Collective Instinct

Abstract

IN response to the appeal which closes Mr. Buck's interesting letter (NATURE, vol. viii. p. 332), the following instance of “collective instinct” exhibited by an animal closely allied to the wolf, viz., the Indian jackal, deserves to be recorded. It was communicated to me by a gentleman (since deceased) on whose veracity I can depend. This gentleman was waiting in a tree to shoot tigers as they came to drink at a large lake (I forget the district) skirted by a dense jungle, when about midnight, a large Axis deer emerged from the latter, and went to the water's edge. Then it stopped and sniffed the air in the direction of the jungle, as if suspecting the presence of an enemy; apparently satisfied, however, it began to drink, and continued to do so for a most inordinate length of time. When literally swollen with water it turned to go into the jungle, but was met upon its extreme margin by a jackal, which, with a sharp yelp, turned it again into the open. The deer seemed much startled, and ran along the shore for some distance, when it again attempted to enter the jungle, but was again met and driven back in the same manner. The night being calm, my friend could hear this process being repeated time after time—the yelps becoming successively fainter and fainter in the distance, until they became wholly inaudible. The stratagem thus employed was sufficiently evident. The lake having a long narrow shore intervening between it and the jungle, the jackals formed themselves in line along it, while concealed within the extreme edge of the cover; and waited until the deer was water-logged. Their prey being thus rendered heavy and short-winded, would fall an easy victim if induced to run sufficiently far,—i.e. if prevented from entering the jungle. It was, of course, impossible to estimate the number of jackals engaged in this hunt, for it is not unlikely that, as soon as one had done duty at one place, it outran the deer to await it in the another.