Disease in captive wild mammals and birds : incidence, description, comparison / by Herbert Fox ... with a foreword by Charles B. Penrose.

  • Fox, Herbert, 1880-1942
Date:
[1923]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Disease in captive wild mammals and birds : incidence, description, comparison / by Herbert Fox ... with a foreword by Charles B. Penrose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    medium size as in very large ones. A deer or antelope in a large enclosure does not use all its domain. It usually has a favorite corner near the food, water and shelter, and stays there. Nor has a large enclosure been found perceptibly to diminish mortality from cage-mates. The stronger will follow the weaker until he gets him, no matter what the enclosure. Even in the large flying cage for birds it is necessary to keep out those of a scrappy disposition. From the point of view of the public small enclosures are more satisfactory. Mental disease in captive animals offers a fasci- nating field for study—now chiefly speculative. Many conditions are present to produce it—all the con- ditions that cause prison psychoses in man. And many if not all the insane and perverted acts of animals have their counterpart in the human. Masturbation is very common in mammals. Eating of their own feces, coprophagy, is not infrequent, and is especially notable in one of the highest types—the Chim- panzee. Perhaps occasionally coprophagy may be due to some defect in diet. There is no instinctive disgust at excrement in the lower animals any more than there is in the uneducated child. Nevertheless, eating feces cannot be healthful, and probably does not occur in nature; and occurs only in the human with mental disease. Some of the insane acts of animals if prevalent in the wild would probably cause the extinction of the race. Such are killing of the young by the father and by the mother; killing of the female by the male, usually during rutting time, in some instances reminding one of Sadism in man. This kind of sexual killing does not often occur in the wild. The female has a better chance to escape, and the male probably does not feel so inclined to damage her when he chooses her himself as when she is chosen for him by his gaoler. When the mother devours her young it is usually shortly after birth. I have, however, the record of a Jungle cat (Fells chaus) who ate two of her
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