The last number of the Popular Science Monthly contains an article on the survival of instincts, which details some cruel and apparently abnormal habits among domestic animals, and traces them to early developments of necessity. By repetition they have acquired the force of instinct. For instance, a gentleman living near Brooklyn recently tethered a turkey in field with a rope for the better protection of her brood. One day the turkey became entangled in the cord and fell hapless upon the ground. The other turkeys in the same field, with whom there had been a constant and friendly association heretofore, immediately fell upon their disabled companion, and commenced with the picking at her head and eyes, evidently with the purpose of killing her. This occurrence led to inquiry, which elicited the fact that such conduct was not unusual among otherwise well-behaved turkeys whenever one of the flock became disabled and an easy victim to its companions. The same disposition, under similar circumstances, has been found among other domesticated animals,-cattle, swine, and dogs. Drovers of long experience testify that, when herds of cattle are rapidly driven, and one falls to the ground or exhibits signs of weakness, it is not uncommon for the rest of the herd to set upon it and gore it to death. A Long Island gentleman reports a case in which this occurred in a field where cattle were peacefully grazing, and another that observation has convinced him that a cry of distress is always a signal for attack on the part of the strong, instead of an invitation for sympathy. The same propensity has been observed among swine. In driving, in the pens, and especially in crowed cars, the weak are attacked by the strong, and in some cases devoured as well as killed. On one occasion, after a hog had been slaughtered and eaten, other meat was thrown to the survivors to test whether hunger had tempted them to this treachery, but it was not touched. This seems to indicate that their cruelty was prompted by some other instinct.
This propensity among dumb animals, uniformly developed under certain conditions, is reasonably attributed to a survival of certain instincts from former wild conditions, when such actions were rendered necessary or advisable as a means of self-preservation. It became necessary at times to drive behind or destroy the feeble in order to protect the majority when animals were threatened or pursued by stronger animals or by man, and this disposition has been perpetuated and strengthened by transmission from generation to generation.
Darwinists find some support for their hypothesis of a common origin of species in traces of a like disposition among men. Mr. Darwin himself mentions the practice common among North American Indians of leaving their fellow-comrades to perish on the plains, and the Fiji Islanders, who bury their parents alive when they get old and disabled. Like traits are found among other savage and semi-savage people. But it is not necessary to go to the savage state of man’s existence to discover them. History shows similar desertion and destruction of the weak that the strong may survive even among civilized nations. At Metz, there is a bridge known as the “Bridge of Death,” not from the terrible destruction of life during wars, but because there was an annual gathering here of the infirm and aged, by order of the city authorities. After the helpless had been assembled, a charge was made upon them, and they were forced to jump into the stream below, where their struggles for life were met with pelting stones, hurled at them by the populace gathered along the banks. The very same trait, having the origin in the same motive, may thus be found in certain stages among men as well as among brutes. In the more advanced stages of civilization there is still a mental reflex of this cruel tendency in the disposition, altogether too frequently recognized, to oppress those who have already suffered reverses. It is generally known as the tendency to ‘kick a man when he is down,”-an expression which seems to trace a similarity between this human trait and the animal instinct that is found to survive among the turkeys, the cattle, and the swine.
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