THE TAMING OF YOUNG ANIMALS 217 



very affectionate, and intelligent. They are expert and tireless 

 climbers, and no doubt as a result of their habit of riding on the 

 back of the mother, although they rather dislike being picked up, 

 they like sitting on the ankle or hand or shoulder. My pet rushes 

 to meet me as soon as I open the door of the room in which it has 

 been kept, after an absence. It roams all over my study, climbing 

 up the bookshelves wherever there is a vestige of foothold ; I have 

 seen it climb on the back of a chair placed against the smooth, 

 polished front of a chest of drawers, stand on tiptoe and give a 

 little jump so that the tip of one of its front paws just reached the 

 top, and then pull itself up with the greatest ease. When it is 

 tired of playing, it climbs on my lap and goes to sleep quite un- 

 'disturbed by my work on a typewriter, although it is startled by 

 every strange noise. It uses its flat, naked palm to give a sharp 

 rap on the floor or on the surface on which it may be resting when 

 it is angry or excited by the sight of a strange person or a strange 

 animal ; but this is also a call note, for when it has hidden behind 

 some books or in a dark corner, it comes out at once and runs to 

 me when I imitate the sound it makes. The fully grown hyrax 

 can defend itself well by giving sharp bites with its long incisor 

 teeth. My little animal, which is able to give quite a painful 

 pinch with its teeth, has learned to stop when I say " No," and to 

 lay hold of my finger quite gently ; it also will open its mouth 

 when I tell it to do so. Although the hyraxes are ungulates, they 

 stand very far away from the other ungulates and are probably 

 as nearly related to the ancestors of men and monkeys as to the 

 elephant and rhinoceros. They certainly have very little experience 

 of human beings, and their intelligence and capacity for being 

 tamed are genuine outcrops of their constitution and habits. 



The domestic horse and donkey have been subjected to so many 

 generations of breeding that their qualities may be taken to be the 

 result of man's preference rather than of natural disposition. Young 

 zebras, zebra-donkey and zebra-pony hybrids, and young wild 

 asses of every kind that I know are as tame and gentle and affection- 

 ate as the young of the domesticated races. Like these, they 

 readily learn to know their keeper and to follow him about, and 

 to be stroked and patted. When they become adult, however, 

 they very often are rather savage and treacherous, and some of the 

 wild asses are amongst the most dangerous of the animals that are 

 kept in captivity. What seems to have happened in the case of 

 the horse and the donkey is not that the nature of the young has 



