112 

 THE POWER OF SCENT IN WILD ANIMALS 



E. C. Stuart Baker, F.Z.S., F.L.S., M.B.O.r. 



Recently there has been a good deal of discussion as to the powers uf 

 scent in wild animals, more especially amongst the Felidce. and rather con- 

 tradictory opinions have been given on the subject. 



My own opinion is that cats have a very indifferent sense of smell, and it 

 may be of interest if I give some of the reasons which have led me to this 

 belief. 



Although many minor incidents occurring during the earlier days of my 

 life in the Indian jungles had made me j)retty sure that such was the case, 

 it was not until I tried to work out the life history of a certain notorious 

 man-eating tiger that I became quite confirmed in mj'- own mind of the 

 defectiveness of this sense in tigers. 



These animals, as every one knows, obtain many of their victims by lying 

 up in extra thick patches of cover beside tracks made, through forest and 

 orass, by cattle, deer, pigs, etc. As long as the tiger is favoured by the 

 wind, the unfortunate prospective dinner will often wander right up to 

 within a few paces of the would-be diner without getting any hint of his 

 presence and it is not until the tiger makes his actual rush, that he 

 knows, too late, of his danger. But 1 believe it is equally the case that 

 in many instances the tiger, himself, does not know what kind of animal 

 he is charging upon until he is practically on the top of his victim. 



It is this, indeed, which in some cases turns an ordinary tiger into a 

 man-eater, and such was the case in the present instance. It appears 

 that a ijarty of villagers were returning from their work on their fields 

 and were passing along a narrow deer track which led towards their 

 home through a dense patch of jungle, such as generally grows up 

 the second year on abandoned cultivation. Weary with their work 

 there was no conversation and, beyond the soft pad, pad of their feet along 

 the muddy track, nothing to indicate to a watcher what it was that was 

 usino- the path regularly traversed by Barking-deer and Sambhur on their 

 way to water. Suddenly there was a hoarse coughing grunt and the 

 tiger rushed out, knocked over the leading member of the band and then 

 incontinently bolted down the path as hard as he could go. One of the men 

 describing the episode to me some time after said that men and tiger 

 were racing down the path together, and that though two or three 

 more of the party were knocked over as they ran none were touched by 

 tooth or claw and the tiger seemed quite as frightened as themselves. 



It was nearly dusk when the man was killed and the sudden eastern dark- 

 ness fast setting down, so the villagers left the body where it lay and hurried 

 hack to their village as fast as they could. The unfortunate man was a 

 Mikir, a tribe who, however brave they may be by daylight, will never leave 

 the immediate vicinity of their own houses by night for they believe every 

 patch of forest, every hill and every piece of water to be the abode of some 

 wicked spirit who works his evil will in the hours of darkness. It was not, 

 therefore, until the next morning that they returned to recover the bod^^ 

 of their comrade and when they did so they found on arriving at the spot it 

 had been partially eaten, the legs from the buttocks to the knees being 

 finished. The evidence given hj the tiger's tracks in the muddy pathway 

 showed that he had not touched the body until hard driven by hunger. 

 His footprints showed that he could not have returned to it until early 

 morning after the dew had ceased to fall and, apparently, hs had several 

 times come up to within a few feet of the corpse from either side before 



