Animals Behaving Badly

by Linda Lombardi

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  ONE - Muggers, Burglars, and Thieves

  TWO - Assault, Running Amok, and Arson

  THREE - Kinky Creatures

  FOUR - Animal Family Values

  FIVE - Party Animals

  SIX - Beastly Devices and Deceits

  SEVEN - Masters of Misdirection

  EIGHT - With Friends Like These . . .

  NINE - Our Own Worst Enemies

  TEN - Ungrateful Beasts

  ELEVEN - Heroic Humans

  Acknowledgements

  REFERENCES

  INDEX

  “This book is educational, hilarious, and it makes me wish it was legal to participate in cage fighting with an endangered species.”

  —MATTHEW INMAN,

  CREATOR OF THEOATMEAL.COM AND

  AUTHOR OF 5 VERY GOOD REASONS TO PUNCH A DOLPHIN IN THE MOUTH

  “A veritable cavalcade of badly behaved beasts. I couldn’t keep my paws off it!”

  —DANNY BECK,

  AKA SIR PILKINGTON SMYTHE ESQ., EVERSOSTRANGE.COM

  “Lombardi may be the anti-cute-and-fuzzy. Her book rightfully reminds us of animals’ true, often cantankerous, horny, and self-serving natures.”

  —JENNIFER HOLLAND,

  AUTHOR OF UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIPS

  A PERIGEE BOOK

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2011 by Linda Lombardi

  Illustrations by Kevin Sherry

  All rights reserved.

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  PERIGEE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lombardi, Linda, 1961–

  Animals behaving badly : boozing bees, cheating chimps, dogs with guns, and other beastly true tales / Linda Lombardi.

  p. cm.

  “A Perigee book.”

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54491-4

  1. Animal behavior—Anecdotes. 2. Animal attacks—Anecdotes. I. Title.

  QL751.L64 2011

  591.5—dc23

  2011018703

  Most Perigee books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write: Special Markets, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  INTRODUCTION

  Not As Cute As They Want You to Think

  ANIMALS. WHY DO WE THINK THEY’RE SO CUTE, SO NOBLE, SO admirable? They eat poop, for Pete’s sake. Some of them will bite your head off as soon as they look at you. Yet somehow we believe that animals are actually better than us. How did they figure out how to get such good press?

  Sure, you can try to make excuses for some of these creatures. Maybe the bear that mugged a New Jersey man for his Italian sandwich in his own driveway was starving. Maybe the turkeys who were attacking people in a Philadelphia suburb—at the end of November—had a point. Maybe all those “innocent” wild things are defending an increasingly precarious existence. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll discover behavior that seems less excusable as well as oddly familiar:■ Bees love alcohol, even, says one researcher, more than college students do.

  ■ A rabbit who lives in a pub in England is addicted to gambling with a slot machine.

  ■ African elephants raised by teenage mothers form violent youth gangs.

  There’s a lot that animals don’t want you to know. In fact, the better their public image, the darker their secrets: lazy, infanticidal lions; hummingbird rapists; and of course, our own dogs, who eat our money, set our houses on fire, and—in more than one case—actually shoot their owners with guns. Think of almost any human vice or crime, and you’ll find that animals do it too. Let’s look at a few examples:■ Stealing: Theft is one animal crime that can sometimes seem justifiable. At least when a bunch of elephants in Thailand gang up to stop a truck full of sugarcane and rob it, what they’re stealing is edible. But how do you make excuses for a fox—already born with a fur coat—who stole a sweater on a ninety-degree August day in Virginia?

  ■ Assault: While some animal attacks seem like plain hooliganism, others feel personal, perhaps even editorial. You almost can’t blame the groundhog who bit the mayor of New York City on a Groundhog Day just after he’d made massive cuts in funding for the city’s zoos. But even if it were a political statement, isn’t the cow who toppled the blind, elderly British MP—on the man’s birthday, no less—going a little too far?

  ■ Perversion: Humans assume we’re the sole species that has sex purely for enjoyment. But if animals mate only to pass on their genes, some of them sure are doing it wrong. Some male frogs pile up on a female till she drowns, and a rooster in England was in the news when his mate died of exhaustion from his enthusiasm—not great approaches if the point really is to produce offspring. We’ll also see in Chapter 3 that it really is true that everyone masturbates.

  ■ Infidelity and domestic violence: If you’ve ever felt bad about your own dysfunctional family, don’t—you’ve got plenty of company. People may have trouble with monogamy, but they probably do better than the bird species where 95 percent of the paired-up females commit avian adultery. And it’s not just birds; all over the animal kingdom we find lousy parents. Human dads may be reluctant to help with the kids, but at least they don’t kill a female’s babies so they can sire their own young. The much-vaunted maternal instinct isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either. Some animals abandon their young as a matter of course, but don’t feel too bad for the many babies who are left to fend for themselves; at least their mothers didn’t eat them.

  ■ Substance abuse: You might assume that drinking and drug use require a certain advanced level of civilization, but humans didn’t invent fermentation. Alcohol occurs in nature, and drunk animals behave just as badly as their human co
unterparts ; in fact, their reactions are often quite familiar. Bees, for instance, have been observed throughout history getting drunk on fermented nectar. They stop doing their jobs, stumble around, have flying accidents, pass out, and may even be ejected from the hive by disgusted relatives.Animals also use many other natural intoxicants. Once you read Chapter 3, you’ll never look at that apparently innocent catnip mouse in the same way again. And if you’re hooked on candy and chips, you’ve got creature company: Neuroscientists have discovered that rats can develop a Ho Hos habit.

  ■ Lying: Okay, so animals steal, do drugs, are perverts, and have lousy family lives. But surely there are still some kinds of bad behavior that are sophisticated enough to separate us from the beasts? Surely, only we have the smarts to lie, right?In reality, nature came up with deception long before the first human told his mate that she looked great in that goatskin dress. Some animals trick other species into raising their young, and others literally cry wolf to fool their buddies into running away from some tasty food. Of course, when it comes to lies, smarts don’t hurt. As you’ll see in Chapter 6, our closest relatives can plan ahead and even construct tools to help them lie, like the orangutans in Borneo that use leaves, held up to their mouths, to make their calls sound deeper. The low tones fool predators into thinking the apes are much bigger than they really are because—like on an Internet dating site—interactions in the rain forest often aren’t face to face.

  ANIMAL IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

  The mere existence of bad behavior in animals is just the start. It would be one thing if people understood what we’re up against. But the real problem? We humans are completely deluded about the true nature of our fellow creatures.

  Take dolphins for instance. What animal is more mystical and profound than the dolphin, swimming through the ocean surrounded by serene new-age music and wind chimes? The ugly truth behind that charming smile, however, is that they are gang rapists who kill babies for fun (see Chapter 7).

  And we sure don’t know how to choose a best friend. The misdeeds of canines are extensive enough to get a whole chapter to themselves (see Chapter 8).

  Now, you might ask, what’s the harm in having beautiful illusions about our fellow creatures? Maybe we shouldn’t throw stones. Maybe every species deserves its own secrets about whether it really, say, mates for life. And who gets hurt if you think that those big brown puppy dog eyes mean “I love you” rather than “Give me a cookie, now”? The dog gets a cookie either way, right?

  The problem is, while we have the wildest misconceptions about them, animals have got our number. In the New York Times, primate researcher Frans B. M. de Waal said that chimps and orangutans in captivity lure humans to come close by holding out a piece of straw and making a friendly face:“People think, Oh, he likes me, and they approach,” Dr. de Waal said. “And before you know it, the ape has grabbed their ankle and is closing in for the bite. It’s a very dangerous situation.”

  The conclusion is inescapable: Believing that animals are charming, adorable, noble, and true is not a victimless crime. If you don’t want to be part of the problem, read on and learn the truth.

  ONE

  Muggers, Burglars, and Thieves

  AS CRIMES GO, STEALING IS PRETTY MUCH UNSKILLED LABOR. You don’t have to be some kind of evil mastermind to snatch someone else’s stuff: All it takes is opportunism and a blatant disregard for others. If those are the qualifications for the job, animals are the perfect candidates, so it’s no surprise that they commit this entry-level offense frequently.

  Now, at first glance, it can be easy to make excuses. Animals need to eat. And since they don’t generally have money, what’s a poor hungry creature to do? You’d have to be downright mean to begrudge a seagull that French fry you dropped on the boardwalk. And what do campers expect when they leave tempting food sitting around unguarded? Of course the bears are going to want a share.

  But not all animal theft, even of food, is so easy to excuse. Sure, it’s one thing if we’re vacationing on the bear’s home turf. But how about the man who was mugged on his own property for his Italian sandwich? Henry Rouwendal of Vernon, New Jersey, was in his driveway when it happened:Suddenly, Rouwendal said, something hit him from behind.

  “It blind-sided me. I was on the ground and I was thinking, ‘What the hell just hit me?’ ” said Rouwendal, who also suffered a large cut on his left temple and several deep bruises on his knee, elbow and buttocks.

  Rouwendal [was] knocked, face-first to the ground. When he rolled over, the bear was standing over him and then grabbed the sandwich.

  It’s hard to believe that starvation is the motivation when some of these animals are so fussy. In this case, the bear took the bread and cold cuts but left the lettuce, onion, and tomatoes behind.

  There was also the seagull in Aberdeen, Scotland, who became something of a celebrity for his shoplifting habits. Far from being satisfied with whatever might fill its belly, the bird would stroll into a store and take a bag of chips—but only cheese Doritos, its favorite kind.

  You might argue that a bird can’t understand it’s committing a crime. An animal doesn’t know that chips on a store shelf are different from the fries and ice cream dropped on the sidewalk, right? On the contrary, the shopkeeper says that the gull is careful to make sure there are no witnesses:He’s got it down to a fine art. He waits until there are no customers around and I’m standing behind the till, then he raids the place.

  UNINVITED COMPANY

  Along with mugging and daylight robbery, breaking and entering is another foraging technique you won’t usually see on the natural history documentaries. One man in Montana was woken in the small hours of the morning by a commotion and discovered that a bear had opened the porch door and was raiding his chest freezer:He was about four feet from me with his head in the freezer munching on a pizza. . . . It was almost comical if it wouldn’t have been that close.

  This man should probably be thankful, though, because a sneaky midnight raid is better than some of the alternatives. In the upscale suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa, baboons have taken to committing outright home invasions. A 2006 report quotes anti-primate crusader Joan Laing, cochair of the Welcome Glen Baboon-Free Neighbourhood Action Group:“They break windows to get into houses,” Laing said. “They even know how to open doors. And once inside, they make a mess. They empty the fridge, ruin furniture, and defecate all over.”

  These raids take place in broad daylight, and the monkeys don’t wait for the house to be unoccupied. Laing has suffered these invasions several times when she was at home. “They simply brushed past me. I had to get out of the way,” she said.

  The result can be damage to more than property. A twelveyear-old boy was confronted by a troop that broke into his home in the summer of 2010:Hearing noises from the kitchen, he went to investigate and found the beasts ransacking cupboards. When the child fled upstairs to find his babysitter, three males gave chase and surrounded him as he made a tearful phone call to his mother, while the animals pelted him with fruit.

  “When he called me he was terrified. They had him surrounded,” said the traumatized child’s mother. Sadly, apparently the existence of anti-baboon activist organizations has done little to solve the problem, and no doubt children will continue to suffer such lifelong psychological damage, as civilized life in the neighborhood has almost become a thing of the past:“Lunch parties in the garden are now just impossible,” a homeowner complained. “It is so unrelaxing. Rather than chatting over our meal, we are looking over our shoulders and bolting the food as quickly as we can before it is stolen. We can’t even leave a window open in summer. We are under siege.”

  And animals making this type of brazen daytime raid have no more sympathy for other animals than they do for humans. In New Hampshire, a bear invaded a home for a meal of fruit and Pepperidge Farm crackers, but the latter weren’t the only goldfish that suffered. The homeowner arrived just in time to save the family pets, one of which was l
eft flopping around on the counter when the bear drank from the fishbowl. (The thief had second thoughts about abducting what he may have believed was a relative—the stuffed teddy he took from the house was left behind in the yard.)

  TINY TERRORS

  Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re safe from home invasions because your neighborhood is free of big scary wildlife like bears and baboons. In Britain, some chipmunks escaped from a wildlife park in 2005 to devote themselves to a life of crime. Their campaign of terror was chronicled in detail by the Sun newspaper, which provided chipmunk recipes for citizens wanting to take justice into their own hands. In one case, a family in Kent found one of the rodents in their kitchen, brazenly eating their breakfast cereal:It was terrifying. I’ve never seen anything like it. We could hear it banging about in the kitchen and when my husband went in it had its head in the cereal and was munching away.... My cats are traumatised. We’re too scared to let them out in case it’s still lurking.

  If you think this is an overreaction to finding a small rodent in your kitchen, read how another woman was attacked in her own backyard:It was staring right at me and wasn’t frightened of me at all. The next thing I knew it was jumping straight towards me and went on the attack.... I thought it was going to bite me. I screamed my head off and ran for the kitchen door, then banged it shut and sat quaking inside.