ANIMALS’ ANTIPATHIES.

Shannon News, 21 November 1922, Page 3

ANIMALS’ ANTIPATHIES.

BIRDS AND BLUE

Recent experiments prove the truth of the oft-repeated saying that birds do really display fear of the colour blue. It has been shown that a scarecrow made of blue paper will keep small birds off peas or fruit far better than any other device. Just why this is so is a difficult problem, but the fact remains. It is u fact that the antipathy of birds to blue is shared by certain insects. Put a piece of blue glass over part of an ants’ nest and you will notice the little creatures clearing out at once from under it. Birds, sparrows especially, also fear black thread, and a lacing of black thread is an excellent device to keep them off seed bods. The dislike shown by cattle for any object of a violent red hue is usually explained on the ground that red is the colour cf blood, but if this is so, why is it that other annuals do not exhibit an equal dislike to crimson? So far as I know, the antipathy is confined entirely to cattle, and is not shared by horses, sheep, pigs, or any kindred of the wild. All horses, I believe, have an instinctive flislike for the camel, and it is extremely difficult, to train them to get over it. Whether this is due to scent or sight I do not know. , Many horses, again, have a violent antipathy to donkeys. I once had a Texan pony that would bolt at the most distant sight of a donkey. Yet the pony was quiet enough otherwise, and . even a bit' of a slug.. To fight like cat and dog is a very old saying. Yet dogs and cats often load perfectly amicable existences in the same house, and even learn to play together.

There is a much more lasting aiid genuine antipathy between the badger and the fox. Old huntsmen will tell you that the two never harbohr in the same part of a wood, and that if a fox invades a badger's earth the badger abandons it. The hostility of that fierce little wild pig, the peccary, for the panther is more reasonable, for it is probable that the panther is not above picking up a pigling if chance offers. But the fact remains that a herd of peccaries will go for a panther on sight, and if they can catch him will rip him to pieces with their terrible tusks. There, is a story that a Briton newly arrived in a Central American town enquired, of a native if he‘knew of any place where he could bathe in safety from alligators. The native showed him a part of the river c-stuary which, he said, was quite free from alligators. The Briton, after a refreshing.bathe, enquired of his guide why this particular spot was so free from alligators. ‘'Because there are so many sharks,

senor," was the answer. The story may be "ben trovato," but at any rate it seems to be a fact that although alligators frequent brackish water they and sharks are never found iu company. —T.C.8., in a London paper.