Among the higher animals there is often a range of sound that does duty as a language. The cats have a wide range, from the plaintive call for admittance to the purr of content and the snarl of rage and its varied modifications. The whale has a voice, if we may believe the old writers. One is called the "caaing" whale, from its alleged voice, and no less a naturalist than Lacepede quotes Duhamel as an authority regarding the rorqual, and "the lamentable and terrible cries" it was supposed to utter.
The dogs combine with voice, movements of the hair, tail, eyes, and ears in speaking. The low growl is accompanied with rigidity of the body, the canine teeth gleam brightly as a warning, and the entire appearance speaks of rage. How opposite is its appearance when greeting its master and fawning at his feet.
The snake can hardly be said to possess language, but that it can call its young has been demonstrated. Colonel Nicholas Pike, a former consul to Mauritius, told me that he had heard a garter snake call its young as he approached by a "peculiar noise," at which they wriggled toward her and ran down her throat for safety—a common trick among various snakes, despite vigorous statements to the contrary. Colonel Pike observed this on several occasions; so it is evident the mother snake has a vocal call that is understood by its young.
Who can doubt that the strange noises made by insects have not some meaning understood by them—the song of the locust, the shrill note of the katydid, and the chirp of the cricket. These sounds are not vocal, but instrumental. The grasshopper fiddles to his mate, and the cricket stridulates his song, while the locust drums. The noise of the grasshopper is made by rubbing the thighs against the fore wing. The former is serrated for the purpose, and under the glass resembles a saw. In the locusts the base of the anterior wing is transparent, forming a drum with which the males do their talking, the various species uttering different sounds, which, it is said, differ day and night. When the katydid utters its call the lips are silent, but there is a vigorous rubbing of the inner surface of the hind legs against the outer surface of the front wings, while the male cricket elevates its fore wing and rubs it against the hind pair.
What a fiddling and chirping there is on summer nights, or drumming on the warm days when the cicada and its friends come out. If these are not calls, sounds with meaning, then nature has for once provided something useless. Some of the butterflies utter a clicking sound. Beetles have remarkable odors by which they distinguish one another, and no one can watch ants without being convinced that they have a means of communication known only to themselves.
I have provided an ant with food too large to be carried off, when it would return to its home and soon appear with two others, and the trio would remove it. Did not the ant tell its good fortune and ask for aid? Ants are often seen facing one another in close proximity and touching one another with their antennae, presumably exchanging ideas.
"The trio would remove it."
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The elephant has an interesting series of sounds or noises, which it utters on various occasions, and which undoubtedly constitute its language. I was impressed with this when attending a private view of Jumbo given to a number of professional men in New York, when the keeper made the huge animal exercise his voice. A shrill cry, uttered through the trunk, indicated rage. An elephant has been heard to warn another elephant by a low sound resembling "prut," or a gentle twittering, while wild elephants utter a sound like hammering on a cask. When the keeper prodded Jumbo, or touched him with the goad, the great beast uttered a penetrating squeak, which seemed to be made inside the trunk, and was ear-piercing. He showed his pleasure by low purring, like a cat, the sound being audible to the driver alone. Rage was expressed by a rumbling in the throat, and fear by a reverberating roar. Suspicion is often shown among wild elephants by a tapping upon the ground, and there are various other sounds and signals which show that the elephant has a language of its own.
Certain shells utter singular sounds, accidental, perhaps, but in some instances so sharp that they attract widespread attention. Some travelers were passing from the promontory of Salsette to Sewree, in Bombay, when they were amazed at hearing a long-protracted booming sound like the notes of a gigantic harp, or a pitch pipe. At first it was believed to come from the shore, and some of the party were convinced that some one was playing upon a musical instrument; but stopping the boat, they found that it was coming from all around them, and was supposed to proceed from a little shell common in the vicinity.
It may be assumed that nearly all animals have a language of sound, sign, or odor which serves them well.
ANIMAL MOUND BUILDERS.
SOME years ago a sea captain who was trading in the Celebes Islands received, as he was about to sail, a basket which the messenger said contained a few eggs which he wished delivered to a naturalist at the next port. The skipper placed the eggs in his cabin for safety, and thought no more about them until one morning he heard a noise in the basket, and, to his amazement, saw one of the eggs break open and its occupant fly across the cabin.
Later he learned that the bird was the maleo, a pheasantlike creature that deposits its eggs in the volcanic sands of the beach, allowing the sun to hatch them. The young birds dig their way out, and are able to take care of themselves from birth, and can fly immediately to a limited distance.
Closely related to the maleo is a group of birds which can be very properly termed the mound builders of bird life. They are the megapodes of New Guinea and Australia, birds that use incubators to hatch their eggs. There are a number of species, but in general they resemble small turkeys with very large feet, and are found in the brush near the shore or beach. When the breeding season arrives, both sexes select a suitable place and proceed to build a mound of grass and vegetable matter. This is accomplished by the birds taking the material in their large and powerful claws and hurling it backward. A large mound is the result, which, when completed, is sometimes many feet high and of great width.
used year after year, often assumes striking proportions.
As an example, some naturalists who were traveling on the Island of Nogo, in Endeavor Straits, were attracted by the accounts of the natives of a bird that made mountains in which to hide its eggs from enemies. On offering to reward the natives, the travelers were taken to the mound of a megapode, from which the guides triumphantly dug out several eggs. The mound was, if not a mountain, a small hill, and measured one hundred and fifty feet in circumference, and at one end was fourteen feet in height, sloping in one place twenty-four feet to the level of the ground, which was scraped bare in the vicinity. Another observed was twenty-five feet in length and five feet high.
These mounds are formed of vegetable matter, interspersed here and there with fine gravel, decayed wood, and leaves, and are artificial incubators. The birds dig a hole in the top, and deposit the eggs about six feet from the surface; the eggs are then covered up and left to hatch by the heat generated in the mass, whereupon the young scramble out.
The Nicobar megapode constructs a similar mound, while the talegallus of Australia is equally remarkable as a mound builder. In this instance, several females use the same nest, and as many as a basketful of eggs have been taken from a single mound. This bird is nearly as large as a turkey, and resembles it.
Among the birds there are a number of mound builders. The lyre bird, so remarkable for its ventriloquistic powers, forms a singular mound of sticks and brush. Upon one occasion, several naturalists visited the small islands on the Bahama Banks, and came upon a singular settlement of mounds. The latter were about thirty inches across, and from one to three feet high, and resembled stools or seats rising from the mud. They were the moundlike nests of the flamingo.
A little bird found deep in the heart of Borneo, called the gardener bird, erects an apparently perfect mound, for its ventilation,
<!-- image -->three or four feet high, which, wonderful to relate, is hollow. The bird is but little larger than a robin, and builds this mound of green twigs simply as a pleasure house, its eggs being deposited in a nest not far distant.
In traveling over the prairies of Illinois several years ago, I observed singular mounds here and there in what was comparatively dry land. So numerous were they that they made the surrounding country appear as though billows were passing over it, giving it an undulating surface. Upon investigation I found that the mound builders were little crayfish that penetrated the soil in every direction from the neighboring brooks, the mounds being startling evidences of their industry.
Very remarkable are the moundlike structures of lamprey eels. One observed in the Saco River was fifteen feet in length and three feet in height, and was formed of stones. In removing the stones the eels attached their suckerlike mouths to them, and, rising with a wriggling motion from the bottom, allowed the current of the stream to carry them along as far as it would before they dropped; then the upward wriggling motion was repeated, until finally the stone was placed where desired. Among the material carried downstream in this manner was a portion of a brick that took the united efforts of two large eels, which held themselves upright in the water as they were carried on by the current.
In my walks and drives through the foothill country of southern California, I have frequently seen a curious and interesting mound builder. The first mound that attracted my attention was a mass of brush piled up about the trunk of a small tree, standing perhaps three feet from the ground. It was so interwoven and interlaced that only with difficulty could I pull it apart, the short twigs having in some way been wound in and out so closely that the heap was not only an impregnable fortress, but rain and weatherproof.
Not knowing exactly to what member of the animal kingdom the mound belonged, I retired a few feet, and soon saw the owner—a large, lustrous-eyed wood rat, that watched me sharply from its point of vantage, at the slightest movement dodging back. I had never seen an interior described, so I began to demolish the nest,
Wood Rat and Nest
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and labored long and hard before I had laid it open.
The upper portion contained a room or apartment lined with fine moss and the bark of trees, and thoroughly protected from the rain. There were other apartments or rooms, some stuffed with seeds, corncobs, and pieces of cloth, probably picked up in the vicinity of a neighboring ranch house. The whole mass was honeycombed with tunnels, so that it was an impossibility to catch one of the mound builders napping; and when I finally removed the nest, I found that one of the passages led into the ground and radiated in various directions.