Animal Healing,

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22317, 3 February 1938, Page 5 (Supplement)

Animal Healing,

Close observers of animals in captivity and in their wild states have told many tales of their clever habits of self-healing. There is. the well-known story of the rat chewing off his own leg that was inextricably caught in a trap; and most people have seen cats and dogs eat green grass to cause them to vomit so that they may rid their Bystems of impurities. Horses will eat dock leaves and cattle will nibble at the bark and twigs and leaves of trees apparently for the medicines that have been proved

to be in these things. But some of the most amazing stories are told of the habits of wounded animals. A few years ago, for instance, there was a young fawn kept as a pet in a southern State of America. The timid, creature was caught in a barbed wire fence and had a painful gash torn in its side. The owner carefully washed the wound with disinfectant and bandaged it. but the fawn pulled the bandage off and licked away all the hair from round the wound till it was quite exposed to the air and sunlight. And in that way the skin soon mended. In new countries, early in the days of European colonisation, the pioneers often learned the healing properties of various plants by ob-

SOME STRANGE HABITS

sefving the* habits of animals towards them. In this way it was found that to chew snakerqot was one way to check the poison of snake bite. And probably the Red Indians of old knew that the treatment of fever followed by the animals would be effective —to go to an airy, shady place near water, to drink much and eat little and give the fever time to abate. The habits of birds are particularly interesting. The vultures, which live on carrion and so must be often in danger of infection

from their impure food, take special care of their cleanliness. In the first place their heads are fairly free from feathers and in the second place every vulture will be seen to take wonderful pains to clean his huge beak after his meal. And then he will go high up on a tree,and will perch for a long time with his wings outspread to the strong winds so that every feather is combed and smoothed and thoroughly cleansed. Other birds, and animals as well, bathe regularly to keep themselves clean. The baths taken may be of sand, dust, mud or water. Sunbaths are taken by most of the animals and it is said that the old rheumaticy ones regularly help their aches and pains by lying in

all the heat they can get. Many practical demonstrations of this may be seen in any fowl run or in any farmyard; the horse rolls and kicks in the dust and then rises

and shakes himself hard; the dog runs rapidly through the grass pushing his head and neck and shoulders along close to the ground; and the cows brush their coats to a glossy sheen by rubbing their way round the haystacks. Every farmyard has also its rubbing post or rubbing tree made shiny by long, rhythmic rubs by horses’ necks and heads and shoulders. Very clever devices have been found by some of the animals to stop the flow of blood from a wound. It is said that a musk rat will cover a bleeding wound with hemlock gum to keep out germs and dirt: a bear will do this, too, and sometimes uses clay; but a musk rat knows, it seems, that clay would be no use to him for it would wash off in the water. Orang-outang, chimpanzees, and gorillas have been observed to staunch the flow of blood by tightly holding the wound and then to close the cut by covering it with packings of aromatic leaves. Creatures with broken limbs will stay still in the same place until the bone has had time to knitand the rat habit of gnawing off a trap-caught foot extends to rabbits (a mother one was found biting her young one free) and the larger quadrupeds.

One more amazing thing that has been noticed is this: birds will go from far inland to the sea shore or to limestone hills to get in their water or in their food the lime that is needed to make the shells of their eggs hard. On the poultry farm, crushed and pounded shells are scattered for the use of the fowls, just as sand baths are prepared for them; but in nature the birds go seeking the food that some sense tells them they need at certain times of the year.