Animal
Behaviour
Many readers
have expressed concern about horrific animal scenes they've witnessed
on TV screens recently.
These included male lions killing and eating the cubs of other males
and chimpanzees banding together to hunt and eat monkeys.
Most of the disturbing chimp scenes on TV were first observed by Dr
Jane Goodall and her team in West Africa.
This may all seem far away and remote somewhere in Africa.
Yet anyone with experience of pet animals knows it can quickly happen
on our own doorsteps.
Golden hamsters fight furiously if they are introduced when the female
is not ready for mating.
Mother rabbits encountering another rabbit's babies will savage them
mercilessly if not stopped.
Any budgie or lovebird breeder who has kept his birds on the colony
system, sooner or later encounters a female who enters another's nest
box and slaughters or scalps her chicks.
Bloody fights and pecked feet are a fact of life when these birds
are kept in large groups.
Some mother cats will not tolerate another cat in their house, not
even when it is one of their own kittens just past the age of 12 weeks.
People should realise that this is just nature at work. Survival of
the fittest is the motto in the wild.
Roused Hibernating Animals
As
the house warms up during winter, you may find one or two other
creatures appearing.
Queen wasps, which are 50% bigger than normal worker wasps, hibernate
in the folds of curtains, or a crack in the wardrobe.
The other creature is the orangy, small tortoiseshell butterfly,
which also hibernates in coolish places and wakes up if it becomes
too warm.
Don't allow it to flutter for too long, but place it in a cool,
mouse-free place, where they can carry on sleeping until spring.
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