THE TAMING OF YOUNG ANIMALS 215 



with him are curious about him rather than frightened of him, 

 but those that have been forced to make his acquaintance at close 

 quarters have had to learn to avoid him and fear him almost as a 

 condition of their existence. When seals of any kind do survive 

 the early days of their captivity, they become very tame and docile, 

 following their keepers from place to place and being anxious to 

 rub against them and nuzzle them. It must be even more difficult 

 for these animals than it is for the predaceous land carnivores to 

 learn the serious business of hunting, and it is probably only after 

 a long apprenticeship with their mothers that they become able 

 to find and to catch fish for themselves. It is not surprising there- 

 fore that they are friendly and attentive and have high powers of 

 intelligence. Common seals, grey seals and sea-lions have frequently 

 lived in zoological gardens long after they have become adult, and 

 I have never heard of a case in which they lost their tameness or 

 were in any way dangerous to their keepers. They are all gre- 

 garious, living in numbers in their favourite haunts, and certainly 

 giving one another warning of approaching danger, and it is only 

 in the breeding season that the males are savage, when they 

 engage in fierce battles and try to steal each other's wives. 



The young of hoofed animals are all accustomed to run with their 

 mother from their first days, and most of them readily transfer 

 their companionship to man. Few of them show any high degree 

 of intelligence, but they distinguish between individuals, recognis- 

 ing them both by voice and by smell, but to a much smaller extent 

 by sight. They like being stroked and fondled, but, except when 

 they are very young, resent being seized hold of or lifted, and are 

 extremely easily scared by any unusual sight or sound. Not only 

 do they follow their mothers when they are young, but most of them 

 are gregarious, and the herds or flocks are accustomed to follow 

 a leader. This is true even in the domesticated animals, and the 

 familiar English sight of a herdsman or shepherd driving his 

 animals with barking dogs and much shouting, or struggling with 

 a pig, is wholly unnatural. Ungulate animals, young or old, learn 

 to follow a human being as surely as they would naturally follow 

 their mother or the leader of their herd. Their affection, however, 

 is seldom much more than a fear of being left alone, a desire for 

 companionship, and the hope of getting some tit-bit to eat. Those 

 that are not domesticated seldom retain much regard for or con- 

 fidence in human beings after they have grown up, and nearly all 

 of them are dangerous in the breeding season. 



