MISCELLANEOUS NOTES. 493 



No. IX. -DO WILD ANIMALS EVER DIE A NATURAL DEATH ? 



This is a question which has engaged my attention for several years past, an 

 it has puzzled me not a little. I am at last persuaded to send these few remarks 

 by noticing that in Vol. XVIII of our Journal, on pages 125 and 213, both Lt.- 

 Col. Caton Jones and Mr. D. 0. Witt ask : — " Do Wild Dogs carry off their dead 

 and bury them? " I am induced to put my question because, though I have 

 knocked about in the wilds for nearly forty years, I can only remember to 

 have come across one dead animal myself, while my questioning of others has 

 never elicited an answer in the affirmative ; and I have asked hundreds of 

 persons, entirely Europeans, not the Natives of the jungles. Most people will 

 say, — " Of course they die natural deaths, they are subject to diseases as men 

 are and cannot live for ever. They must go away into inaccessible places 

 where man cannot go." It is natural to suppose this, but what inaccessible 

 places can deer get away to ? — and also I ought to say antelope ? Where can 

 Blackbuck goto? and they swarm all over the Indian Plains in hundreds. 

 Has any one ever come across a dead Blackbuck? No. Then what becomes of 

 them ? Surely if they die natural deaths some one must come across one now 

 and again. 



Some will say " Vultures and animals eat them as soon as they die." Has 

 any one ever come across Vultures feeding on a dead wild animal ? I never 

 have. 



I think we must look for the answer somewhere else. My idea is that 

 nature has endowed all wild animals with such properties as enable them to 

 take care of themselves as long as their powers remain unmipared. Directly 

 these powers begin to wane, whether from disease, old age or other causes ; 

 some other animal comes across them and kills and eats them straight away. I 

 am aware that there are many things that could be urged against this theory, 

 but I am anxious to start a discussion in this journal befoi'e I leave India for 

 good and to see what the result may be. That dead wild animals are not 

 found in places, where the live animals abound is one of Nature's mysteries. 

 Let us see if we can get, if not quite to the bottom of it, at any rate some good 

 way down. As I have said before I came across a dead Sambhar in the 

 Kanara Forests. It was a hind and a much smaller hind was lying down 

 beside it. I could not understand why they did not both get up and run away, 

 for it was very evident as we came up to them that the younger hind both 

 heard and saw (and possibly scented) my shikari and myself, but it did 

 not get up and bolt until we came within a few yards, and even when 

 it did go, it only went a short way off and evidently waited for its companion. 

 When we got closer we found the bigger hind dead and cold. The two had 

 evidently gone in the morning to the place where we found them and 

 the elder one had quietly passed away. The younger one would not run from 

 us, for she was under the protection of the other and was waiting for her com- 

 panion to get up. It was between four and five in the evening of an April 

 day when we found the dead hind. There was apparently nothing wrong with 



