1 42 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



due to a curious indifference to danger. Others are 

 real fascination, not caused by fear, but by an irre- 

 sistible attraction or curiosity which renders the animal 

 subjected to it indifferent to fear. 



The behaviour of fish in the presence of pike and 

 crocodiles, creatures most obviously dangerous and 

 most repulsive in appearance, looks like fascination, 

 but is really due to their limited intelligence. Many 

 readers must often have watched the boldness or 

 insensibility of shoals of fish when a big pike is 

 lying close by. The monster, weighing perhaps six 

 or eight pounds, lies perfectly motionless, except for 

 the gentle vibration of its fins, in a clear pond 

 while roach or carp are being fed. The whole shoal, 

 of many score in number, swim past the pike, and 

 struggle for bread within a yard of its jaws, until 

 one slightly injured, or engaged in swallowing an un- 

 usually large piece of bread, passes close by. Then 

 the pike makes a rush like a rocket, all the fish start 

 off explosively, leaving one victim in the jaws of the 

 monster, and in two minutes all the survivors will be 

 feeding again. 



The crocodile's methods are almost identical. But 

 unlike the pike, which is very conspicuous from the 

 side, which is the point of view it presents to the 

 fish, and which any one may see in a good aquarium, 

 the alligator is exactly the colour of the dark mud of 

 tropical rivers, a tint which is imitated by many other 

 water creatures, down to certain tropical water-snails. 

 It seems fully aware of its semi-invisibility, and takes 

 advantage of it in its methods of attack. 



