Birds and Beasts that Bluff 



I 



his adversary. This is nothing new. Most men 

 and all women are bluffers, and every animal is 

 an adept at the art within its own range of ex- 

 perience, while the less actual ability it has to 

 use them, the more inclined it is to put up its 

 fists. 



Take, for instance, the caterpillar of a sphinx 

 moth a slow, fat, green worm, crawling slug- 

 gishly about the bushes in plain view of every 

 insect-eater. It has no armor, or spines, or 

 poison, or ability to defend itself whatever, 

 but the instant anything approaches it it rears 

 up and wags its horned head and looks so for- 

 midable that almost nothing has the nerve to 

 tackle it. This is purely a bluff. 



Consider the case of that harmless braggart, 

 the hog-nose snake. He can really hurt nothing 

 bigger than a mouse or a fledgling sparrow, and 

 he lives mainly on ground beetles and worms, 

 yet he has to be on his guard against hawks, 

 owls, skunks, blacksnakes and various other ser- 

 pent-eaters, in respect to all of which he is full 

 of cowardly fear. But he is so slow that he 

 cannot run; he can wield no poisoned stilettos, 



<$ 123 



