NATURAL DEATH IN THE ANIMAL WORLD.
MR. F. G. AFLA.LO, in the St. James's Gazette, suggests that if death by accident is comparatively rare among animals, those which die a "natural death" meet it in the form of starvation. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that wild animals, enfeebled by weakness or physical decay, do so perish, because of the absence of aid in sickness. But if the bills of mortality from causes other than the violence of predatory species could be made out for the animal world, there would probably be good ground to modify the conclusion that this lingering death is in store for the majority.
The subject is complicated by a kind of mystery which has been long recognised in common experience, and is now attract- ing some of the attention it deserves from travellers and naturalists, the disappearance, namely, of the animal dead, other than those killed by accident or violence. In tropical countries rapid decay dissolves the tissues of flesh, and bone- devouring beasts like the hymna may destroy the largest bones. But there is one region in which we should expect to find the bodies of such animals as have died a natural death, —along the whole length of the frozen rim of the Old World, from the Petchora to Behring Sea, a region where even the fruits forced into being by the Arctic summer are preserved fresh beneath the snow until the ensuing spring, and the remains of prehistoric beasts, the mammoth and Siberian rhinoceros, have only undergone partial decay in the frozen soil. Here we should also expect to discover the bodies of animals which bad died at the end of the summer " cold- stored " till the snow broke up in the Arctic spring.
For this life during the Arctic summer is numbered by millions; there is probably no such gathering of birds on any part of the globe as on the Arctic tundra in July and August, while large and small mammals, seals, walrus, reindeer, foxes, and lemmings also abound. Do they never die, or what becomes of their bodies ? For the latter are almost never seen. Nordenskiold, in his "Voyage of the 'Vega,'" more than once recurs to this strange absence of the animal dead. In an ice-beset channel among some Arctic islands off the mouth of the Yenesei he saw a great number of dead fish- gadus polaris—and next day saw the sea-bottom, where the water was very clear, bestrewn with "innumerable fish" of the same species, which had probably met their death by the shoal being enclosed by ice in a small hole, where the water could not receive a fresh supply of oxygen. This is a common form of natural death among fish in cold countries ; but the explorer remarks it for the following reasons. "1 mention this," he observes, "because such examples of 'self-dead' vertebrate animals are found exceedingly seldom. They therefore deserve to be noted During my nine expe- ditions in the Arctic regions, where Arctic life during the summer is so exceedingly abundant, the case just mentioned has been one of the few in which I have found remains of modern vertebrate animals which could be proved to have died a natural death. Near the bunting grounds there are often to be seen the remains of reindeer, seals, foxes, or birds that have died from gunshot wounds, but no self- dead' Polar bear, seal, walrus, white whale, fox, lemming, or other vertebrate. The polar bear and the reindeer are found there in hundreds, the seal, walrus, and white whale in thousands, and birds in millions. These birds must die a
natural death' in untold numbers. What becomes of their bodies ? " Of this we have at present no idea; and yet we have here a problem of immense importance for the answering of a large number of questions concerning the formation of fossil- bearing strata. It is strange in any case that on Spitz. bergen it is easier to find the vertebrx of a gigantic lizard of the Trias, than the bones of a seal, walrus, or bird which has met a natural death.
This disappearance of the dead, so remarkable in itself, must, we think, be left out of account in the endeavour to ascertain the causes of decease. These must be sought, not by coroner's inquest, when too often there is no body which the jury can view, but by argument from the known causes of death among domestic animals, and the numerous, if scattered, records of mortality among wild ones, notes of which have often been carefully preserved, and may be found scattered over the history of the last ten centuries. Most of these are the records of epidemics, but these and similar diseases must be held to be at work from year's end to year's end, even when not so violent as to cause remark ; while con- currently there are among animals a large class of ailments causing natural death exactly analogous to those leading to human mortality.
Among these normal, non-epidemic causes of death many must be common both to wild and to domesticated species.
"Distemper" among dogs and cats probably extends also to foxes, wolves, and the wild felidm. Its course is often exactly like that of a wasting low-fever, and animals die from it in exactly the same way as a human patient suffering from malaria or bilious fever, for the symptoms are not always the same. " Chill " kills dogs, often by jaundice, and horses and cows mainly by causing internal inflammation. Death is then rapid and painful, and takes place before emaciation of any kind is visible in the animal. Most domesticated animals, even cage-birds, are liable to this cause of death ; but we may assume that among wild animals, whose normal course of life does not expose them to over-exertion or "draughts," it is less common. Among aged domesticated animals, or those which are obliged to take violent exertion, heart-disease often causes sodden death. 'Master Magrath ' died from this; so do the racing dogs of the Northumberland miners. Aged horses sometimes drop down dead when being gently ridden from the same cause. Most very old horses which have been turned out to grass to end their days in peace suffer in the end from forms of indigestion, which cause them to become so thin that their owners order them to be shot. A recent veterinary work ascribes this and many other equine maladies to decay or defects in the teeth due to age or accidents. In the same way old dogs become emaciated, even when carefully fed. But, like human beings, all the canine race, and most of the felida3 and bears, seem liable to forms of tumour, and unless relieved by surgery or released by euthanasia, may meet their death after great misery and suffering. Nor should it be forgotten that virulent sore throat is often prevalent and fatal amongst animals, especially cats.
Consumption and other forms of tuberculosis account for a large percentage of the natural deaths of domesticated animals. We doubt if any but the goat have complete immunity from it. Cattle, cats, chickens, pigeons, and in a less degree horses, dogs, rats, and mice, are all victims of the tubercle-bacillus. Between these normal and non-con- tagious causes of death and the violent and devastating animal plagues comes the long list of contagious animal
diseases mainly confined to domesticated animals. Anthrax,
the most rapid and deadly, is perhaps the least common. Then follows the permanent list,—influenza, now always pre- sent and often epidemic, and affecting all domestic animals, and probably wild ones also; swine fever, aphthoue fever (not commonly fatal), glanders, and in some seasons the fatal "liver rot," mainly affecting sheep and rabbits, due to a parasite harboured in tainted ground and water. Add to these the choleraic diseases from bad water and dirty soil, and we have forms of natural death sufficient to account for the total disappearance of whole species, did not the generally healthy conditions under which they live act as a safeguard.
Unfortunately, among these conditions is one which does not make for the preservation of health, namely, the tendency of nearly all non-carnivorous animals to herd together, and even when non-related, to seek each other's society. Hence the astonishing violence and fatal results of animal epidemics. During their prevalence the absence of the animal dead is no longer marked. On the contrary, the bodies are in evidence.
Among the multitude of examples collected by Mr. George Fleming in his work on "Animal Plagues" are eighty-six epidemics affecting wild quadrupeds and birds, and twenty- seven affecting fish. Among the former nearly every wild species in Europe is mentioned, and some in the New World, in- cluding red-deer, reindeer, wolves, foxes, pelicans, bears, chamois, hares, wild hogs, rabbits, rats, wild ducks, rooks, gears, and monkeys. Disorders usually somewhat rare and sporadic are
capable of developing into epidemics and claiming victims to disease wholesale. Perhaps one of the most curious instances is that of rabies among foxes. This prevailed on the Con-
tinent during the years 1830 to 1838. In the Canton of the Vaud in Switzerland the bodies of the dead foxes were often picked up and examined, and it was thought that they were suffering from malignant quinsy; but as they entered villages and bit men, dogs, and swine, which afterwards died from rabies, there was no doubt as to the nature of the malady. In Wurtemburg and Baden the fox-rabies became so serious that regular hunts were organised until the animals were killed off, like the dogs of Lima under similar conditions. The effect of epidemics among animals is now so- well known that we have dwelt in these remarks mainly on the less striking bat still constant causes of natural death. But to those which perish in this normal course of mortality there must be added a vast number of wild animals which escape constitutional or contagious disorders, and die of lingering starvation, hastened by exposure. This fact in a. great degree justifies the domestication and appropriation of animals to the service of civilised man, who in his dealings with their last years shows an ever-increasing tendency to rectify this aberrant conclusion set by Nature to animal life.
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