34 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



in preparation for the long winter, each makes a 

 stack of hay over one of the entrances to its burrow. 

 In the bitter cold of the Central Asian winter, when 

 the steppes are covered with snow, these haystacks 

 are the only source of food left to them, and are 

 gradually drawn into the burrow from below. Its 

 position gives a certain security that, if all goes well 

 with its neighbours, only the owner of the stack will 

 eat the store so carefully collected. But these poor 

 little stacks of hay are often taken by the Kirghiz for 

 their fires, or as food for their camels, a source of 

 danger probably unknown in the distant ages when 

 pikas first turned haymakers. The question natur- 

 ally arises as to how the ruined owners of the store 

 are to save themselves from starvation. Clearly the 

 only resource left is to borrow from a neighbour's 

 stack. But animal sense of private property in food 

 is very strong, and in the pikas 1 colonies there is 

 no attempt at making a common stock. Consequently 

 the price paid for society is the liability to support 

 at a personal loss any suddenly pauperised neighbour. 

 The hamsters avoid any such possibility by living 

 alone ; but the loss of society is apparently too 

 great a sacrifice to be made by the pikas, even to 

 secure the sole and safe enjoyment of their winter's 

 food. The social instinct, so apparent in the case 

 of the calling-hares, exists in many creatures which 



