stations, off the northern coasts of Alaska. He says: “It appears to be a well-understood principle among the able-bodied bulls that each one shall remain undisturbed on his ground, which is, usually, about ten feet square, provided he is strong enough to hold it against all comers; for the crowding in of fresh bulls often causes the removal of many of those who, though equally able-bodied, at first, have exhausted themselves by fighting earlier, and are driven, by the fresher animals, back farther and higher up on the rookery” (“rookeries” is the name given to these seal-breeding stations, though it does not appear to me to be a very good one). “Some of these bulls,” continues Mr. Elliott, “show wonderful strength and courage. I have marked one veteran who was among the first to take up his position, and that on the water-line, where, at least, fifty or sixty desperate battles were fought victoriously by him with nearly as many different seals, who coveted his position, and when the fighting season was over, I saw him covered with scars and gashes, an eye gouged out, but lording it bravely over his harem of fifteen or twenty cows, all huddled together on the same spot he had first chosen.”
As to the fighting itself, Mr. Elliott says it “is mostlyor entirely done with the mouth, the opponents seizing each other with the teeth, and clenching the jaws. Nothing but sheer strength can shake them loose, and that effort almost always leaves an ugly wound, the sharp canines tearing out deep gutters in the skin and blubber, or shredding the flippers into ribbon-strips. They usually approach each other with averted heads and a great many false passes, before either one or the other takes the initiative by gripping; their heads are darted out and back as quick as a flash; their hoarse roaring and shrill, piping whistle never ceases, whilst their fat bodies writhe and swell with exertion and rage, fur flying in air and blood streaming down—all combined make a picture fierce and savage enough, and, from its great novelty, exceedingly strange at first sight.” Sooner or later one of the two combatants proves stronger than the other, and when this becomes sufficiently apparent, the weaker of the two withdraws. Instead of pursuing him, as might have been expected, the victorious bull stays where he was, fans himself with one of his hind flippers, as though so much exertion had made him hot, and, with a satisfied chuckle, seems to rejoice in his victory.
An older writer who visited the islands more than 170 years ago, and who calls the sea-bears sea-cats, says: “When two of them only fight, the battle lasts frequently for an hour. Sometimes they rest awhile, lying by one another; then both rise at once, and renew the engagement. They fight with their heads erect, and turn them aside from one another’s stroke. So long as their strength is equal, they fight with their fore paws; butwhen one of them becomes weak, the other seizes him with his teeth, and throws him upon the ground. When the lookers-on see this, they come to the assistance of the vanquished. The wounds they make with their teeth are as deep as those made with a sabre; and in the month of July you will hardly see one of them that has not some wound upon him. After the end of the battle they throw themselves into the water to wash their bodies.” This account differs in some particulars from that of Mr. Elliott, who says nothing about the seals fighting with their flippers or entering the water afterwards. The latter hardly seems likely, as the females would be then left unguarded; but perhaps, the actions of the seals differ a little, according as it is early or late in the season. This latter informant, who was a Russian, tells us that the females who may be present at such conflicts always follow the victor. At the time when he lived, these poor sea-bears were not persecuted in the way they are now. People hardly ever went to their breeding islands then. It is pleasanter to think of these strange, fierce battles raging amidst ice and snow, in the far-off lonely regions of the north, without anyone to see or interfere with them, than amidst human surroundings of not at all a pleasant character—for the men who skin the seals alive for ladies are amongst the most brutal and debased of mankind. There is always more of the romance of natural history when animals are not interfered with.
The fur-bearing seal is only one of many species belonging to the family. Some of them are very large animals, the largest being the great elephant-seal or sea-elephant,a creature which sometimes measures as much as thirty feet in length, and fifteen or eighteen feet round the largest part of the body, so that it is much larger and heavier than the real elephant. They are polygamous, like the animals we have just been speaking about; and it must be a still more wonderful thing to see such huge creatures fighting. This the males do with the greatest fury; but the first descriptive word upon our title-page receives a better illustration in the love and devotion which they show towards the females. They will not desert them when they are in any danger, and this fact, so much to their credit, is taken advantage of by the brutal seal-hunters, who attack the females first, and the males, who remain with them, afterwards. Were they to reverse the process of destruction, the harem belonging to any male that was killed would immediately take to the sea and disappear. Whilst he lives, however, they connect their safety with his presence, and so continue to crowd about him until he breathes his last. My authority for this statement is the Rev. J. G. Wood, but I have not been able to find anything bearing upon it in the accounts of those having personal experience of the habits of these animals, which I should have liked to have done. If true, then we have here a striking instance of affectionate solicitude in an animal, as contrasted with that callousness and deadness of sympathy on the part of man, which the slaughter of beasts always and necessarily produces.
The sea-elephant is enormously fat, and the boiling of its fat down into oil, with the subsequent sale of this, isthe industry with which its slaughter is connected. Some time ago this industry was not known, and some years hence it will have ceased with the life of the species. The world, therefore, will have gained nothing permanently by the oil, whereas it will have lost for ever an interesting and wonderful creature. The sea-elephant is a denizen of the southern seas, and used once to be very plentiful on the coast of California and Mexico. Now, however, owing to the persecution to which it has been subjected, one is scarcely ever to be seen there.
Next, perhaps, to the sea-elephant in size, comes the great morse, or walrus, of the arctic and antarctic oceans. The principal peculiarity of this huge seal—the sea-horse as it is sometimes called—is the pair of long tusks, reminding one of those of an elephant, which it carries in its upper jaw. The length of these tusks is about a foot, and sometimes they weigh ten pounds apiece. The Esquimaux use them in the making of fish-hooks—for the fish-hooks of all savages are very different-looking articles to our own, and made in a very different way, though the principle is the same. But what does the walrus itself use them for? Wielded by an animal of such vast size and strength, they must, no doubt, be formidable weapons of offence, but they cannot be used to give a direct thrust forward, as the elephant uses his tusks, since they hang down from the jaw instead of projecting horizontally beyond it. Were one male walrus, however, to succeed in rearing his head over the neck or shoulder of another, he could inflict, it is evident, a formidable wound by stabbing downwards with his twocurved ivory stilettoes. It would seem, however, that it is mostly as an aid to the procuring of its food that the walrus uses its great tusks. With them it digs and scrapes amongst the sand and shingle on the bottom of the sea, along the coast, thus stirring up various molluscs and crustaceans, on which it principally feeds. In climbing up upon the rocks or slippery shores, too, it finds its tusks useful to hook on with, as has been related by various eye-witnesses and denied by various professors.
The regions where the walrus dwells are equally the abode of the white, or polar, bear, and it is possible that these two great creatures sometimes come into collision. Not that the walrus would ever interfere with the bear, but, in spite of its size, the converse may sometimes be the case, when the latter is pressed by hunger. In such an encounter I should think, myself, that the walrus would have the best of it. With his thick skin and still thicker blubber underneath it, he could hardly be very much injured by the teeth and claws of the bear, whereas a dig of his own tusks might well put the latterhors de combat, or even terminate his existence. For large and strong as a polar bear is—and he exceeds even the grizzly in size—he is inferior in both these particulars to the vast bulk and huge, though unwieldy, strength of the walrus. Doubtless he is aware of this fact, nor have I ever heard of such a combat being witnessed. Still, as I say, it might occur, and then what a sight it would be! What mighty blows and buffets! what horrible growlings and roarings!—the bear, no doubt, reared on its hind legs, striving to tear at the throat or neck of the walrus as the mostvulnerable part. The great seal, however, swinging its huge head from side to side, would shake off, each time, the grasp of its shaggy assailant, and at length seizing an opportunity to which the methods of the latter would perhaps have contributed, might transfix his neck or shoulder with a terrific downstroke of its tusks; crushing him at the same time on to the ice or hardened snow, now all bloodstained with the conflict. But we will not pursue further an imaginary picture.
But though they can defend themselves when the necessity arises, walruses are not of a combative disposition. They go in herds, the members of which are much attached to each other, so that an attack upon any one arouses the resentment, and may even provoke the retaliation, of the rest. When tamed, too, walruses have shown themselves as affectionate towards human beings as any dog could be. One brought alive from Archangel to St. Petersburg, in 1829, became deeply attached to its keeper—a lady, Madame Dennebecq by name.
One might expect that an animal thus capable of forming friendships would also show great parental affection. Accordingly we find this quality highly developed in the walrus, and the usual sportsman has given the usual account of how he witnessed it. A female, in this case, being wounded, placed her right fore fin or flipper about the body of her young calf, and endeavoured to shield it from the harpoon, against which its years were no protection, by the constant interposition of her own body. The terror of the calf, with the look of anxiety upon the mother’s face, accompanied with a reckless disregard ofher own danger, were, we are told, most affecting, but did not, unfortunately, affect the result, both the poor animals being slaughtered. Walrus-hunters do not often let their feelings get the better of them, they prefer to get the better of the walruses, throughtheirfeelings, which are tenderer. Thus, having caught a young one, they induce it to grunt, when the herd come to its assistance and are shot or harpooned.
It is, however, to its habit of going in herds that the walrus owes much of its safety. Even though half famished, a polar bear would hardly venture to attack one—even if only a young one—under these circumstances. Indeed, though so large an animal, the polar bear contents himself, for the most part, with the smaller kinds of seals, which he catches when they are asleep on the ice—perhaps, sometimes, even in the sea: for he is a wonderful swimmer, though not shaped quite so much like a fish as is a seal, and with feet only, and not flippers, to swim with. So much is said about the great size and strength of the grizzly bear that one might think it was the largest of all the bear family, but this is not the case. The largest of all bears are the polar bears, and this proves that they get quite enough to eat, even though they live in the cold, bleak north, where there are no great forests full of birds and monkeys and all manner of creatures; no plains or prairies with antelopes, or bisons, or herds of wild horses or zebras bounding over them, but only desolate icefields or dreary wastes of snow. Life, indeed, in the far north or south, is poor in species, but it is—or, at least, it was, until civilised mancame there to make it a solitude indeed—abundant in individuals. The ice has its own herds in the shape of numberless seals that lie upon it asleep or resting, enjoying what sun there is, during the short summer. Even in the winter, as these creatures must have air to breathe, they are accustomed to come out of the sea through holes in the ice, which they manage to keep open by constantly coming up in the same place, and so always breaking the ice, before it has time to get thick. The polar bears watch at these seal-holes, as they are called, and seize the seals as they come up, or else they wait till they have crawled out, and stalk them as they lie asleep.
A Brave Mother.The wounded walrus endeavoured recklessly to protect her young calf from the harpoon.
A Brave Mother.The wounded walrus endeavoured recklessly to protect her young calf from the harpoon.
A Brave Mother.
The wounded walrus endeavoured recklessly to protect her young calf from the harpoon.
In this way the male polar bear, at any rate, seems able to keep himself in food during the winter, but the female is said to hibernate, and this she does in a very interesting and peculiar way. Where it is all ice and snow, there are no caves for her to retire into, but she makes a cave by utilising the materials around her in the simplest possible way. She simply lies down in a snowstorm, and lets all the rest take care of itself. Her weight presses down the soft snow she is lying on, and she is soon covered up by the flakes falling upon her. She now lies in a little cave, for, by moving and rolling, she presses the snow away from her back and sides, so that she has a comfortable space, and does not feel cramped and confined. If it were earth that had been flung over her, she would be pressed down by its weight and soon suffocated, but it is different with the soft yielding snow. Neither is she cold, for the heat from her body warms the little cave that she lies in, just as if she were a stove; and as the hot breathfrom her nostrils rises up, it thaws the snow just above them, and makes a hole by which it escapes, and through which she is able to breathe. Here, then, in her little vaulted chamber, with its breathing-hole in the ceiling, the she polar bear lies snugly asleep, all through the cold, dark winter, and when the summer comes and the sun begins to melt the snow, out she gets, with a good appetite, all ready to catch a seal.
I am not sure if the winter sleep of the polar bear is a heavy or a light one, or whether the Esquimaux, who live in these arctic regions, are bold enough to interfere with it if they happen to come upon its sleeping-place. The brown bear of Siberia, however, is sometimes attacked whilst hibernating, and this is a very dangerous thing to do, for this species—unlike the black bear of America—sleeps lightly, and is very fierce when disturbed. The way employed is for one man to descend into the bear’s cave, at the end of a rope, the other end being held by two or three men, who stand at the cave’s mouth. The man who goes in has a torch, or a candle, fixed into his cap—at least I think I have somewhere read this account—so that he can both see before him, and carry his gun in both hands. When he sees the bear lying asleep he creeps cautiously up, and putting the muzzle of his gun against the side of the animal’s head, pulls the trigger. As soon as the men outside hear the roar of the gun in the cave, they pull on the rope, and the assassin starts running at the same time. If he stumbles or falls, he is pulled along the ground, and in this way may avoid the rush of the bear, supposing the shot has not killed it.If the muzzle of the gun has been well placed, it ought, of course, to be a certain thing, but the bear may wake first, or move just at the critical moment, or it may be difficult, in the dark cavern, only dimly illumined by the flickering light of the candle, to see in what position it is lying. All this has to be risked. Still, on the whole, the chances are a good deal against the bear, and if its cavern—or hibernaculum, to use the technical word—is once found, it is pretty sure to be killed, even though it may, sometimes, kill a man or two first. I forget, now, exactly where I have read this account, but it was in a trustworthy book, I feel sure, so I hope it is correct in the main, even though I may have forgotten some of the particulars.
Bears are the largest animals that hibernate, unless some very big crocodiles or alligators may be considered to be larger still; and, perhaps, as these giants attain a length of twenty or even thirty feet, they may weigh as much or more. These creatures generally sleep in holes under the river-bank, but the alligator of tropical America will, sometimes, bury itself in the mud of a swamp, which may then dry up altogether, so that an encampment, or even a hut, may be raised upon it. In time the rains fall, the ground begins to grow moist again, and someone lying in his hammock, or just sitting down to breakfast, may be startled, all at once, by a great alligator rising up beneath him, out of the mud that makes the floor of his hut.
It is not this alligator, but the crocodile of Egypt and the Nile, that has long been famous for its friendship with a little bird, which, when he lies on the shore, maybe seen not only running all about his body, but sometimes even inside his mouth, which the reptile holds purposely open for him. One snap of the great jaws, and the bird would never more be seen, but this snap is never made. The reason is that the bird is of great service to the crocodile, by freeing it from certain small animals which fix themselves on its body, or even within its jaws. On the other hand, the bird is very glad to get these creatures to eat, so that the friendship on both sides is based upon utilitarian principles. Herodotus, who visited Egypt over 2,000 years ago, relates as follows concerning this intimacy: “It is blind in the water (!) but very quick-sighted on land; and because it lives for the most part in the water, its mouth is filled with leeches. All other birds and beasts avoid him, but he is at peace with the trochilus because he receives benefit from that bird. For when the crocodile gets out of the water on land, and then opens its jaws, which it does, most commonly, towards the west, the trochilus enters its mouth and swallows the leeches: the crocodile is so well pleased with this service that it never hurts the trochilus.”