Konrad & Geese

Konrad Lorenz is a favorite writer of mine. In the early part of the last century he pioneered the field of ethology, the comparative study of animal behavior.

Today I began Lorenz's The Year of the Greylag Goose (which I was given for Christmas and have shamefully failed to read until now). This is a large, illustrated volume on the birds that were the focus of his life's work. The following passage from the book's opening pages caught my attention.

Even after having seen it so many times, I always find it utterly enthralling to witness free-flying birds moving toward me from a long distance away. After all, most poor (or perhaps wicked) souls never see wild animals except from behind! In all the lands of the earth where man has come in contact with wild animals, he is recognized as the most dangerous and merciless predator of all. There is hardly an animal, no matter how big and how strong or how effective its weapons, that will not flee when it sees a human being approach. Only in places where man is unknown will the local animals approach him with complete trust, although usually this is utterly misplaced. One must travel to the Galapagos Islands or Antarctica to find animals that can be approached to within a few feet without being provoked to run or fly away.

Anyone who comes upon a large mammal in a wood will be greeted for a fraction of a second by a terrified animal face. Almost all its surface is taken up by sense organs: large, erect ears, widely staring eyes, and flaring nostrils. An instant later there is usually nothing to see but swaying branches, or at the most a rapidly disappearing view of the animal's rear. Birds, particularly the larger kinds, such as raptors, members of the crow family, and water birds, are if anything even shyer than mammals in the wild. In order to see them close up - and take photographs - one must make use of the cunning techniques of the hunters, either approaching very stealthily or constructing a well-camouflaged hide in a suitable place.

Man regards himself as Lord of the Earth, and so he is, though regrettably so in the sense just indicated, and then only on dry land. I remember quite clearly an occasion when I naively tried to chase off a barracuda, which simply adopted a threat posture and bared its teeth. That gave me the opportunity to find out just how fast one can swim backward with flippers!

Apart from such unwelcome exceptions, man cannot closely approach free-living animals without causing them to take flight. He has been exiled from the paradise of peaceful coexistence with his fellow creatures. That is why, when free-living animals approach me from a long distance away, not because they have failed to notice me but for the very reason that they have seen me and have heard me, it is as if this exile from paradise had been lifted.

This is the type of writing that makes one want to study animals!