A Naturalist’s Big Stories
By John Burroughs
TALK about “wild animal whoppers,” I have found nothing in my reading of the works of reputable naturalists quite so hard to believe, so utterly incredible in fact, as in Hudson’s “The Naturalist in La Plata.” What is one to think, for instance, of his man-chasing spider, and the man on horseback at that? Mr. Hudson suggests that when Nature made this species she “overshot her mark.” That he has himself overshot the mark in portraying the creature’s fierceness and prowess will, I fancy, be the conclusion of most readers. “When a person passes near one—say, within three or four yards of its lurking place—it starts up and gives chase, and will often follow for a distance of thirty or forty yards. I came once very nearly being bitten by one of these savage creatures. Riding at an easy trot over the dry grass, I suddenly observed a spider pursuing me, leaping swiftly along and keeping up with my beast. 1 aimed a blow with my whip and the point of the lash struck the ground close to it, when it instantly leaped upon and ran up the lash, and was actually within three or four inches of my hand when I flung the whip from me.” So the spider got the whip, if it failed to get the man. The question naturally occurs, what was Mr. Hudson doing, while the spider was traveling up his whip-lash from the ground? Was he holding still? Could he not snap the savage beast off? Our own wolf-spider is a savage little creature, and will show fight when you touch it, but here is a wolf-spider that, like a veritable wolf, pursues and overtakes a man on horseback, and actually comes near biting him. The size of the spider is not given; though it is said to be “extraordinary.” Yet it could hardly have been more than an inch high.
The bird-catching spider of South America has a spread of eight or ten inches, but I believe this is much the largest of the spider tribe. I have seen our wolf-spider seize and drag off a very small toad, but it could hardly travel fast enough to overtake a creeping baby.
This astonishing spider story of Mr. Hudson’s predisposes one to discount many other statements in his book. The precocity of the young of some of his animals surpasses anything of the kind I ever heard of. Of the lambs of the pampa or native breed of sheep he says this: “I have often seen a lamb dropped on the frosty ground in bitterly cold, windy weather in midwinter, and in less than five seconds [the italics are mine] struggle to its feet, and seem as vigorous as any day-old lamb of other breeds. The dam, patient of the short delay, and not waiting to give it suck, has started off at a brisk trot after the flock, scattered and galloping before the wind like hunanacos rather than sheep, with the lamb, scarcely a minute in the world, running freely at her side.”
Can one accept such a statement without a violent wrench to his “will to believe”? It takes all four-footed creatures of which I have any knowledge, some minutes to get their eyes open when they are born, and to find themselves in their new and strange surroundings, and they rarely do this without aid from the mother. Is there not just as much need that the fawn of the common wild deer should be able, on coming into the world, at once to find its legs and follow the dam as that the new-born lamb upon the pampa should? And yet the fawn does not follow the dam for some days, and probably does not get to its feet for some hours. President Roosevelt records that he once saw a frightened deer drop her fawn as she ran, but he does not record that the fawn sprang to its feet and followed its mother.
These pampa sheep are, no doubt, a very hardy breed, but the statement that they come into the world ready to flee from danger on the instant certainly taxes one’s credulity.
Mr. Hudson's statement that the young of the jacana—a bird, of the marshes—“is ready to begin active life from the very moment of leaving the shell,” is not quite so hard to believe, though hard enough. The young of certain reptiles will run, and hiss, and strike the instant they escape from the egg. But this maturity of powers is certainly rare among birds one moment from the shell. The young of our water-fowl require some hours to make ready for active life. But not so with the jacana. Mr. Hudson had found a nest on a mound of earth in a shallow lagoon containing four, “pipped” eggs. “While I was looking closely at one of the eggs lying on the palm of my hand, all at once the cracked shell parted, and at the same moment the young bird leaped from my hand and fell into the water. To perish? Not so. It pulled for the shore at once, and escaping from the water concealed itself in the grass, lying close and perfectly motionless like a young plover.”
This story has gone into recent works of animal instinct, and the truth of it has apparently never been questioned. All the same, it is a tough one.
There are several other observations in Mr. Hudson's book that one cannot swallow without a struggle. His account of the death-feigning instinct of the fox is so contrary to all we know of that animal that it is incredible. In one case which he relates a young fox actually fell down at the sight of two men approaching on horseback and played its part so well that a severe
