African Nature Notes and Reminiscences 7

African Nature Notes and Reminiscences 7

To me it seems that the influence of environment might very well be

deemed sufficient of itself to cause all animals that have lived for

long ages in treeless deserts under constant strong sunlight to assume

the dull brown coloration which they undoubtedly possess; whilst Arctic

conditions might be expected to cause the whitening of an animal's hair

in the winter, or the play of the sun's light through the leaves and

branches of trees and bushes to be responsible for a spotted or striped

coat. In the case of a combination of black and white--the two most

conspicuous colours in nature--such as may be seen in the adult cock

ostrich or male sable antelope, why should it not be supposed that the

law of sexual selection has come into play, as it probably has done in

the production of the lion's mane and the exaggerated size of the horns

in the male koodoo.

 

Having spent many years of my life in the constant pursuit of African

game, I have certainly been afforded opportunities such as have been

enjoyed by but few civilised men of becoming intimately acquainted with

the habits and life-history of many species of animals living in that

continent, and all that I have learnt during my long experience as a

hunter compels me to doubt the correctness of the now very generally

accepted theories that all the wonderfully diversified colours of

mammals--the stripes of the zebra, the blotched coat of the giraffe,

the spots of the bushbuck, the white face and rump of the bontebok, to

mention only a few--have been evolved either as a means of protection

from enemies or for the purpose of mutual recognition by animals of

the same species in times of sudden alarm. Sexual selection and the

influence of environment must, I think, have been equally potent

factors in the evolution of colours in mammals, birds, reptiles, and

insects.

 

In all recent articles which I have read by well-known naturalists on

these subjects, it appears to be assumed that both carnivorous and

herbivorous animals trust entirely to their sense of sight, the former

to find their prey, and the latter to detect and avoid the approach of

their enemies. Yet nothing is more certain than that all carnivorous

animals hunt almost entirely by scent, until they have closely

approached their quarry, and usually by night, when all the animals on

which they prey must look very much alike as far as colour is concerned.

 

The wild dogs of Africa and the wolves of northern latitudes are not so

completely nocturnal, it is true, as the large Felidae, but the former

I know, and the latter I have every reason to believe, hunt, as a rule,

by night and only occasionally in the daytime. In both these animals

the sense of smell is enormously developed, and must be of far greater

use to them in procuring food than the sense of sight, however acute

that may be. In all my wanderings I have only seen African wild dogs

chasing game in the daytime on four occasions. I once saw a single wild

dog chasing a sable antelope in the daytime. This wild dog--which was,

however, then too far away to enable me to see what it was--first ran

past the sable antelope and behind it from where I was watching. It

must then have been running on the trail, with its nose on the ground,

and must have passed quite close to the animal it was pursuing without

seeing it. Its nose, however, kept it on the antelope's tracks and

soon brought it to close quarters, and then of course it continued

the chase by sight. Now if this is the usual proceeding of African

wild dogs, and I am convinced that it is, the value of assimilative

coloration to animals on which the wild dog preys cannot be very great.

 

But not only do all carnivorous animals hunt by scent, and rely far

more upon their olfactory organs than upon their keenness of sight

to procure food, but, as all practical hunters very well know, the

sense of smell is also very highly developed in all, or at any rate

in most, of the animals on which the carnivora prey, and personally I

am persuaded that all browsing and grazing animals in Africa trust as

much to their noses as to their eyes both to avoid danger and to find

members of their own species. The eyes of antelopes are quick to detect

a moving object, but they are by no means quick to notice any unusual

colour in a stationary object. I will relate an anecdote illustrating

this point.

 

Early in 1883, I reached the spot on the Hanyani river in Mashunaland

where I intended to establish my hunting camp for the season. Whilst

my Kafirs were chopping down trees to build the cattle enclosures, I

climbed to the top of the ridge at the foot of which I was having my

camp made.

 

It was late in the afternoon, and I was sitting on a rock looking over

the open country to the south, when I heard a slight noise, and turning

my eyes saw a fine male waterbuck coming towards me up the ridge. I

sat perfectly still, and it presently walked slowly past within three

yards of me and then went on along the ridge, into the forest beyond.

As it passed me I noticed its shining wet nose, and the way in which

its nostrils kept constantly opening and shutting at every step. It was

evidently listening to the noise that my Kafirs were making chopping

down small trees at the foot of the ridge, but as it could not get

their wind did not take alarm.

 

Of course, if I had made the very slightest movement, this waterbuck

would have seen me instantly; but had it possessed much sense of

colour, the contrast between the red brown of my sunburnt arms and face

and the light-coloured shirt I was wearing would have attracted its

attention, as I was sitting on a stone, on the top of a ridge which

was quite free from trees or bush. I have never had any other African

antelopes pass so close to me as this without seeing me, but many have

fed slowly past me, as I sat watching them, with a tree or a bush

behind me but nothing between myself and them, at distances of from 20

to 50 yards.

 

Both in Newfoundland and in the Yukon Territory of Canada, I have had

caribou walk almost over me when sitting in front of them on their

line of march on ground devoid of any cover whatever. In such cases,

of course, the wind was blowing from these animals towards where I was

sitting, and I remained absolutely motionless.

 

As a rule, when wild animals notice something suspicious approaching,

say a man on horseback, and cannot get the scent of it, they run off

before it gets near them or circle round to try and get the wind of

it. But the smaller African antelopes, steinbucks, duikers, oribis,

and reedbucks will occasionally, while keeping their eyes fixed on

the unfamiliar object, crouch slowly down, and then, with their necks

stretched along the ground, lie watching. I have ridden past a few

oribis, steinbucks, and reedbucks within a few yards, as they lay

absolutely motionless on the ground watching me. To pull in one's

horse with the intention of shooting such a crouching antelope was

the instant signal for it to jump up and bound away. Lions too, when

they see a human being and imagine that they themselves have not been

observed, will often lie flat on the ground watching, and will not move

until very closely approached. I imagine that these carnivora secure

nearly all their prey by approaching herds of game below the wind, and

when they have got pretty near lying flat on the ground, perfectly

motionless except for the twitching of the end of their tails, which

they never seem able to control, and then waiting till one or other of

the unsuspecting animals feeds close up to them, when they rush upon

and seize it before it has time to turn. If a lion, however, fails

to make good his hold with one of his fore-paws over the muzzle of a

buffalo or one of the heavier antelopes, and cannot fix his teeth in

their throats or necks, they often manage to throw him off and escape.

 

It is perhaps worthy of remark that I have never known a case of one

of the larger antelopes trying to escape observation by lying down.

Gemsbucks, roan and sable antelopes, elands, koodoos, hartebeests,

indeed all the large African antelopes, directly they see anything

suspicious, face towards it, and stand looking at it, holding their

heads high, and not in any way shielding their bodies and only exposing

their faces to view, which, when marked with black and white, as in

the case of the gemsbuck and roan antelope, are supposed, though quite

erroneously, to render these animals invisible.

 

I am inclined to think, but it is only my personal opinion, that the

difficulty of seeing wild animals in their natural surroundings has

been greatly exaggerated by travellers who were not hunters, and whose

eyesight therefore, although of normal strength, had not been trained

by practice to see animals quickly in every kind of environment.

 

I am quite sure that to a South-African Bushman there is no such

thing as protective coloration in nature. If an animal is behind a

rock or a thick bush, he of course cannot see it, but his eyes are

so well trained, he knows so exactly the appearance of every animal

to be met with in the country in which he and his ancestors have

spent their lives as hunters for countless ages, that he will not

miss seeing any living thing that comes within his range of vision no

matter what its surroundings may be. Bantu Kafirs are often called

savages, and their quickness of sight extolled; but Kafirs are not

real savages, and though there are good hunters amongst them, such

men will form but a small percentage of any one tribe. To realise to

what a pitch of perfection the human eyesight can be trained, not in

seeing immense distances but in picking up an animal within a moderate

range immediately it is physically possible to see it, it is necessary

to hunt with real savages like the Masarwa Bushmen of South-Western

Africa, who depend on their eyesight for a living.

 

Now, if carnivorous animals had throughout the ages depended on their

eyesight for their daily food as the Bushmen have done, which is what

naturalists who believe in the value of protective coloration to large

mammals must imagine to be the case, surely their eyesight would have

become so perfected that no colour or combination of colours could

have concealed any of the animals on which they habitually preyed from

their view. As a matter of fact, however, carnivorous animals hunt as a

rule by scent and not by sight, and usually at night when herbivorous

animals are moving about feeding or going to drink. At such a time it

appears to me that the value of a coloration that assimilated perfectly

with an animal's natural surroundings during the daytime would be very

small as a protection from the attacks of carnivora which hunted by

night and by scent.

 

Reverting again to the question of quickness of eyesight, I will say

that, although a Boer or an English hunter can never hope to become as

keen-sighted as a Bushman, his eyes will nevertheless improve so much

in power after a few years spent in the constant pursuit of game, that

the difficulty of distinguishing wild animals amongst their native

haunts will be very much less than it was when he first commenced to

hunt, or than it must always be to a traveller or sportsman who has not

had a long experience of hunting.

 

However difficult an animal may be to see as long as it is lying down

or standing motionless, as soon as it moves it becomes very apparent to

the human eye; and, as I have had ample experience that any movement

made by a man is very quickly noticed by a lion, leopard, hyæna, or

wild dog, I am quite sure that all these carnivora, if lying watching

for prey by daylight, would at once see any animal moving about feeding

anywhere near them; and all herbivorous animals move about and feed

early in the morning and late in the evening, the very times when

carnivorous animals would be most likely to be looking for game by

daylight.

 

During the heat of the day carnivorous animals are very seldom seen,

as at that time they sleep, and most herbivorous animals do the same.

But even when resting, wild animals are seldom motionless. Elephants

and rhinoceroses are constantly moving their ears, whilst giraffes,

elands, buffaloes, zebras, and other animals seldom stand for many

seconds together without swishing their tails. All these movements at

once attract the attention of the trained human eye, and I am very sure

would be equally apparent to the sight of a lion or a leopard, were

these animals to hunt by sight and during the daytime. But, speaking

generally, they do not do so, though doubtless should antelopes or

other animals unconsciously feed close up to where a lion happened

to be lying resting and waiting for night before commencing active

hunting, he would very likely make a rush and try and seize one of

them if he could. Upon two occasions I have had my bullocks attacked

in the middle of the day, once by a single lioness, and on the other

occasion by a party of four lions, two lions and two lionesses. But how

many old hunters have seen lions actually hunting in the full light

of day? Personally, in all the long years I was hunting big game in

Africa--years during which I must have walked or ridden many thousands

of miles through country full of game, and where lions were often

numerous--I only once saw one of these animals hunting by daylight.

This lion was pursuing four koodoo cows on a cool cloudy winter's morning.