ANIMAL COURAGE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3128, 31 July 1922, Page 8

ANIMAL COURAGE.

For sheer nerve the common housefly, that will persist in walking over one’s nose and returning to the charge again and again when forced to brief strategic retreats, may seem to health© palm among the whole animated creation. It fears nothing on earth except tobacco smoke. , This, however, is a case of cheek, raised, it is true, to a. sublime degree, rather than of pluck, that quality which the hunter recognises and respects in his quarry. The lion has always been considered, the very symbol of courage, but his hardihood becomes less wonderful than that of some smaller animals when we remember what very formidable weapons of attack nature has endowed him with. The smallest quadruped ever known to attack man is probably the common rat. Again and again when cornered the rat has turned on his pursuer, making, with his infallible instinct, straight for the most vulnerable point, the throat. Weasels, too, are dangerous foes when at bay, and have often inflicted severe injuries on children in country places, A curious story was reported recently from North Wales. A girl, seeing a solitary weasel on the road, threw a stone at it. The animal uttered a peculiar,cry, and immediately six other weasels appeared on the scene, and all 1 started to attack the girl. Things would have gone hardly with her had not her shouts brought the help of a farmer and his dog, who soon dispersed the vermin. The females of all species of animals, and indeed of birds as well, show utter fearlessness in defence of their young. It would be hard to say which most excels in coinage and self-sacrifice when the maternal instinct is aroused. The qualities of the old-time British bulldog were famous, however degraded may have been the sport that brought ’them into play. The same die-hard determination and unfaltering pluck are possessed by the wild boar of India. Pig-sticking, big-game hunters tell us, is the finest sport in the world, calling for the utmost nerve and skill. The boar is a peaceable denture unless provoked, but when he turns at bay he is a tough customer indeed. His charge is at once wary and furious, and to resist it is about the most thrilling experience a. hunter could have. To the end the hoar’s dogged courage does not fail, and again and again lie literally burls' himself on the spears, till at last he sinks down in grim silence, without a groan. Surely lie justifies the words of the pig-stickers’ song:— “The pluckiest brute that Hod ever made!”