The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

William T. Hornaday

The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4057664604385

Table of Contents

PREFACE

ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MINDS AND MANNERS OF WILD ANIMALS

I. A SURVEY OF THE FIELD

II

III

IV

V

II. MENTAL TRAITS OF WILD ANIMALS

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

III. THE HIGHER PASSIONS

XIX

XX

XXI

IV.—THE BASER PASSIONS

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

THE CURTAIN

BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY

THE MINDS AND MANNERS OF WILD ANIMALS

THE CURTAIN.

PREFACE

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During these days of ceaseless conflict, anxiety and unrest among men, when at times it begins to look as if the Caucasian really is played out, perhaps the English-reading world will turn with a sigh of relief to the contemplation of wild animals. At all events, the author has found this diversion in his favorite field mentally agreeable and refreshing.

In comparison with some of the alleged men who now are cursing this earth by their baneful presence, the so-called lower animals do not seem so very low after all! As a friend of the animals, this is a very proper time in which to compare them with men. Furthermore, if thinking men and women desire to know the leading facts concerning the intelligence of wild animals, it will be well to consider them now, before the bravest and the best of the wild creatures of the earth go down and out under the merciless and inexorable steam roller that we call Civilization.

The intelligence and the ways of wild animals are large subjects. Concerning them I do not offer this volume as an all-in-all production. Out of the great mass of interesting things that might have been included, I have endeavored to select and set forth only enough to make a good series of sample exhibits, without involving the general reader in a hopelessly large collection of details. The most serious question has been: What shall be left out?

Mr. A. R. Spofford, first Librarian of Congress, used to declare that Books are made from books; but I call the reader to bear witness that this volume is not a mass of quotations. A quoted authority often can be disputed, and for this reason the author has found considerable satisfaction in relying chiefly upon his own testimony.

Because I always desire to know the opinions of men who are writing upon their own observations, I have felt free to express my own conclusions regarding the many phases of animal intelligence as their manifestation has impressed me in close-up observations.

I have purposely avoided all temptations to discuss the minds and manners of domestic animals, partly because that is by itself a large subject, and partly because their minds have been so greatly influenced by long and close association with man. The domestic mammals and birds deserve independent treatment.

A great many stories of occurrences have been written into this volume, for the purpose of giving the reader all the facts in order that he may form his own opinions of the animal mentality displayed.

Most sincerely do I wish that the boys and girls of America, and of the whole world, may be induced to believe that the most interesting thing about a wild animal is its mind and its reasoning, and that a dead animal is only a poor decaying thing. If the feet of the young men would run more to seeing and studying the wild creatures and less to the killing of them, some of the world's valuable species might escape being swept away tomorrow, or the day after.

The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Munsey's Magazine, McClure's Magazine and the Sunday Magazine Syndicate for permission to copy herein various portions of his chapters from those publications.

W. T. H.

The Anchorage, Stamford, Conn. December 19, 1921.

ILLUSTRATIONS

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Overpowering Curiosity of a Mountain Sheep

Christmas at the Primates' House

The Trap-Door Spider's Door and Burrow

Hanging Nest of the Baltimore Oriole Great

Hanging Nests of the Crested Cacique

Rajah, the Actor Orang-Utan

Thumb-Print of an Orang-Utan

The Lever That Our Orang-Utan Invented

Portrait of a High-Caste Chimpanzee

The Gorilla With the Wonderful Mind

Tame Elephants Assisting in Tying a Wild Captive

Wild Bears Quickly Recognize

Protection Alaskan Brown Bear,

Ivan, Begging for Food

The Mystery of Death

The Steady-Nerved and Courageous Mountain Goat

Fortress of an Arizona Pack-Rat

Wild Chipmunks Respond to Man's Protection

An Opossum Feigning Death

Migration of the Golden Plover. (Map)

Remarkable Village Nests of the Sociable Weaver Bird

Spotted Bower-Bird, at Work on Its Unfinished Bower Hawk-Proof

Nest of a Cactus Wren

A Peace Conference With an Arizona Rattlesnake

Work Elephant Dragging a Hewn Timber The Wrestling Bear,

Christian, and His Partner

Adult Bears at Play

Primitive Penguins on the Antarctic Continent, Unafraid of Man

Richard W. Rock and His Buffalo Murderer

Black Beauty Murdering Apache

THE MINDS AND MANNERS OF WILD ANIMALS

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MAN AND THE WILD ANIMALS

If every man devoted to his affairs, and to the affairs of his city and state, the same measure of intelligence and honest industry that every warm-blooded wild animal devotes to its affairs, the people of this world would abound in good health, prosperity, peace and happiness.

To assume that every wild beast and bird is a sacred creature, peacefully dwelling in an earthly paradise, is a mistake. They have their wisdom and their folly, their joys and their sorrows, their trials and tribulations.

As the alleged lord of creation, it is man's duty to know the wild animals truly as they are, in order to enjoy them to the utmost, to utilize them sensibly and fairly, and to give them a square deal.

I. A SURVEY OF THE FIELD

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I

THE LAY OF THE LAND

There is a vast field of fascinating human interest, lying only just outside our doors, which as yet has been but little explored. It is the Field of Animal Intelligence.

Of all the kinds of interest attaching to the study of the world's wild animals, there are none that surpass the study of their minds, their morals, and the acts that they perform as the results of their mental processes.

In these pages, the term animal is not used in its most common and most restricted sense. It is intended to apply not only to quadrupeds, but also to all the vertebrate forms,—mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes.

For observation and study, the whole vast world of living creatures is ours, throughout all zones and all lands. It is not ours to flout, to abuse, or to exterminate as we please. While for practical reasons we do not here address ourselves to the invertebrates, nor even to the sea-rovers, we can not keep them out of the background of our thoughts. The living world is so vast and so varied, so beautiful and so ugly, so delightful and so terrible, so interesting and so commonplace, that each step we make through it reveals things different and previously unknown.

The Frame of Mind. To the inquirer who enters the field of animal thought with an open mind, and free from the trammels of egotism and fear regarding man's place in nature, this study will prove an endless succession of surprises and delights. In behalf of the utmost tale of results, the inquirer should summon to his aid his rules of evidence, his common sense, his love of fair play, and the inexorable logic of his youthful geometry.

And now let us clear away a few weeds from the entrance to our field, and reveal its cornerstones and boundary lines. To a correct understanding of any subject a correct point of view is absolutely essential.

In a commonplace and desultory way man has been mildly interested in the intelligence of animals for at least 30,000 years. The Cro- Magnons of that far time possessed real artistic talent, and on the smooth stone walls and ceilings of the caves of France they drew many wonderful pictures of mammoths, European bison, wild cattle, rhinoceroses and other animals of their period. Ever since man took unto himself certain tractable wild animals, and made perpetual thralls of the horse, the dog, the cat, the cattle, sheep, goats and swine, he has noted their intelligent ways. Ever since the first caveman began to hunt wild beasts and slay them with clubs and stones, the two warring forces have been interested in each other, but for about 25,000 years I think that the wild beasts knew about as much of man's intelligence as men knew of theirs.

I leave to those who are interested in history the task of revealing the date, or the period, when scholarly men first began to pay serious attention to the animal mind.

In 1895 when Mr. George J. Romanes, of London, published his excellent work on Animal Intelligence, on one of its first pages he blithely brushed aside as of little account all the observations, articles and papers on his subject that had been published previous to that time. Now mark how swiftly history can repeat itself, and also bring retribution.

In 1910 there arose in the United States of America a group of professional college-and-university animal psychologists who set up the study of animal behavior. They did this so seriously, and so determinedly, that one of the first acts of two of them consisted in joyously brushing aside as of no account whatever, and quite beneath serious consideration, everything that had been seen, done and said previous to the rise of their group, and the laboratory Problem Box. In view of what this group has accomplished since 1910, with their problem boxes, their mazes and their millions of trials by error, expressed in solid pages of figures, the world of animal lovers is entitled to smile tolerantly upon the cheerful assumptions of ten years ago.

But let it not at any time be assumed that we are destitute of problem boxes; for the author has two of his own! One is called the Great Outdoors, and the other is named the New York Zoological Park. The first has been in use sixty years, the latter twenty-two years. Both are today in good working order, but the former is not quite as good as new.

A Preachment to the Student. In studying the wild-animal mind, the boundary line between Reality and Dreamland is mighty easy to cross. He who easily yields to seductive reasoning, and the call of the wild imagination, soon will become a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions of things that never occurred. The temptation to place upon the simple acts of animals the most complex and far- fetched interpretations is a trap ever ready for the feet of the unwary. It is better to see nothing than to see a lot of things that are not true.

In the study of animals, we have long insisted that to the open eye and the thinking brain, truth is stranger than fiction. But Truth does not always wear her heart upon her sleeve for zanies to peck at. Unfortunately there are millions of men who go through the world looking at animals, but not seeing them.

Beware of setting up for wild animals impossible mental and moral standards. The student must not deceive himself by overestimating mental values. If an estimate must be made, make it under the mark of truth rather than above it. While avoiding the folly of idealism, we also must shun the ways of the narrow mind, and the eyes that refuse to see the truth. Wild animals are not superhuman demigods of wisdom; but neither are they idiots, unable to reason from cause to effect along the simple lines that vitally affect their existence.

Brain-owning wild animals are not mere machines of flesh and blood, set agoing by the accident of birth, and running for life on the narrow-gauge railway of Heredity. They are not Machines in Fur and Feathers, as one naturalist once tried to make the world believe them to be. Some animals have more intelligence than some men; and some have far better morals.

What Constitutes Evidence. The best evidence regarding the ways of wild animals is one's own eye-witness testimony. Not all second- hand observations are entirely accurate. Many persons do not know how to observe; and at times some are deceived by their own eyes or ears. It is a sad fact that both those organs are easily deceived. The student who is in doubt regarding the composition of evidence will do well to spend a few days in court listening to the trial of an important and hotly contested case. In collecting real evidence, all is not gold that glitters.

Many a mind misinterprets the thing seen, sometimes innocently, and again wantonly. The nature fakir is always on the alert to see wonderful phenomena in wild life, about which to write; and by preference he places the most strained and marvellous interpretation upon the animal act. Beware of the man who always sees marvellous things in animals, for he is a dangerous guide. There is one man who claims to have seen in his few days in the woods more wonders than all the older American naturalists and sportsmen have seen added together.

Now, Nature does not assemble all her wonderful phenomena and hold them in leash to be turned loose precisely when the great Observer of Wonders spends his day in the woods. Wise men always suspect the man who sees too many marvelous things.

The Relative Value of Witnesses. It is due that a word should be said regarding expert testimony in the case of the wild animal. Some dust has been raised in this field by men posing as authorities on wild animal psychology, whose observations of the world's wild animals have been confined to the chipmunks, squirrels, weasels, foxes, rabbits, and birds dwelling within a small circle surrounding some particular woodland house. In another class other men have devoted heavy scientific labors to laboratory observations on white rats, domestic rabbits, cats, dogs, sparrows, turtles and newts as the handpicked exponents of the intelligence of the animals of the world!

Alas! for the human sense of Proportion!

Fancy an ethnologist studying the Eskimo, the Dog-Rib Indian, the Bushman, the Aino and the Papuan, and then proceeding to write conclusively On the Intelligence of the Human Race.

The proper place in which to study the minds, manners and morals of wild animals is in the most thickly populated haunts of the most intelligent species. The free and untrammeled animal, busily working out its own destiny unhindered by man, is the beau-ideal animal to observe and to study. Go to the plain, the wilderness, the desert and the mountain, not merely to shoot everything on foot, but to SEE animals at home, and there use your eyes and your field-glass. See what normal wild animals do as behavior, and then try to find out why they do it.

The next best place for study purposes is a spacious, sanitary and well-stocked zoological park, wherein are assembled great collections of the most interesting land vertebrates that can be procured, from all over the earth. There the student can observe many new traits of wild animal character, as they are brought to the surface by captivity. There will some individuals reveal the worst traits of their species. Others will reveal marvels in mentality, and teach lessons such as no man can learn from them in the open. To study temperament, there is no place like a zoo.

Even there, however, the wisest course,—as it seems to me,—is not to introduce too many appliances as aids to mental activity, but rather to see what the animal subject thinks and does by its own initiative. In the testing of memory and the perceptive faculties, training for performances is the best method to pursue.

The reader has a right to know that the author of this volume has enjoyed unparalleled opportunities for the observation and study of highly intelligent wild animals, both in their wild haunts and in a great vivarium; and these combined opportunities have covered a long series of years.

Before proceeding farther, it is desirable to define certain terms that frequently will be used in these pages.

THE ANIMAL BRAIN is the generator of the mind, and the clearing- house of the senses. As a mechanism, the brain of man is the most perfect, and in the descent through the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes, the brain progressively is simplified in form and function.

THOUGHT is the result of the various processes of the brain and nervous system, stimulated by the contributions of the senses.

SANITY is the state of normal, orderly and balanced thought, as formulated by a healthy brain.

INSANITY is a state of mental disease, resulting in disordered, unbalanced and chaotic thought, destitute of reason.

REASON is the manifestation of correct observation and healthful thought which recognizes both cause and effect, and leads from premise to conclusion. INTELLIGENCE is created by the possession of knowledge either inherited or acquired. It may be either latent or active; and it is the forerunner of reason.

INSTINCT is the knowledge or impulse which animals or men derive from their ancestors by inheritance, and which they obey, either consciously or subconsciously in working out their own preservation, increase and betterment. Instinct often functions as a sixth sense.

EDUCATION is the acquirement of knowledge by precept or by observation; but animals as well as men may be self-taught, and become self-educated, by the diligent exercise of the observing and reasoning faculties. The adjustment of a wild animal mind to conditions unknown to its ancestors is through the process of self-education, and by logical reasoning from premise to conclusion.

The wild animal must think, or die.

Animal intelligence varies in quantity and quality as much as animals vary in size. Idiots, maniacs and sleeping persons are the only classes of human beings who are devoid of intelligence and reasoning power. Idiots and maniacs also are often devoid of the common animal instinct that ordinarily promotes self- preservation from fire, water and high places. A heavily sleeping person is often so sodden in slumber that his senses of smell and hearing are temporarily dead; and many a sleeping man has been asphyxiated by gas or smoke, or burned to death, because his deadened senses failed to arouse him at the critical moment. (This dangerous condition of mind can be cured by efforts of the will, exercised prior to sleep, through a determination resolutely to arouse and investigate every unusual sensation that registers danger on any one of the senses.) The normal individual sleeps with a subconscious and sensitive mind, from which thought and reason have not been entirely eliminated.

Every act of a man or animal, vertebrate or invertebrate, is based upon either reason or hereditary instinct. It is a mistake to assume that because an organism is small it necessarily has no mind, and none of the propelling impulse that we call thought. The largest whale may have less intelligence and constructive reasoning than a trap-door spider, a bee or an ant. To deny this is to deny the evidence of one's senses.

A MEASURE FOR ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. The intelligence of an animal may be estimated by taking into account, separately, its mental qualities, about as follows:

1. General knowledge of surrounding conditions. 2. Powers of independent observation and reasoning. 3. Memory. 4. Comprehension under tuition. 5. Accuracy in the execution of man's orders.

Closely allied to these are the moral qualities which go to make up an animal's temperament and disposition, about as follows:

1. Amiability, which guarantees security to its associates. 2. Patience, or submission to discipline and training. 3. Courage, which gives self-confidence and steadiness. 4. A disposition to obedience, with cheerfulness.

All normal vertebrate animals exercise their intelligence in accordance with their own rules of logic. Had they not been able to do so, it is reasonable to suppose that they could never have developed into vertebrates, reaching even up to man himself.

According to the laws of logic, this proposition is no more open to doubt or dispute than is the existence of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm exists, and is not a debatable question.

To men and women who really know the vertebrate animals by contact with some of them upon their own levels, the reasoning power of the latter is not a debatable question. The only real question is: how far does their intelligence carry them? It is with puzzled surprise that we have noted the curious diligence of the professors of animal psychology in always writing of "animal behavior," and never of old-fashioned, common-sense animal intelligence. Can it be possible that any one of them really refuses to concede to the wild animal the possession of a mind, and a working intelligence?

Yes. Animals do reason. If any one truth has come out of all the critical or uncritical study of the animal mind that has been going on for two centuries, it is this. Animals do reason; they always have reasoned, and as long as animals live they never will cease to reason.

The higher wild animals possess and display the same fundamental passions and emotions that animate the human race. This fact is subject to intelligent analysis, discussion and development, but it is not by any means a question subject to debate. In the most intellectual of the quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, the display of fear, courage, love, hate, pleasure, displeasure, confidence, suspicion, jealousy, pity, greed and generosity are so plainly evident that even children can and do recognize them. To the serious and open-minded student who devotes prolonged thought to these things, they bring the wild animal very near to the lord of creation.

To the question, Have wild animals souls? we reply, That is a debatable question. Read; then think it over.

METHODS WITH THE ANIMAL MIND. In the study of animal minds, much depends upon the method employed. It seems to me that the problem- box method of the investigators of animal behavior leaves much to be desired. Certainly it is not calculated to develop the mental status of animals along lines of natural mental progression. To place a wild creature in a great artificial contrivance, fitted with doors, cords, levers, passages and what not, is enough to daze or frighten any timid animal out of its normal state of mind and nerves. To put a wild sapajou monkey,— weak, timid and afraid,—in a strange and formidable prison box filled with strange machinery, and call upon it to learn or to invent strange mechanical processes, is like bringing a boy of ten years up to a four-cylinder duplex Hoe printing-and-folding press, and saying to him: Now, go ahead and find out how to run this machine, and print both sides of a signature upon it.

The average boy would shrink from the mechanical monster, and have no stomach whatever for trial by error.

I think that the principle of determining the mind of a wild animal along the lines of the professor is not the best way. It should be developed along the natural lines of the wild-animal mind. It should be stimulated to do what it feels most inclined to do, and educated to achieve real mental progress.

I think that the ideal way to study the minds of apes, baboons and monkeys would be to choose a good location in a tropical or sub- tropical climate that is neither too wet nor too dry, enclose an area of five acres with an unclimbable fence, and divide it into as many corrals as there are species to be experimented upon. Each corral would need a shelter house and indoor playroom. The stage properties should be varied and abundant, and designed to stimulate curiosity as well as activity.

Somewhere in the program I would try to teach orang-utans and chimpanzees the properties of fire, and how to make and tend fires. I would try to teach them the seed-planting idea, and the meaning of seedtime and harvest. I would teach sanitation and cleanliness of habit,—a thing much more easily done than most persons suppose. I would teach my apes to wash dishes and to cook, and I am sure that some of them would do no worse than some human members of the profession who now receive $50 per month, or more, for spoiling food.

In one corral I would mix up a chimpanzee, an orang-utan, a golden baboon and a good-tempered rhesus monkey. My apes would begin at two years old, because after seven or eight years of age all apes are difficult, or even impossible, as subjects for peaceful experimentation.

I would try to teach a chimpanzee the difference between a noise and music, between heat and cold, between good food and bad food. Any trainer can teach an animal the difference between the blessings of peace and the horrors of war, or in other words, obedience and good temper versus cussedness and punishment.

Dr. Yerkes' laboratory in Montecito, California, and his experiments there with an orang-utan and other primates, were in a good place, and made a good beginning. It is very much to be hoped that means will be provided by which his work can be prosecuted indefinitely, and under the most perfect conditions that money can provide.

I hope that I will live long enough to see Dr. Yerkes develop the mind of a young grizzly bear in a four-acre lot, to the utmost limits of that keen and sagacious personality.

II

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WILD ANIMAL TEMPERAMENT AND INDIVIDUALITY

In man and in vertebrate animals generally, temperament is the foundation of intelligence and progress. Fifty years ago Fowler and Wells, the founders of the science of phrenology and physiognomy, very wisely differentiated and defined four temperaments of mankind. The six types now recognized by me are the morose, lymphatic, sanguine, nervous, hysterical and combative; and their names adequately describe them.

This classification applies to the higher wild animals, quite as truly as to men. By the manager of wild animals in captivity, wild-animal temperament universally is recognized and treated as a factor of great practical importance. Mistakes in judging the temper of dangerous animals easily lead to tragedies and sudden death.

Fundamentally the temperament of a man or an animal is an inheritance from ancestors near or remote. In the human species a morose or hysterical temperament may possibly be corrected or improved, by education and effort. With animals this is rarely possible. The morose gorilla gives way to cheerfulness only when it is placed in ideally pleasant and stimulating social conditions. This, however, very seldom is possible. The nervous deer, bear or monkey is usually nervous to the end of its days.

The morose and hysterical temperaments operate against mental development, progress and happiness. In the human species among individuals of equal mental calibre, the sanguine individual is due to rise higher and go farther than his nervous or lymphatic rivals. A characteristic temperament may embrace the majority of a whole species, or be limited to a few individuals. Many species are permanently characterized by the temperament common to the majority of their individual members. Thus, among the great apes the gorilla species is either morose or lymphatic; and it is manifested by persistent inactivity and sullenness. This leads to loss of appetite, indigestion, inactivity and early death. Major Penny's John Gorilla was a notable exception, as will appear in Chapter IX.

The orang-utan is sanguine, optimistic and cheerful, a good boarder, affectionate toward his keepers, and friendly toward strangers. He eats well, enjoys life, lives long, and is well liked by everybody.

Except when quite young, the chimpanzee is either nervous or hysterical. After six years of age it is irritable and difficult to manage. After seven years of age (puberty) it is rough, domineering and dangerous. The male is given to shouting, yelling, shrieking and roaring, and when quite angry rages like a demon. I know of no wild animal that is more dangerous per pound than a male chimpanzee over eight years of age. When young they do wonders in trained performances, but when they reach maturity, grow big of arm and shoulder, and masterfully strong, they quickly become conscious of their strength. It is then that performing chimpanzees become unruly, fly into sudden fits of temper, their back hair bristles up, they stamp violently, and sometimes leap into a terrorized orchestra. Next in order, they are retired willy-nilly from the stage, and are offered for sale to zoological parks and gardens having facilities for confinement and control.

The baboons are characteristically fierce and aggressive, and in a wild state they live in troops, or even in herds of hundreds. Being armed with powerful canine teeth and wolf-like jaws, they are formidable antagonists, and other animals do not dare to attack them. It is because of their natural weapons, their readiness to fight like fiends, and their combined agility and strength that the baboons have been able to live on the ground and survive and flourish in lands literally reeking with lions, leopards, hyenas and wild dogs. The awful canine teeth of an old male baboon are quite as dangerous as those of any leopard, and even the leopard's onslaught is less to be feared than the wild rage of an adult baboon. In the Transvaal and Rhodesia, it is a common occurrence for an ambitious dog to go after a troop of baboons and never return.

Temperamentally the commoner groups of monkeys are thus characterized:

The rhesus monkeys of India are nervous, irritable and dangerous.

The green monkeys of Africa are sanguine, but savage and treacherous.

The langur monkeys of India are sanguine and peace-loving.

The macaques of the Far East vary from the sanguine temperament to the combative.

The gibbons vary from sanguine to combative.

The lemurs of Madagascar are sanguine, affectionate and peaceful.

Nearly all South American monkeys are sanguine, and peace-loving, and many are affectionate.

The species of the group of Carnivora are too numerous and too diversified to be treated with any approach to completeness. However, to illustrate this subject the leading species will be noticed.

TEMPERAMENTS OF THE LARGE CARNIVORES

The lion is sanguine, courageous, confident, reposeful and very reliable.

The tiger is nervous, suspicious, treacherous and uncertain.

The black and common leopards are nervous and combative, irreconcilable and dangerous.

The snow leopard is sanguine, optimistic and peace-loving. The puma is sanguine, good natured, quiet and peaceful.

The wolves are sanguine, crafty, dangerous and cruel.

The foxes are hysterical, timid and full of senseless fear.

The lynxes are sanguine, philosophic, and peaceful.

The mustelines are