Other examples there are which show not only this
same understanding and knowledge, but the community
[p. 199]
and mutual affection of fish. Thus, if one scate happen
to swallow the hook, all the rest of the scates that are in
the same shoal presently crowd together and bite the line
in pieces. The same scates, if any of their companions
fall into the net, give the prisoners their tails to take hold
of with their teeth, and so draw them forth by main
force.
But the fish called anthiae with far more courage assist
their fellows in distress. For getting under the line with
their backs, and setting up their fins, with these, as with
sharp saws, they endeavor to cut it in two.
Now we know no land animal that will assist and defend his kind in danger; neither the bear, nor the wild
boar, nor the lion, nor the panther. True it is that, when
they are in herds together, they will gather into a circle
and defend each other in common; but no single land
animal either knows or cares to assist a single companion,
but flies and shifts for himself as far off as he can from
the beast that is wounded and lies a dying. For as for
that old story of elephants filling up the ditches with
heaps of adjoining materials, whether wood or earth, for
the unfortunate elephant the more easily to get up again,
this, my good friend, is extremely uncouth and foreign to
us, as if we were bound to believe Juba's books by virtue
of a royal edict. However, if it is true, it does but serve to
show that many of the marine creatures are nothing inferior in understanding and community to the most intelligent of the land animals. But as for their mutual society,
we shall discourse apart of that by itself.
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