ATTITUDE OF WILD ANIMALS TOWARDS MAN 245 



yards of me. He quietly returned my look but made no move- 

 ment to run away. In a moment or two I got up and limped 

 across to fetch my gun, the wolf watching me with interest, but 

 without the smallest sign of apprehension. As a matter of fact, 

 he came a few steps nearer to me, still gazing at me fixedly. 

 He also joined the majority in a very short space of time. We 

 could not afford to have such desperate thieves about our camp. 

 At another place in the same neighbourhood a wolf, coming in 

 to investigate our camp, was attacked by my big deerhound 

 Tom. The wolf made no attempt to escape but met his foe 

 with a fearful bite, and in the end we had to go to Tom's assist- 

 ance before the wolf could be killed. 



From these instances it will be seen that the Cordillera wolf 

 has absolutely no fear of man. The pampa fox shares this 

 characteristic, but possesses it in a much less prominent degree. 

 When I have been chasing one of these latter the animal has in 

 more than one case stopped to regard me steadfastly, not with the 

 timid curiosity of the huemul but with a fearless stare. Yet these 

 foxes are hunted for their pelts. One evening I fired at a pampa 

 fox and missed him. He retired at a slow lollop while I pursued 

 him. When a couple of hundred yards had been covered, he halted, 

 chose a bush, deliberately lay down and waited for me, his muzzle 

 sunk upon his paws. I picked up a handful of gravel and tossed it 

 at him. He rose, snarled, looked at me for a moment, and then 

 walked slowly off. 



The data given above suffice to show that different animals 

 assume very various attitudes with regard to man on first intro- 

 duction to knowledge of him. Not only this, but animals of the 

 same species behave variously under these circumstances. My 

 experience of Patagonian wild animals goes to prove that those 

 to whom we were the first human visitors regarded us with 

 extreme curiosity, and though in some cases there was a show of 

 timidity, it was not to be confounded with any apprehension of 

 violence at our hands. 



To sum up the relative confidingness of the animals I met with, 

 I propose to take the distance within which they will allow man to 

 approach as a sort of scale : 



