been observed coming to the aid of a comrade shot by a hunter, despite their fear of gunshots. The other elephants work in concert to raise their wounded companion to walk again. They do this by pressing on either side of the injured elephant and walking, trying to carry their friend between their gigantic bodies. Elephants have also been seen sticking grass in the mouths of their injured friends in an attempt to feed them, to give them strength.
Even a duck can be a hero. On November 27, 1944, the Allies launched an air attack against Freiburg, Germany. Unfortunately, the town's air-raid sirens weren't working.
The local inhabitants would not have had a chance for survival were it not for a vocal duck who lived in Freiburg's main park. The residents had noticed that just before an air raid, animals would sometimes begin vocalizing hysterically, as if they somehow sensed the distant bombers long before the warning system. On this occasion, although the sirens failed, the duck's frenzied squawking drove many hundreds of people into the air-raid shelters.
Unfortunately, the duck was killed in the bombing, but after the war, when Freiburg was rebuilt, the survivors commemorated their web-footed savior with a monument in the new park.
Many animals—from robins and thrushes to vervet monkeys—utter a piercing warning cry when a predator approaches. The shriek enables others of its kind to hide or flee, even though it also attracts the predator's attention, sometimes resulting in the sentinel's death.
While researching animal behavior for her book Mongoose Watch, British ethologist Anne Rasa was surprised to discover that when a dwarf mongoose became ill with chronic kidney disease, he was treated differently by his peers.
The other mongooses permitted the ill animal to eat much earlier than he normally would have, considering his rank in the mongoose social order. To Rasa's astonishment, the sick mongoose was even allowed to nibble on the same piece of food that the dominant male was eating—something that would never occur normally.
When the ill mongoose lost his ability to climb, the entire group of mongooses gave up their decided preference for sleeping on elevated objects such as boxes. Instead, they all opted to sleep on the floor with their sick friend.
A mongoose had injured its front paw so that it could no longer capture food. While they did not overtly bring food to her, the other mongooses, upon seeing her plight, started to forage for food near her. They did not offer her food, as this was against mongoose etiquette, but made sure they were close to her so when she asked they could share.
During the Civil War, an eagle, stolen from his nest while still a baby, was sold to a man who joined the Union army and went to fight against the Confederates. Growing up with the army, the young eagle soon became their mascot. Possibly because of his beaky profile, the troops named him “Old Abe” after their hero Abraham Lincoln.
Old Abe soon proved his loyalty. Once, as his platoon was about to enter a wood, the eagle began swooping over their heads so crazily that their commander called a halt. When they tried to resume their advance, he began flying into the faces of the men on the front line. Spooked, the soldiers decided to fire a few rounds into the woods. Instantly, Rebel troops, lying in wait, fired back and the Union troops took cover. Were it not for Old Abe's warning, the Union soldiers would have walked into a trap and been massacred.
Thereafter, whenever his regiment fought, Old Abe appeared and his troops were always victorious. The eagle became such a symbol that Confederate General Major Sterling Price once remarked that he would “rather kill or capture the eagle than take a whole brigade.”
Finally old Abe was wounded and the “Yankee Buzzard,” as the Confederates called him, became part of the North's public relations campaign. Old Abe traveled around the United States and was a featured attraction at parades and patriotic events. When his local regiment returned home to Wisconsin after the war, a banquet was held in the State Capitol building with Old Abe as the guest of honor.
For the last fifteen years of his life, Old Abe lived in a cage in the Capitol Building of Madison, Wisconsin. One day, a fire broke out in the building and he roused the watchman by banging his tin cup against his cage. Again Abe had been a hero. Although his warning was enough to save the building, the watchman forgot the bird in the excitement of the fire and Old Abe died of smoke inhalation.
“I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of the whole human being.”
—Abraham Lincoln
“I wish people would realize that animals are totally dependent on us, helpless, like children; a trust that is put upon us.”
—James Herriot
The dogs of the neighborhood were apparently not on guard duty this particular day. Indeed, the one animal that was making a fuss about whatever was going on across the street was a cat named Emily.
She paced back and forth in the front room window, growling ominously to signal that something, in her opinion, was very wrong. Drawn by her vocalizations, Emily's family looked across the city street just in time to see a burglar climbing in a neighbor's window. Emily's family alerted the police, the man was apprehended, and all was well.
When he dined, Winston Churchill would have his servants bring his cat Jock to the table to share dinner. Churchill considered Jock one of his more agreeable dining companions.
While collecting specimens of birds, a naturalist named George Romanes shot a tern, which fell into the sea. At once, other terns gathered around the fallen bird, “manifesting much apparent solicitude, as terns and gulls always do under such circumstances.”
The wounded bird began drifting toward the shore accompanied by his companions. Edward walked towards the downed bird to collect it. To his utter shock, two of the attendant terns grasped the wounded bird, one tern holding each wing, and lifted him out of the water. The two terns began to carry the injured bird towards the sea. They carried him about seven yards and carefully set him down again, where he was then taken up again by a fresh pair of birds and carried a little farther. In this way, the terns continued to carry the injured bird alternately, until they had brought him to a sea rock at some distance from the human attacker.
Shaking his head, the man started toward the bird again with the intention of capturing it. To his surprise, a great swarm of birds descended in front of him, obstructing his path. As he pushed through the birds, getting closer to the rock, he watched as two birds again took hold of the wounded bird's wings and carried him out to sea, far beyond the man's reach.
“This, had I been so inclined,” Romanes wrote, “I could no doubt have prevented. Under the circumstances, however, my feelings would not permit me; and I willingly allowed them to perform an act of mercy which man himself need not be ashamed to imitate.”
“The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”
—Henry Beston
ways to return the kindness
If you have an animal that plays in your backyard, try planting
