Snake Demands Its Eggs Fresh

1914

Species of South African Snake With a Dainty Appetite and Keen Sense of Smell

The South African snake called the eggeater has inherited from long generations of ancestors a sense of smell so acute that it appears never to be at fault. Professor Fitzsimons, director of the Port Elizabeth museum, gives in his book on "The Snakes of South Africa" an interesting instance of the wisdom of these serpents.

"Being short of fresh pigeons' eggs once, I went to my cabinet and took the clean-blown shells of a few doves' eggs. Beating up the contents of a fowl's fresh egg, I syringed them into the empty shells, and carefully pasted tiny bits of tissue paper over the holes. I put these in the eggeaters' cage, and watched, for I expected the snakes to swallow them as they did the other eggs. First one eggeater advanced. He touched each egg gently in turn with the tip of his nose or the point of his forked tongue, and crawled away in disgust. Another and yet another eagerly advanced, repeated the performance, and straightway retired. I began to get interested. Leaving the eggs, I returned in a few hours' time to find them still there.

"For two whole weeks those eggs remained in the cage untouched, although I refrained from giving the snakes any others. Then I procured some fresh pigeons' eggs and put them into the cage. The snakes approached, touched them with their noses or tongues, and instantly began to swallow them. I tried this experiment a second time with the same result. Frequently I have noticed that the snakes would eat some of the eggs that I gave them, and reject others. On breaking the latter open, I always found that they were either addled or else had a partially developed young bird inside. I could never induce an eggeater to swallow an egg that was not perfectly fresh.

"The eggeater is an expert climber, and his sense of smell is so sharp that he can discover birds' nests with the greatest facility. If you place an empty bird's nest in the cage of an eggeater, he will take no notice of it, except to use it occasionally for a cozy bed. But if you put fresh eggs in it, he at once detects their presence, although they are hidden from his sight." — Youth's Companion.

Had Corner in Graves

1905

The Melbourne Women's hospital discovered lately that a local undertakers' ring had bought up nearly all the vacant plots in the general cemetery, and, having put up its prices for funerals at another cemetery, which has only been opened a short time. In order to divert trade to its own ground, it was retailing its corner in graves at a handsome profit.


A Grimly Suggestive Group

The minister and the doctor were riding down town in a Lexington avenue car, and had arrived at Madison square when their friend the undertaker joined them.

After riding with him two blocks the minister and doctor put the undertaker off the car, saying their appearance in trio looked too suggestive and would cause talk among their friends.


Dachshund Found His Mistress

Three years ago Mrs. A. M. McKee of Plainfield, N. J., made a visit at Glens Falls, N. Y., and on her return left her dog, a dachshund, with her Glens Falls friends. The other day the dog appeared at the old home in Plainfield and finding that his mistress had moved, searched the city until he located her present residence.


Freak of Nature in Kentucky

A peculiar freak of nature has shown up in the bluegrass. Wells that have been dry for weeks, springs that have long since ceased to flow, have burst forth, and some of the small creeks that were dry as a powder keg are now living, running streams — all this without rain. — Grayson Bugle-Herald.

Child Is Wiser Than Man

1910

His Instinct Often Is More Reliable Than the Wisdom of His Parents

The imposition of any form of restraint on the appetite of a child is a relic of barbarism, a blunder on the part of the parents and a sign of ignorance of the laws of nature. Not only is it true that the child is father to the man, but in certain directions he is man's superior in wisdom. The prevailing parental notions on the rearing of children are crude, archaic and altogether unworthy of enlightened twentieth century civilization.

"Children have bottled-up intelligence inside of them," to quote the language of Dr. Woods Hutchinson, and this tells them what is best for them to eat. It is an admirable provision of nature. One cannot overfeed them despite all the old superstitions to the contrary. A child who wishes to eat between meals should be permitted to do so, for his system requires the food. If he displays a craving for sweets, the craving should be gratified, because his appetite is guided by an infallible instinct.

The wisdom exhibited by nature in this matter, as explained by Dr. Hutchinson, leads one to wonder what function parents are intended to perform. If the child's instinct is to be relied upon in everything, then parental guidance becomes superfluous, and parents are of much less importance than they have imagined. — Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.

Tame Ducks Display Rare Homing Instinct

1920

Three Gift Birds Fly Thirty Miles to Former Owner's Farm

OMAHA, Nebraska — Sophus Neble presented three tame "wild" ducks to County Surveyor Lou Adams when Lou was out at the Neble farm south of Springfield. Lou brought them in his Buick to his home here and put them in the chicken house.

The next day Mrs. Adams turned them out in the yard. When Lou came home that evening he couldn't find the ducks. He searched high and low in the chicken house, but no ducks. Then he asked Mrs. Lou.

"Why, I turned them out in the yard," said she.

"Well, they're gone," said Lou. "We'll never see them again."

But he was half wrong. Gone, that ducks were, without a doubt. But that evening came a telephone call from the Neble farm.

"Your ducks are down here," was the message. "They arrived this morning and are in their old pens."

The ducks, by the mysterious sixth sense possessed by birds, had found their way from the Adams home in the midst of the city to the Neble farm, 30 miles away.

"I can't see why they didn't join the big flocks of ducks now flying north," said Lou. "But they didn't. They just went straight home, arriving there within an hour or two after their probably departure from my yard."

The Zoo By Night

1907

Gleaming Eyes In the Blackness Give a Flavor of the Wilds

The average grownup who visits the zoo thinks it rather a dull sort of show, for the fact that the animals are captive robs them of all the romance that would attach to them in their native forests.

But let the blase sightseer obtain permission to visit the zoo at midnight, and his impressions will be very different. Darkness hides the bars and the boards, and the eyes of some wakeful creature gleam maliciously at you. For the moment you imagine that you are in the wilds, on equal terms with the creatures around.

Poised on the swings and platforms at the top of their cages sleep the monkeys, instinct surviving their loss of freedom, for in the forests they had to sleep thus to avoid the beasts of prey.

Here rests a lioness, prone upon her back, her legs rigid in the air and her paws hanging limply down. There reclines her lord, asleep upon his side, his paws turned in and his general pose not unlike that of a dog.

The more cunning and more cowardly of the animals do not seem to sleep at all, for as soon as they hear our approaching footsteps they give us their greeting with snarls and malevolent glowering and watch us suspiciously till we depart. — Pearson's.

The Instinct of Birds — A Storm Coming

1901

While a British brig was gliding smoothly along before a good breeze in the South Pacific, a flock of small birds about the size, shape and color of paroquets, settled down in the rigging, and passed an hour or more resting.

The second mate was so anxious to find out the species to which the visiting strangers belonged that he tried to entrap a specimen, but the birds were too shy to be thus caught, and too spry to be seized by the quick hands of the sailors. At the end of about an hour the birds took the brig's course, and disappeared, but toward nightfall they came back and passed the night in the maintop.

The next morning the birds flew off again, and when they returned at noon the sailors scattered some food about the decks. By this time the birds had become so tame that they hopped about the decks picking up the crumbs.

That afternoon an astonishing thing happened. The flock came flying swiftly toward the brig. Every bird seemed to be piping as if pursued by some invisible enemy on wings, and they at once huddled down behind a deck house. The superstitious sailors at once called the captain of the brig, who rubbed his eyes and looked at the barometer. A glance showed that something was wrong with the elements, and the brig was put in shape to outride a storm.

The storm came about 20 minutes after the birds had reached the vessel. For a few minutes the sky was like the waterless bottom of a lake — a vast arch of yellowish mud — and torrents of rain fell. Why it did not blow very hard no one knows; but on reaching port, two days later, they learned that a great tornado had swept across that part of the sea. — Our Dumb Animals.

Swimming Cat Saves 9 U.S. Sailors

1920

Feline's Instinct Leads Crew of Boat to Safety

GRANGEMOUTH, Firth of Forth, Scotland, March 25. -- Nine men of the crew of the American steamer Lake Eliko were saved from drowning recently by the instinct of the ship's cat to swim toward the steamer in a storm and darkness when their small boat foundered at midnight between the ship and the shore. John Shortne, 33, a sailor of Marlboro, Mass., and Gilmer Stroud, 17, the messroom boy, of North Carolina, were drowned.

The eleven members of the crew had been ashore on leave. They had with them the ship's cat. A storm began while they were ashore, and when they were some distance out on their return journey to the steamer the boat capsized.

In the darkness no one could make out the lights of the ship. Tabby, however, with her instinctive desire to get out of the water as quickly as possible, swam directly toward the steamer. The men swam after her and nine of them reached the ship. The other two went down.

The Lake Eliko cleared for Norfolk, Va.

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 1.

Intelligence of Ants Overestimated

Stockholm, April 9. - The ant has been greatly overrated, in the opinion of Rich Ege, a Swedish naturalist. Solomon set the fashion with his famous admonition to the sluggard, and the ant has been living under false pretenses ever since. For, as matter of fact, she is a hopeless chucklehead, and to consider her ways is no way to become wise.

Mark Twain arrived at this conclusion many years ago, and science now joins hands with him in the person of Mr. Ege, who publishes the results of a series of experiments with ants. He disposes first of the insect's supposed uncanny power to recognize other tenants of its own anthill. Mr. Ege washed ants in ether, dipped them in liquid gained by pressing a number of ants from another hill, and put them back among their own friends, who promptly fell upon them and rejected them. He took ants fifty times larger than the inhabitants of a certain anthill, washed them and treated them in a liquid pressed from ants from that hill, and then placed them in it. The Lilliputian insects did not recognize the giants as invaders. Mr. Ege concludes, therefore, that the supposed remarkably sharp, recognitional powers of the insects are simply a matter of scent and inherited reflexes.

Ants removed from familiar paths blunder blindly along, with no sense of distance or direction, until they strike a trail made by other ants or themselves. In many tests made by Mr. Ege the insects disclosed, "no more intelligence than is to be found in the digestive processes of human beings." In other words, he found nearly all their acts are but movements by reflexes, unconnected with intelligence.

--The Ada Weekly News, Ada, Oklahoma, April 11, 1918, page 10.