ANIMALS AND AIR RAIDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16823, 13 April 1918, Page 2 (Supplement)

ANIMALS AND AIR RAIDS.

FACULTIES AS SENTINELS.

SOME SHOW UNCONCERN.

Mast observers during (lie air raids of the past six months have noticed the cur: ous difference in the behaviour of animals before and during these attacks. Dogs, for example, behave in the most extraordinary fashion. The small and nervous dog is usually an extremely good sentinel. One such animal, a toy Yorkshire, always shows uneasiness before a raid. In the days before proper warnings were given he was of real ser- | vice, though now Ins excitement is a little j otiose. It is quito clear that he hears the | vib.ation of engines or of gunfire long before it becomes audible to human ears. Thin ''acuity was specially shown in the > Zeppelin raids. He roused a household on ; the night of September 23, 1916, quito j fifteen minutes before the sound of gups or bombs was heard, in time to witness the i

destruction of one of the enemy. On the other hand, another and older dog in the same house gave not the slightest sign of perturbation, and dept through the whole business with utter tinconcern. More recently a cocker spaniel — a very good sporting —took the j gyrations of a whole fleet of Zeppelin* I without emotion, and did not turn a hair ' of his jet-black body when three or four heavy bombs exploded within a mi'e of him. Gats seem to dislike firing and during raids show an unwonted sociability. At the front this difference in the behaviour of animals ha.* been observed. There is an interesting passage in the admirable letters from the front written bv the late Lieutenant (1. W. Devonian :— " I have forgotten to say before how the different animals take the righting. Cows usually appear quite indifferent, and often you seo them wandering about in between our trenches and the enemy's quite unconcerned. One would persist in getting in front of my gun. an 18 pounder, so we had to drive it off bv chucking empty cart-ridge-cases and clods if earth nt it. One dog there was in abject terror, which tried to burrow its way into the ground in a barn." It ie quite clear that opws would be useless as sentinels. Experience at British air stations shown that birds are, on the whole, the best sentries till they get accustomed to tiring. Parrots early in the war were tried at the Eiffel Tower with the result that at first they gave warning fully twenty minutes before the aeroplane or airship could 1"< made out by the eye or heard by the human ear. These birds, however, appear to have grown bored or indifferent, as they could not be kept indefinitely at the wow. , Pheasants have been found almost invan- I

ably to signal the approach of aircraft at I night bv their chattering and screaming. | When the pheasant begins to talk then j the airman gets ready to fly and the anti-1 aircraft gunner turns out. The streaming ■ of pheasants often precedes by fifteen j minutes to half an hour the approach of a I Zeppelin or aeroplane. ! A good example of the pheasant's acute hearing was given durinc the first Zcppe- j lin raid of January, 1915, when at Thet-1 ford and Bury St. Edmunds, 35 to 40 miles | from tho area over which the Zeppelin j flew, the pheasants shrieked themselves | hoarse. Reports from almost the whole i north of England make it certain in the ' same way that they heard the firing in the j North Sea which accompanied the battle of | tlje Dogger Bank that same January. I With habit they lose this peculiar sensi- j tivoness. Nearly all observers in Franco I have noticed that birds, after their first j terror, gradually grow accustomed to i heavy firing, and, indeed, treat all the I rage of man with the utter unconcern of I Lieutenant Devenish's philosophic cow. Hares, partridges, and pheasants could be J perhaps can still be seen— the i advanced trenches, competing with the rats for any provender that may bo obtainable. i