Chapter 13: The Chameleon
The lower animals, by which zoology understands the batrachians, insects, fishes, and all other water animals, are not as a rule credited with any emotional life.
Among the creeping animals are included lizards of all kinds, tortoises, snakes, ephemera, voles, toads, and frogs.
It must be admitted that all these animals stand much lower in the scale than the mammals, but to deny them all emotional life is much too sweeping.
Although the field is narrow, being confined to physical needs and chiefly propagation, there remains plenty of scope for the attentive observer to investigate the inward nature of these generally despised creatures. Apart from a few exceptions, the life of all these animals is enacted in mysterious obscurity, indeed for the most part in the actual darkness of the night. All these creatures, except a few special types, seem to interest only specialists.
Man’s thousand-year-old aversion to the creeping animals is a difficult thing to eradicate, and I am definitely of the opinion that it is impossible to eradicate it. And it is not only man who recoils in horror from snakes, toads, lizards, and frogs; many birds and mammals do the same.
There are many birds which have no fear of creeping animals. These birds are their enemies and destroy them in masses, and so contribute towards preventing the numbers of these uninvited guests of the earth from increasing to infinity. The elements also help to keep down these unpopular creatures.
Brehm, Darwin, and many other naturalists tell us that the usefulness of these creatures never outweighs the harm they do.
This I venture to doubt, for nothing in nature is purposeless.
It is difficult to observe the emotional life of the lower creatures, if such there be, for the reason that a great majority of them spend the daylight hours hidden in holes or under stones and sand, and only leave these hiding-places after the fall of darkness.
These animals do certainly possess an emotional life, even though it may be very rudimentary and only become apparent at the mating season.
But it is easier to study the creatures of daylight and here the watchful and conscientious observer may learn, if he has the time and the patience, that there are among the creeping animals species which, in proportion to the small amount of brain they possess, manifest a definite, if limited, emotional life.
For example, I have observed that members of the chameleon family warn one another of an enemy’s approach.
True, no animal has so many enemies as the chameleon. It is a titbit, and its name is certainly heavily underlined on the menu of all animals.
Every animal that lives near the chameleon, or merely catches sight of it, hunts and devours it. Birds of prey, but also harmless birds which do not count as birds of prey, and creeping and other animals which are regarded as equally harmless, are enthusiastic hunters of the chameleon. It is for this reason that it has been endowed by nature with the defensive power of changing colour; changing its coat to match the object upon which it happens to be settled at the moment of danger.
This strange creature, which is generally set down as stupid and voracious by the zoologists, has, despite everything, an emotional life, as I have had the opportunity to observe.
I once discovered five dozen chameleons in the home of a priest in Ceylon. It took a great deal of persuasion to induce the holy man to part with them, and it was less the money that won the day than my promise to find a place for the rare creatures in a European temple.
Darwin says, and Brehm confirms, that: “A chameleon seen is a chameleon lost.” This is true, for, as I have said, almost every animal living in his neighbourhood hunts it. I have not been able to discover what delicate substance in the flesh of the chameleon forms the attraction, as I could never bring myself to kill one of these animals, and still less eat it in a raw state. Nor have I ever seen natives eat the chameleon, even cooked.
Chameleons are quarrelsome and often fight fiercely among themselves; once, when one of these animals was seriously wounded in battle, and not likely to recover, I had it put out of its misery, and had one part of it roasted and another boiled. I had to overcome a good deal of revulsion before I could bring myself to eat any of it, but I managed it, and can only say that it tasted horrible. My servants would not touch it.
Nature has provided the chameleon with a means of defence against the attacks of its enemies by enabling it to change colour quickly and assume that of its surroundings, so as to become actually invisible. They can even assume three, or as many as four, colours at one and the same time. One side of the stripe running from mouth to tail along the belly may be dark green like the bough on which the animal is resting, while the other side is brownish like the trunk, and the head yellowish like a flower-bud.
I can state definitely from my own experience that this animal, whatever the zoologists may say, does possess an emotional life. In the animal house at Kalutara, in Ceylon, I had plenty of leisure time in which to study it.
In one corner of the large area, I had had several young trees enclosed and covered with wire netting, and in this aviary the chameleons were kept. They were surrounded by their enemies, the animal house being a veritable Noah’s Ark filled with an enormous number of creatures, which included not a few gourmets who devoted far more attention to my protégés than the latter found pleasant. Day and night the hungry animals besieged the enclosure, hung from the netting; but the chameleons were on their guard. They did not venture on to the tips of the flowers, usually their favourite place, but kept to the center of the tree-crest, on boughs which the marauders could not reach.
A spider-monkey, which is not really a carnivorous animal but for which the chameleons formed a great source of interest, put life into what are the laziest creatures I know.
Except the crocodile, I know no animal so lazy as the chameleon. It can remain motionless on a branch for many hours, with its four feet and tail gathered close in, the body completely still, and only the eyes in constant movement, apart from the incredibly long tongue darting out to catch food.
The spider-monkey had torn open the netting of the roof, and I caught him in the act of forcing in the upper half of his body and stretching his long arm towards the chameleons. I should never have believed that these animals could move so quickly. Like lightning they evaded the threatening hand and crept close together, deeper in towards the trunk of the tree. One female, however, was not quick enough, and the monkey caught her by the tail. She remained sitting unmoved, changed colour only slightly, blew herself out, but made no attempt to defend herself. I noticed that she was wounded under the tail. Then I came up and drove away the tormentor. The chameleon lay as though paralysed, and after a few minutes the others came up, collected round the terrified creature, and as far as I could see showed no sympathy for her misadventure.
I hid behind a bush to see whether the monkey would return to the assault, and whether the wounded animal would remain where she was.
Very soon the spider-monkey, cautiously looking around him, approached, and when he thought that no one could interfere, he clambered quickly up the netting and forced his hands and head through the opening.
And now came a surprise. Once more the wounded animal refused to get out of the way; but the others were aroused, and I could distinctly see them urging the stubborn creature to leave her place and get out of the danger zone. In this, one rather small chameleon was particularly prominent. It crept up to the lethargic female from behind and I saw him force away her tail, which was firmly fastened to the branch. Before the monkey could reach the group with his fingers, all, with the exception of the rescuer, managed to escape out of reach, but the gallant little chameleon was crushed to death.
I have also established with certainty that chameleons learn to know people who have to do with them, and particularly those who give them food. For instance, I often used to catch large flies, butterflies, or beetles in a drop of syrup on my hand and go up with them to a male chameleon settled on a cupboard in my airy room. Like an arrow the tongue would dart out and snatch the prey.
I noticed that whenever I approached his resting-place, the animal would raise himself a little and turn his eyes in front of him; but if anyone else came up, he would not stir, and would hesitate for a little time even when the stranger held a living insect in his outstretched hand.