Becoming a Tiger: The Education of an Animal Child Read online

  If you weigh so much that it’s that difficult to get around, Povinelli and Cant argue, an increased awareness of one’s own self and one’s impact on the surroundings would give a selective advantage. “Our hypothesis is that clambering in large-bodied apes who negotiate a habitat that is fragile, unstable, noncontinuous, and unpredictable as a consequence of their body weight, is underpinned by cognizance of one’s actions—an ability to engage in a type of mental experimentation or simulation in which one is able to plan actions and predict their likely consequences before acting.” Povinelli and Cant hypothesize that a common ancestor of all great apes, including us, was a large arboreal creature that was selected for self-conception, and who passed the capacity down to us.

  I’m stuck! I’m stuck!

  Scientist and animal trainer Karen Pryor writes that cats do not need to learn to climb trees, but they need to learn to climb down again. Up is easy. The cat extends its claws and goes in the direction it wants to go. When it’s time to go down, the curved claws won’t be any help unless the cat goes down backward, and apparently it is not obvious to young cats that this is the thing to do. If they start to go down head first, their claws slip. They stop. Often they yell for help.

  Pryor argues that cats are very good at mimicking, and if they get to see their mother climbing in trees, they will copy her way of turning around and descending. But if they don’t get to see this, they may be baffled when they find themselves high in the branches.

  Arnold, a young starling reared by Margarete Sigl Corbo, grew up strolling around the house and did not attempt to fly. It turned out that he lacked an even more basic skill, the ability to perch. Not having been raised in a nest, he was unfamiliar with branches and other things he might have wrapped his feet around. When Corbo tossed him in the air he fluttered into a mulberry tree, aimed for a branch, and toppled off because he could not grip it. He couldn’t even perch on her fingers. Corbo spent several days putting Arnold through physical therapy. She laid him on his back in her hand, held him so he couldn’t squirm away, and slapped the bottoms of his feet with a dowel. He hated this. Finally he took to grabbing for the annoying dowel to ward it off. Once he had grabbed it tightly, Corbo swung Arnold upright. For a moment he stood poised, perching as a bird should, and then he lost his balance, fell forward, and hung upside down in amazement.

  Corbo repeated the procedure, and the next time Arnold began to topple, she jerked the dowel down, causing him to flap his wings in alarm, which helped keep him upright. Doing this over and over, Corbo helped Arnold learn to grip and balance. As soon as he could perch, he felt safe flying, and for this he needed no lessons.

  Taking wing

  Learning to fly is worth it, but risky. One of the first peregrine falcons fledged in Kansas City after many decades broke her wing on her first flight out of the nest, and broke it so badly that she could never be released even after it healed. A young greylag goose flew into the wall of a house, just three feet off the ground, and instantly broke its neck. Numberless young birds have launched themselves into the reach of waiting foxes and cats.

  It is routine for young birds to leave the nest before they can fly competently. They learn fast, but not always fast enough. They are in danger from cats and other predators and they are also in danger from benevolent-minded humans who pick them up and try to raise them or take them to a bird rescue center. (Most such baby birds “rescued” by humans would be more likely to survive if they were left alone. As soon as people are out of sight, the parents will return, feed the fledgling, and encourage it to get to a higher place, by flying or by other means.)

  Birdwatcher Olive Thorne Miller heard a terrible squawking and outcry in the forest and found a young blue jay on the ground. She started toward him, wishing only to help, got screamed at by his parents, and was smart enough to back off. The little jaybird tried to fly but couldn’t get more than two feet off the ground. Night was approaching. The young jay hurled himself at a locust tree and began climbing it. He’d fly up the trunk a few inches, cling to the bark and catch his breath, then fly up a few more inches. He got six feet up, nearly to the lowest branch, and then fell off. Undaunted, he struggled through the grass to a maple tree, which he attacked in the same manner. This time he made it to a branch, “where I saw him sitting with all the dignity of a young jay.” Miller came back to check on him the next day, and he still had to fight his way up trees bit by bit, but on the third day he could fly.

  Lucky, a whooping crane chick living by a lake in central Florida, had a large circle of admirers, who hoped to see his first flight. He’d flap his wings, and it is reported that whenever a breeze came up, his fond parents would flap their wings and chase Lucky until he ran, flapping his wings. No liftoff. Then one afternoon when he was nearly three months old, just after the official biologists had given up and gone home, all three cranes suddenly rose into the air and flew across the lake, leaving the remaining onlookers too awestruck even to grab a camera.

  Flying late

  Rarely, a bird must learn to fly as an adult. Scarlett O’Hara was a scarlet macaw that came to filmmakers David and Lyn Hancock after spending years in a small cage, doing little but acquiring a plummy English accent. Her wing muscles were atrophied, and if she had ever been able to fly, that had been long ago. She climbed, walked, or swaggered everywhere she went. The Hancocks were determined that Scarlett would fly and gave her lessons. These consisted of tossing her up in the air, for although she knew about flapping her wings, she had neither the strength nor the will to launch herself. David Hancock would hurl her into the air, and she would flap her wings and spiral gently down to the grass. Thrilled, she would waddle back to Hancock and climb his leg to be launched again. In this way she gradually built up her muscles, but she still lacked aviation experience.

  One day Hancock tossed her up, and Scarlett managed to stay aloft, perhaps even caught some thermals, and ascended to 75 feet. She then made the mistake of turning downwind, got blown off course, and plummeted into a crab-apple thicket. “Not wishing to embarrass her, we went inside and looked through the window,” wrote Lyn Hancock. Scarlett extricated herself from the thicket, leaving behind some tail feathers, marched back to the house, and knocked on the door with her bill, crying “Come in” to herself in a cordial voice.

  Silly geese

  At Konrad Lorenz’s research station in the Alm Valley of Austria, many of the greylag geese in the colony there were raised by people. People don’t make the best flight instructors for geese, but fortunately most of the motor patterns for flying are innate. The young geese grasp how to take off, fly, brake, and land. But they must learn to estimate distances and heights, and to judge wind conditions. They do not know that they should land against the wind, because if they land with the wind it may push them over, and “they may turn the most awful somersaults.”

  Since people can’t fly, they can’t lead the youngsters into the wind to land, but if they see the geese flying low into the wind, human foster parents can encourage landing by quickly stooping or falling flat on the ground. The young geese interpret this as landing, or a signal to land, and they follow suit. Once Lorenz mischievously encouraged four young geese to land the wrong way, with the wind. They all crashed. They weren’t hurt, “but it was obvious they had lost confidence in me! For some time afterward I was unable to induce them to land by abruptly dropping to the ground.” So they had to learn not only “Don’t land with the wind” but also “Don’t trust Daddy when he’s grinning.”

  Parents who are actual geese discourage their children from flying too soon. Young geese let it be known that they feel like flying by spreading their wings and shaking their beaks. In the early days the parents utter warning calls which inhibit the goslings from taking off. If they do take off, the parents leap into the air, catch up, and take the lead. They choose where to land, and they choose safe spots and head into the wind.

  Young geese must also learn to navigate obstacles. In The Year of the G
reylag Goose, a photograph shows a flock of young geese returning from a practice flight. The geese, who are flying along the river, must soar upward to get over the trees along the water and then come down sharply to land in the meadow beyond. This is hard. “In gliding down, the inexperienced geese often lose their balance and veer from one side to the other,” wrote Lorenz. “Their struggle to keep on an even keel is accompanied by pitiful distress cries.”

  Fly like an eagle, but not that eagle

  Lady, a golden eagle raised by Kent and Ed Durden, also had the innate motor patterns for flight, but not air smarts and tree smarts. When she flew free she took a while to figure out that she couldn’t perch on small twigs but needed to select stonger branches.

  Lady had to get flying tips from humans, but Ed Durden was a pilot who knew about all the problems novice flyer Lady would face, except for the one about the right size of branch. He directed her to air currents she could catch and encouraged her to land into the wind. When summoning Lady to return to a lure, he made sure she had room to turn into the wind, but at first she didn’t always see the need. She made several “highspeed tailwind landings before she learned…she tried desperately but to no avail to put on the brakes, always ending up in a jumble of feathers and looking rather sheepish.”

  Another mistake that human pilots and eagles should both avoid is flying up a narrow canyon that rises faster than the plane or bird can gain altitude, where there is no room to turn around. In this situation a plane will crash, and an eagle will be forced to land “and continue on foot to the crest of the hill.”

  Learning to swim

  European river otters crawl on their bellies at four weeks. By seven weeks they walk and run. At three months they begin to swim. Cubs vary in their attitude toward this vital step. Philip Wayre mentions a cub who wanted to swim before his mother thought he was ready, so she kept dragging him out of the water by the scruff of his neck. But American river otter mothers have been reported grabbing reluctant cubs by the scruff to drag them in. Another European otter brought her 12-week-old cubs to the edge of a pool. The mother went in and began to swim. The cubs ran up and down the bank, squeaking. Two went in and swam clumsily, “bobbing along like corks.” Young otters paddle with all four feet and don’t know how to use their tails, which simply stick straight out. The third cub ran around squeaking and wouldn’t go in.

  Otters need to dry off after they swim, and one otter rehabber warns that this may be a learned skill. Otter orphans in human care can catch pneumonia when they get chilled. Veterinarian Frank Blaisdell advises either not giving otter pups enough water to swim in or limiting their time in the water and then encouraging them to dry off thoroughly on towels.

  On the coast of Scotland, filmmaker Hugh Miles saw a mother otter lead her fluffy cubs to the sea. She swam, but the cubs stood at the brim squeaking. Their mother came back and encouraged them to follow. Her son went in, but her daughter squeaked, then turned and ran up the beach toward their den. The other two came out and raced after her. Catching up to her, they nuzzled her. Then all three walked into the sea together.

  The buoyant little otters paddled, squeaking when their mother dived. After a while the male cub put his head underwater to watch his mother dive. The female tried, got a noseful of water, and paddled to shore, sputtering. The next day the cubs tried to dive, “but despite much thrashing of front and back legs only succeeded in submerging their head and shoulders.”

  Fury, a captive-reared European otter, was late coming to water. She had no otters to show her the joys and possibilities of the medium. When she was nearly nine months old she began going into a small pond, but for safety’s sake she stayed in the shallows, swimming with her front paws and keeping her hind paws on the bottom. After days of caution, she dared to take her feet off the bottom and soon was plunging and porpoising.

  Dolphins, also gorgeous swimmers, swim from the very moment of birth. Yet they still have things to learn. “Newborn calves tend to bring the head out of the water when surfacing, and it takes a month or two before they consistently roll smoothly at the surface to breathe,” write marine biologists Hal Whitehead and Janet Mann.

  Exploring

  Once baby animals can swim, walk, or fly, and generally locomote, they may go exploring. They want to know what’s out there. Indeed, adults want to know, too. Rangers in the Kruger National Park in South Africa built a causeway across the Letaba River. The day after it was finished, they went out to admire their handiwork and found it covered in elephant dung. By night the elephants had come to check it out. They didn’t want to cross the river particularly, and once they had crossed the causeway they turned and recrossed it. They just wanted to know what was going on. The fact that the rangers had posted a large No Entry sign was of no concern to them, because elephants are authorized personnel wherever they go.

  Many young animals go exploring while they are still with their parent or parents, and presumably may learn about areas they might disperse to if they someday strike out on their own. Young red foxes, red squirrels, and Merriam’s kangaroo rats are among species known to make such excursions.

  Young red-necked wallabies and eastern grey kangaroos of course go everywhere with their mothers when they are in the stage known as “pouch young.” When they are a little older, they are called “young at foot.” It is reported that near the end of the time when mother and child associate intensely, both red-necked wallaby and grey kangaroo mothers have been seen leading their young on “exceptionally long ‘tours’ around their home ranges with no obvious function…as if giving their young a final familiarisation with the area.”

  I was just playing

  Play is hard to define, and researchers have wrestled with the task. The definitions show the strain. “Play is all motor activity performed post-natally that appears to be purposeless, in which motor patterns from other contexts may often be used in modified forms and altered temporal sequencing. If the activity is directed toward another living being it is called social play.”

  There are three differences between play and practice, Robert Fagen proposes. Animals playing come up with variations, whereas animals practicing show less variation as they master the actions. A playing lamb runs, and then it sees if it can run, jump, and kick at the same time. (Not something your average sheep needs to do.) Two kittens play-fighting mix scary sideways jumps with panicky dashes for safety. And animals keep playing after they become expert.

  The study of play is recent. “Incredibly, we still do not know if most mammals do or do not play,” wrote Marc Bekoff and John Byers in 1998. Play doesn’t come without costs. Sometimes young animals get hurt while playing, or are snatched up by predators while distracted. Play must have value that outweighs the risk. Among the benefits of play that have been mentioned are exercise, forming neural connections, practice with objects, practice in communicating with playmates, and getting information about yourself and your playmates (who’s faster? who’s stronger? who’s mean as a snake?). Animals who are the only children of relatively solitary species like pandas must usually fall back on their mothers as playmates.

  Exuberance, exaggeration, and general witless leaping around are common in play. Susan Wilson and Devra Kleiman write that certain actions they call locomotor-rotational movements are characteristic of play. Head shaking, body twisting, running, and jumping all count when they are performed in an exaggerated way. They jump too high, they run unnecessarily fast. They found similar kinds of movement in harbor seals, pygmy hippos, pandas, and three species of South America rodents, the degu, the salt desert cavy, and the choz-choz. All had stereotyped ways of soliciting play from another animal, using postures, calls, or touches. A harbor seal pup might solicit play by leaning its chin on another pup, and a degu might gurgle softly.

  Playing alone, playing with the world

  A yearling polar bear cub, waiting while his mother hunted a little distance away, began racing around on the pack ice, sliding and taking headfirst di
ves into pools of melt water on top of the ice, making huge splashes. As he was flying through the air, a seal popped up in the water in front of him, probably wondering what all the racket was. The young bear grabbed the seal, pulled it onto the ice, and killed it. Instead of eating it, he played with it. He ran around carrying it. He tossed it into the air. He threw it into pools and dived in after it. When his mother looked over and saw him playing with his food, she galloped up and began to eat it herself.

  An Anna’s hummingbird jumped in the stream of water coming from a hose and floated down it. That was so much fun that the hummingbird did it over and over. Common eiders floated over a rapids and dashed back to repeat the experience. Adelie penguins floated on small ice floes in a rushing tide, and swam back to do it again.

  Charmingly, honeybees make “play flights.” According to James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould, when bees are two to three weeks old, almost ready to make the transition between working in the hive and going out to forage, they go “for brief looping flights near the hive entrance” on sunny days. “The play flights, which range successively farther and farther from the entrance, may enable bees to learn to recognize the hive entrance, to land gracefully, and to become calibrated to the direction and rate of movement of the sun, their prime navigational landmark. If this is the goal of the behavior, though, it is not completely effective: attrition among foragers on their first day of serious food-gathering is nearly 50 percent.” Keep in mind that even if the behavior has the effect of information gathering, and gives bees a selective advantage thereby, that does not mean that the bees are not playing. (If the alternative is that the bees are assigning themselves homework, that may be pushing the concept of the busy bee too far.)