“Expression in Animals.”

  THE range of expression in animals is wider and much more varied than is generally believed. Not only the face, but the whole figure in many cases, tells the tale. This is true even of wild animals, if they are observed constantly and closely; but satisfactory proof of this is very easy to anyone who has domestic pets: it matters not of what sort. Birds are not generally credited with great powers of expression; but let anyone observe how, even the common canary, when once the delightful little fellow is on free terms with his master or mistress, can keep up a conversation in his own way and give language to his varied feelings by unmistakable signs and expressions. If you wish to see inquiry, curiosity, and questioning mingled in degree with surprise and wonder, suddenly show something that is new or strange to a pet canary. You will see the feathers on the top of his head rise, till what had seemed to you elegant from its length, and almost flatness, grows round and short, while the eye is turned first on the object you hold with a certain intense kind of scrutiny that, for the moment, really alters the expression of the eye, and then with the most questioning air on you, and back again. The softer hue that comes over the little dark eye, accompanied by the “tweet-tweet” on seeing you the first thing in the morning, or after you have been absent longer than usual from the room where he is, the flirting of the tail up and down, and the puffing out of the fore-part of the neck, you may not see again for a long while if you remain constantly beside him. It is his way of saying “Good-morning! I hope you’re well!” or “Welcome back, dear friend”; “I wish you joy.”

  Look at a macaw or a cockatoo: how he wishes to have his poll scratched by his master. The head goes down at once under the fondling hand, and the eyes seem to close a little with the luxury of the sensation. And then observe the wholly different expression his head and face assume when some youngster has meddled with him, and put him into a rage with such a trick as none of us would tolerate—the eyes dilate, the mouth is open and the tongue moving, the crest is raised, and even the body feathers are erected. He looks quite a different bird from what he was under the gentle and soothing hand of his master. Vanity is, no doubt, a strong feature in the cockatoo’s character: and, indeed, he has been made the symbol of pride and superciliousness; but he can become very attached too, and yield himself to his master’s loving treatment very gently.

  We knew a gentleman who had a fine macaw, which was much attached to all the members of the household save a servant-girl, and her the bird could not endure. Her master would take the macaw off her perch and do anything with her, and she would kiss and fondle him in the most demonstrative manner, the soft round tongue going over his lips, though one felt one would need to be sure of the bird’s affection before venturing on such endearments: for that beak could crack the hardest nut with the utmost ease, and go through a hard ship’s biscuit like the sharpest steel. But when the servant-girl came the whole expression was different; the macaw would scream and hiss and set up the head feathers, or else—cunning bird—she would pretend to be reconciled, that she might give all the deadlier peck; but the maid had learned to be wary. No one could in the least account for the dislike the bird had to that girl, but an expression special to the occasion was unvaried whenever the girl came near.

  You would not fancy there could be much change of expression in an owl’s face. But see him when he returns to his young ones with a titbit, and is in the act of feeding them, and then see him when he has been frightened by some strange intruder near to him or his nest. The eyes go wink, wink, wink, and then assume a strange wide-open expression, the feathers all over the body and head rise and tremble, and present the aspect of a mere bundle ill put together. The bill goes moving with a constantly clucking sound. We are told that if the owl by any chance turns out through the day, all the little birds follow and surround him screaming and expressing in every way their dislike; and as the owl does not see well in clear light, he tumbles about in the oddest manner, and sometimes, no doubt, puts on this strange and striking expression of fear only to make his enemies behave the more audaciously.

  But think of the dog. What a variety of expressions he has! Look at his eyes, and the lights of joy that shoot in them as he jumps round his master who has been absent longer than usual; see him when he plays with the youngsters—the “pawky” turns of expression, as a Scotchman would say, which he puts on. Some animals may fail in it, but the dog’s appreciation of fun and play has often made me think that if there is anything in transmigration of souls, dogs are now inhabited by humorists.

  And then the capacity for discipline, notwithstanding. I have seen a blind beggar’s dog seated at the end of a stone step, with a posse of stray dogs gathered round him, sniffing at him, barking, and doing all they could to enlist him in their sociality and enjoyment. No; there he sits, utterly passive, faithful to his task, with a happy but demure expression in the higher sense of duty done. His little eyes would follow the dogs with no movement of a muscle beside. They speak of the discipline of the battlefield, which is so wondrously sustained by mere sense of comradeship, but the blind man’s dog, all alone, was in this case discipline incarnate.

  And when a passer-by essays to put a penny in the tin box tied under the dog’s chin, and misses it, the expression of joy with which the dog jumps down, and with his mouth secures the copper, is a treat to see, and also the grand proud smile that seems to light up his eyes when he receives his blind master’s appreciative pat as he drops the penny into his master’s hand. There is a blind man who sits in the little passage which runs by the upper side of St. Martin’s church, making nets; and if you should pass that way and throw the dog a copper, you will see exactly what we mean. This dog is a kind of Skye-terrier a most intelligent and faithful specimen of a good breed.

  After this, who would fancy that Mrs. Barrett Browning exaggerated the wisdom or affection of her dog Flush, whom she has twice celebrated in poetry? But see a dog when he has been beaten by a stranger, and shrinks away from him in fear by the side of the wall—his patience exhausted, anger mingling with his fear, and intensifying instead of really modifying it—and you have a sight which the true dog-lover does not like to see. Then there is a sinister devilry in the eye, showing the white ominously, the ears thrown back, the body drawn together, and the teeth all displayed. That is one of the dog’s bad quarter-hours: then he exhibits some of his worst features. You could hardly believe this was the same creature whom you saw but a short half-hour ago jumping up and licking his young master’s hand in gratitude as they went out for a walk, and bounding with joy from side to side of the way, as if he could not by any means make the delightful journey long enough.

  Mr. Darwin was wont to speak of the mind of man as having been developed from the mind of the lower animals, and often on that ground he doubted the real basis of many of its “convictions.” All a necessity of logic, one of the conclusions of his philosophy was that conscience was merely the result of heredity and the cumulative effects of the lessons of the rod. But we ourselves have a dog—a cross between a small retriever and an otter-hound—which certainly goes as far towards suggesting a something beyond as any human being could do. You have only to peak in the softest tones of something he has done—tell in conversation lo another some offence for which he has been guilty—and though he may have been lying as if asleep on the hearth-rug, softly lifting his feet high and cautiously, as though to make no noise or attract attention to himself, he at once moves away, and hides himself beneath the sofa or anywhere else he can till he is called forth in re-assuring tones. His master has often to leave the little country-house where he is, but poor Brin is seldom to be seen when his master actually leaves home; the moment the black bag is brought out and packing begins, he knows what is coming, and hides himself, though he hangs to his master’s heels like a shadow when in other circumstances he goes out in order to enjoy a walk with him. That dog of a truth has almost as many expressions as are to be seen on the faces of some of the peasants hard by.

  A few years ago was published a volume called “Animal Anecdotes arranged on a New Principle.” This volume had a section which went to show the existence of something very like conscience in certain animals, and some of these anecdotes—all of them verified—were widely quoted. We are distinctly of opinion that there is much not otherwise to be accounted for in intelligent and faithful dogs. A dog stricken with a sense of guilt, and fear bred of this consciousness is one of the very finest studies for expression. The tail is thrown down and almost touches the ground: an invariable feature; the head is lowered as with a sense of weight; the eye looks round as with stealthy furtiveness. And in all cases of this conscience-smitten contrition there is a very defined expression of fear mixed with it—this although there may be no actual threat of physical punishment.

  The retriever otter-hound I have already referred to will show all these expressions when merely ordered to go under the sofa; whereas, with a subtlety of cunning insight—in which, probably, no other animal equals the dog—on the few occasions when I have been momentarily a little angry with him and took the whip in my hand to chastise him he would make this difficult by his jumping up and coming very near to me, whining for forgiveness and licking my hands, the result of which is that he generally has got off with comparatively light punishment. He literally kisses the rod and so makes the stroke lighter.

  But this I think goes to show that what now affects him most is not the rod, but the sense of losing his master’s favour, respect, and affection. If he does not clearly reason it out by definite steps and stages, his instincts are wonderfully enlightened.

  With regard to the cat, there can be no doubt that her range of expression is considerable. Think of the softness of which that eye of hers shows itself capable when she has a litter of kittens to purr over, and fondle, and lick; and then her sudden transformation when a strange dog comes near—fire itself in the eye, the ears thrown back till they almost disappear, the hair raised all over the body, the teeth all displayed, and the tail straight up, and apparently five times the size it was a moment before while she spits and hisses out hate and defiance. Mr. Browning has noted and given fine effect to this same contrast in the eagle in his powerful poem entitled “Incident in the French Camp”:—

“The chief’s eye flashed; but presently
Softened itself, as sheathes
A film the mother-eagle’s eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes.”

  Or again, look at pussy when she is busy hunting after mouse or bird: the eyes are wide open and show light strongly; the ears are very erect if not even bent forward, so as to catch the slightest sound the more quickly; the body is lengthened out and the limbs thrown apart, so that a spring is easy any second. The main features and expressions of this position characterize all the attributes; and when we see our “harmless, necessary cat” in this position we see her in an act which most directly proclaims her long descent and her kindredship with the giant members of her species. Mr. Hamerton, in his fine studies of animals, favours the idea that the cat does not have the almost moral sensitiveness that marks the dog, though in some respects her sense of touch and her perceptions are finer—at all events, quicker; but we have met with at least one case where the attachments to individuals were so strong that they overcame some of the most powerful instincts in the cat: such a going round the house in the wet for the sake of master’s company. That cat’s range of expression was really wonderful, as well as the attempt to keep up a conversation by mews varied through a considerable scale, and modifications of expression such as sometimes gave much amusement to visitors.

  Mr. Darwin had a very odd theory that the smile on the human countenance was but a survival of the snarl in the brute progenitors in the far back ages. That was not quite so complimentary to us poor human beings as a man less severely scientific and less disposed to follow out his own ideas to their last result might have made it; but so it was. The arguments with which Mr. Darwin sought to fortify this are not, in our opinion, so well based as some other arguments of his; but it is very odd that the Romans had what they called the “snarling letter” (litera canina): that is the letter R. If you try ever so to pronounce that letter without opening the lips more or less widely, and showing the teeth more or less, you find you cannot do it. How very odd it is that both Mr. Darwin and the Romans agreed in finding some survival of the wild animals’ snarl: the one in our language, the other in our smiles, which are but another and finer form of language. But really, analogy in the one case and scientific severity in the other surely went too far. As we have seen, even in the most primitive time before man had domesticated and influenced to any extent the lower animals, the lion and the lioness looked with tender eye upon the young cubs, and could paw and fondle them and play with them; and if the smile in the human face is to be traced to any brute original surely it should rather have found origin there, as most consistent even with the idea of evolution itself; and Science makes almost too bold a demand upon us when, because it finds certain muscles called into exercise, it declares that the original expression of a benevolent feeling was that of the most malevolent one. If you attend to a dog in a rage you will perceive that if the mouth is open and the teeth displayed as in a smile on the human countenance, the eyes are very different indeed; they are charged with fierce hate and the nerves and muscles there exercised must be very different from those called into exercise by a smile. Rage in the lion or tiger is still more emphatic on this point, if that were possible. The fierce aspect of the eye is due to the upper eyelid being drawn up as into a sharp point, and the whiskers in part raised as if in some portion to stand up almost perpendicularly instead of standing out horizontally from the lip. The mere movement of the whisker in this direction itself greatly alters the expression.

  Much might be said about the influence of man on animals in developing their power of expression. The dog does not bark, properly speaking, till he comes into contact with man, nor does he exhibit the feelings most vividly expressed by barking: joy, sense of guardianship as well as surprise or sense of danger. In truth, domesticated animals receive a new dowry of feeling and emotion through association with man, which is almost as surprising as man’s own accent to emotion and thought, and all the fine complexities of language and expression which they bring.

From Cassell’s Family Magazine, 1892