The Way of the Wild (Hawkes)/The Animal Sixth Sense
Some animals and birds and even fishes and seals seem to have a sort of sixth sense which man does not possess. The scientific name for this sense is orientation. This means a sense of direction. These animals have a sort of compass in their heads which, no matter how far they may travel, always points toward home. This is a very fortunate sense, for it prevents their getting lost.
Were you ever lost in the woods? If so, you know what a terrible sensation it is. You rush about frantically trying to find the way out, and the more you rush the more hopelessly you get lost. If you would only sit down quietly and think, or observe, you might find your way out.
Here is a very simple way to get out of the woods when you are lost.
Your reason for being lost is that you are traveling around in a circle. There is an open field somewhere not far distant, but you cannot find it. Here is a simple rule. Pick out a tree in the direction that you think is home and go to it. Then pick out another in the same direction and go to that. Then look back at the first tree and pick out a third in line with these two and go to that. Then keep going in this way, always looking back to your two last trees to keep your direction. This will enable you to travel in a straight line, and before you know it, you are out of the woods. But the animals do not have to do this way. They just know. A fox hound will follow a fox all day long, winding in and out. At night he may be many miles from home, but he does not have to wander about to find his home. He just points his nose toward his master's house and travels for home as fast as his legs will carry him.
A friend of mine was once hopelessly lost in the Rockies. He drove his horse for hours toward what he thought was camp, but did not find it. Finally he gave the wise horse his head and he started off in a direction which the hunter thought would land them still further from camp. But not so. The faithful animal soon trotted into camp to the great astonishment of his rider.
Even such stupid things as fishes seem to possess this instinct. The herring which are hatched in some pond or river along the coast will go hundreds of miles to sea ranging about until they are fully grown. Then when it is their turn to spawn, they will turn their noses toward the old spawning bed and come swarming up the stream or river until they nearly choke it. The great silver salmon of the streams in Alaska always return to the old spawning bed each season. When these fish went to sea they were merely minnows. But they come back as full-grown salmon, many of them weighing twenty or thirty pounds, yet they have not forgotten the place where they were hatched.
The seals, which are also born along the islands of the Alaskan coast, can always find the way home. In the summer they will swim far to seaward, following the cold currents southward, but when the call of nature comes, they obey it and find their way back to the home rookeries.
Who can say by what instinct a little bird no larger than a butternut finds his way across a continent, braving wind and storms, always sure of his direction and never lost? The bluebirds will say good-bye in the autumn when the last dead leaf has fallen. But the same brave little fellow will say hullo again in the spring. He is just as bright and beautiful as he was when he went away and even more so, for now he brings the hope of spring with him and then he foretold the winter.
The King Gander who leads the great flock southward each year needs neither compass nor map. I presume, though, that he follows the watercourses, and most of them lead southward, but even so, he still needs a good compass to guide him in storms or in fogs. He travels just as well in the darkest night as by daylight, because the home instinct guides him.
I have purposely kept the best example of the homing instinct until the last. That is the homing pigeon, the beautiful, brave bird whose heart is always singing "home, home," whose one instinct is the home cote.
The other day the government released one of those wonderful birds in Chicago. The mayor of that city placed a message for President Harding in the tube upon the bird's leg. Fourteen hours later the message had been delivered at the White House and the faithful messenger was pecking grain in the home cote, the average mileage being forty-five miles per hour, which is fast for so long a flight. These swift messengers will deliver a message within fifty or sixty miles, flying at the rate of a mile a minute.
No one can estimate how many lives of soldiers these birds saved during the great war. One faithful pigeon, with his leg shot off, but still hale and hearty, is wearing a Croix de Guerre as a token of faithful service. A part of the regiment with which he was detailed to fight was cut off in the Argonne Forest. It was known as the Lost Battalion. For five days the men battled against terrible odds. Their food and water gave out and finally their ammunition as well. They had dug into a sandy bank. Their friends thought them all dead. So both Germans and their own troops were shelling the side hill. Men tried to get word to their base line, but they were all killed in the attempt. As a last resort, four pigeons were released one after another, and all met the same fate. Finally, the last pigeon was thrown into the air, but a bullet struck him before he was ten feet away. He reeled and fluttered and seemed about to fall. But he sensed the call of his mate and the nest, the home cote. With a mighty effort he summoned all his remaining strength and flew away. Half an hour later he delivered the message to the commanding general and the Lost Battalion was saved through the heroism of a homing pigeon.