Ch. 22: The Strange Instincts of Cattle

My purpose in this paper is to discuss a group of curious and useless
emotional instincts of social animals, which have not yet been properly
explained. Excepting two of the number, placed first and last in the
list, they are not related in their origin; consequently they are here
grouped together arbitrarily, only for the reason that we are very
familiar with them on account of their survival in our domestic animals,
and because they are, as I have said, useless; also because they
resemble each other, among the passions and actions of the lower
animals, in their effect on our minds. This is in all cases unpleasant,
and sometimes exceedingly painful, as when species that rank next to
ourselves in their developed intelligence and organized societies, such
as elephants, monkeys, dogs, and cattle, are seen under the domination
of impulses, in some cases resembling insanity, and in others simulating
the darkest passions of man.

These instincts are:--

(1) The excitement caused by the smell of blood, noticeable in horses
and cattle among our domestic animals, and varying greatly in degree,
from an emotion so slight as to be scarcely perceptible to the greatest
extremes of rage or terror.

(2) The angry excitement roused in some animals when a scarlet or
bright-red cloth is shown to them. So well known is this apparently
insane instinct in our cattle that it has given rise to a proverb and
metaphor familiar in a variety of forms to everyone.

(3) The persecution of a sick or weakly animal by its companions.

(4) The sudden deadly fury that seizes on the herd or family at the
sight of a companion in extreme distress. Herbivorous mammals at such
times will trample and gore the distressed one to death. In the case of
wolves, and other savage-tempered carnivorous species, the distressed
fellow is frequently torn to pieces and devoured on the spot.

To take the first two together. When we consider that blood is red; that
the smell of it is, or may be, or has been, associated with that vivid
hue in the animal's mind; that blood, seen and smelt is, or has been,
associated with the sight of wounds and with cries of pain and rage or
terror from the wounded or captive animal, there appears at first sight
to be some reason for connecting these two instinctive passions as
having the same origin--namely, terror and rage caused by the sight of a
member of the herd struck down and bleeding, or struggling for life in
the grasp of an enemy. I do not mean to say that such an image is
actually present in the animal's mind, but that the inherited or
instinctive passion is one in kind and in its working with the passion
of the animal when experience and reason were its guides.

But the more I consider