by M Krishnan
1961
38
The North–South Rule
It is a generally accepted principle that when an animal has an all-India range, it attains its best development in its northern reaches and declines in size in the southern. This has been endorsed by eminent ornithologists with reference to many species of resident birds—obviously the rule cannot apply to migratory birds that come to our country, both to its northern regions and its southern, from outside. Naturalists have also applied this rule to some of our mammals, such as the common langur and the blackbuck. Now any rule, to be valid and viable, must be true of the overwhelming majority of a class of animals, though there may be an exception or two—these are termed, somewhat slickly, ‘exceptions that prove the rule’.
I do not think the rule holds for our mammals: it does not exhibit a demonstrable general trend when applied to them. Naturally, animals limited either to the north (like wild sheep, goat-antelopes, the clouded leopard and the caracal) or the south (like Nilgiri tahr, the lion-tailed macaque and the slender loris) cannot be compared, because they do not live in both parts of the country. It is only those animals that are found in both the north and the south, in the same species or in regional subspecies or races, that can be compared.
At this stage it must be realized that individuals of exceptional size may occur anywhere in the all-India distribution of an animal: only the relative sizes of the average adults of different regions can be taken into account for establishing, or disproving, the rule. If it is found that it is neither the northern nor the southern population of an animal that displays this maximum average adult size, but a population living in-between or markedly to the west or east, then also the rule breaks down.
Now, quite a few mammals with an all-India range display such a wide variation in adult size in all their regional populations that there can be no comparison of the relative size attained in any of them. Examples of such animals are the leopard (very big and very small adults are to be found in most regions), the tiger (in which individual variation, where it is perceptible, appears to be no question of latitude but of environment), palm civets, the porcupine, and other rodents.
It has been suggested that the rule applies to our deer. Sambar, chital, muntjac and mouse deer are the only deer species which occur both in the north and in the south. I have seen impressively big sambar in the deep southern hill ranges, and noticed that in parts of Uttar Pradesh (such as the Corbett Tiger Reserve) the sambar are not only quite average in size but also notable for their very poor antler development: the most robust populations of sambar in India (where this deer with a wide distribution in south-east Asia attains its best development) are probably to be found along the Bihar–Orissa border. It is claimed that it is in sub-Himalayan tracts that the chital attains its best size. It is true chital in this region do come very big, but I am very sure that elsewhere, too, in the south, they are no less impressive, though only in specific locations. For instance, in the Moyar– Masinagudi area of the Mudumalai Sanctuary of Tamil Nadu, the chital (both hinds and stags) are as big as they come anywhere. The other two deer show no latitudinal differences in size.
All this does go to show that there is no demonstrable superiority in bodily development in the northern populations of many of our animals, but what is much more damaging to the rule is the provable existence of animals which attain their best size in the south. The most notable example of such an animal is the gaur. The gaur, like the sambar, has a wide distribution in south-east Asia and is also there in some northern states, but nowhere does it attain the truly magnificent size it does in the southern reaches of the Western Ghats, in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
The Indian hare is differentiated into a northern and a southern subspecies: the latter is the larger. The giant squirrel, too, seems to be larger in its southern hill forest range. Finally, the most magnificent of our land animals, the elephant. There does not seem to be any demonstrable superiority of size between the regional populations of this somewhat discontinuously distributed giant. In fact, adults of distinctly different bodily conformation are to be found in the same herd, and the elephant is probably the farthest ranging of our mammals by nature—given the space, it traverses well over 200 km of forests in its seasonal treks.
A man I know, who has a rabid antipathy to the north–south rule, cites the elephant as conclusive evidence disproving the rule. Taking the elephant in southern Kerala to start with, he traces its ascent northward up the Western Ghats right up to Goa, without disclosing any increase or decline in average adult size, and then goes farther north to Gujarat, where its sudden and swift diminution in size is so drastic that it disappears altogether from view!
1981
39
The ‘Pinch Period’
It is now, in midsummer, that forest-living animals go through a taxing period of adversity, termed the ‘pinch period’ in contemporary Indian wildlife literature. It is the mammalian herbivores, like deer, gaur and even antelopes, that are most affected by this month of want and stress, though the other animals also experience hardship.
It is mainly in the deciduous forests, where at this time there is hardly any green fodder in the ground vegetation and the trees have shed their leaves and still not fully renewed them, and where the water has dried up and sources of the life-giving fluid are few and far between, that the animals are sorely handicapped. Undoubtedly, they suffer much during this month, and some may even grow so weak that they fail to survive it. But is this a natural recurrent disaster against which conservationists provide artificial relief (like artificial waterholes, in a few places even the provision of green fodder), or is it something that also has an ultimate beneficial influence? After all, it is no hardship newly imposed on the animals of such forests, but something they have survived for centuries.
This question has intrigued me for decades. Naturally even a partial understanding of the problem cannot be gained by armchair theorizing and as opportunity offered itself (quite adequately), I have been investigating it in the field in suitable habitats all over India, in the north-west, central and southern regions. I think the ‘pinch period’, while never beneficial to an individual animal during its currency, does benefit its species as a whole. I shall try to set out my view broadly, in non-technical language, resisting the temptation to cite instances from my field observation, and omitting all mention of quite a few fascinating aspects of animal behaviour arising out of the study.
What happens in a typical setting is that early in summer (which is spring in our forests) the grasses and other ground plants wither and turn dry and brown. There is a prodigal flowering of the trees, usually preceded or accompanied by leaf-shedding, and by April the trees are still not in thick green leaf (though the leaf-buds are opening). But the natural consequence of the flowering is the fruiting, and most trees are in fruit. Many of these fruits are eaten by the animals, some even by men. Forest pools and ponds dry up, and the nullahs also are dry, except for a few small puddles along their course. A notable feature of the wild mammals of such habitats is that they do not shift en masse to a greener and less parched tract—as birds do, when the finding of sustenance in a habitat becomes harder and harder. This is because beasts lack the swift coverage of distances of flight, traversing hundreds of miles in a day. Some large herbivores, like gaur, are given to ranging far in their feeding, and even monkeys shift feeding grounds seasonally. Animals like gaur and elephants may cover considerable distances in the course of such treks, but over a period. They go on from one feeding ground to another and then to a third, and take months to go far out and return.
Moreover, the gain in fodder by such shifts is only slight because they traverse much the same kind of forests, similarly affected by seasonal rigours—though there is very considerable gain in the maintenance of the balance of nature by such shifts, important faunally and floristically, but outside the scope of this inquiry. Furthermore quite a few animals do not move out at all but stay put
in their settings.
Most wild beasts prefer still water, or slow water, to drink from, and will go long distances to a puddle or a muddy waterhole rather than to a river that is nearer. But during this period it is not that the herbivores (including the ruminants which crop fodder quickly and in bulk to lie up in safety and chew the cud) are wholly without food or water. In places the dry leaves forming a carpet on the forest floor provide a natural silage that is edible and freely eaten, and some green leaves not browsed when on the plant are eaten after they have been shed and have turned yellow. Moreover, there are fruits and bulbs and tubers, and along the dry nullahs (which still retain some subsoil moisture) brakes of succulents serve to augment the failing water resources.
Two things in the way the animals are affected by this month of rigours are significant, and neither seems to have been considered by faunists. First, there is a forced change of diet and a limitation to the food intake, with green fodder no longer there in plenty. Secondly, and no less important, it is at this time, when their physical reserves are at an ebb, that many animals undergo a change of coat, shedding their old coat in ragged patches, and regrowing the new—a great strain on their bodily resources.
The benefits from this period of attrition and want are twofold in the main. The lame and the halt, the too old and the infirm, often succumb to the ‘pinch period’ and thereby the community as a whole is rendered more healthy by the nonsurvival of the unfittest—to adapt a phrase from Darwin—this is specially a benefit to gregarious animals. Neither predation nor epidemics are selective and serve to weed out the unfit, whereas this seasonably imposed set of hardship and change does serve this purpose—I mean, all the factors combined, a forced change of fare, severely limited food and water resources and the change of coat.
The second benefit, although I have no proof of it, is that a spell of austerity serves to tone up the system. Note that with increasing loss of body weight during this period, the basal metabolic requirement is also reduced, enabling most animals to survive. It is an age-old belief in many human communities that the periodic spells of fasting and austerity imposed on its members by tradition benefit them not only spiritually but also physically. I believe that this period of want and change of fare does serve to improve the powers of endurance of the wild animals and also conditions them to increased bodily vigour when the days of plenty return.
1987
Nature Domesticated
40
My Distinguished Neighbour
For some time last year I lived next door to an elephant—I mean literally next door. Only a low brick wall separated us, and there was nothing to prevent his reaching out and grabbing the precious vegetation, of my garden or even me, but of course he never did such a thing. For he was an orderly, law-abiding sort of elephant, who knew the laws of property and trespass and respected them. He would stay all day in his trellised stall or else come out into the sun and air and stand towering above my garden wall, but as I said his exploring trunk never crossed it. He could not come farther than that, for his foot-chains held him, though perhaps it was unnecessary to shackle such a well-behaved creature. Each day I would rise to the sound of bells as he was led out for his wash in the pond, and afterwards, sitting idly in the verandah, I would watch Jadhav returning from the bath, black and fresh and newly scrubbed, the little gun-metal bells at his throat tinkling with each movement. All that is gone with the past year. I live once again amidst commonplace men, but I often think of those far-off days and of my distinguished neighbour.
Jadhav was a fine animal well over eight feet high. And I suppose he would have grown taller still, for he was only a dozen years old and an elephant is still young at forty. His ears were rounded and whole, with none of those tears and leprotic patches that make their appearance on the ear-folds of most elderly elephants. His youthful tusks were barely a foot long, and his hide was sleek and smooth, with a scattering of thick bristles over the back and face. He walked on inaudible feet, in spite of his magnificent bulk. Elephants are remarkable for the utter silence of their movements. Cattle and horses go past with a clatter of hooves and you can hear the thud of the galloping feet of a dog yards away, but elephants and cats—you never hear them move. They both walk on cushioned feet. The huge, circular sole of the elephant’s foot is a pad of loose fat, except for the horny rim of toes. When the foot is pressed against the earth this pad is drawn in and up, but its weight lowers it when the foot is lifted, so that it is the first thing that comes in contact with the ground when the elephant puts down its feet. And that is why these massive animals move noiselessly even over ground strewn with dry, crackling twigs, and leaves: their cushioned soles muffle all sounds.
But what used to surprise me even more than the silence of Jadhav’s gait was its apparent slowness. His walk was a languid dawdle, but I found it was all I could do to keep up with him on the rare occasions when I accompanied him on his early morning strolls. The elephant, by the way, bends his hips and legs outwards and behind at each step, like a man.
Whenever I saw my neighbour I used to be reminded of an ancient school text from which I had learnt all about the domestic uses of the elephant—about the timber-dragging elephants of Burma, stacking and carrying teak, lordly state elephants marching in royal processions, shikar elephants, performing elephants, and the war elephants of ancient and more recent times. Elephants were used to carry heavy guns in the Indian Army till very recently, as anyone who has read ‘The Servants of the Queen’ will remember—
We lent to Alexander
The strength of Hercules,
The wisdom of our foreheads
The cunning of our knees.
Make way there, way for the ten-foot teams.
Of the Forty-Pounder Train!
Of course my encyclopaedian school text had not forgotten those gun elephants, but it had omitted all mention of Jadhav and his kin. Jadhav belonged to a temple. He was painted, decorated and taken along the streets during festivals, but otherwise he did nothing beyond belonging to the Gods. At times he got quite bored with his tethered inactivity, and then he would swing himself from side to side for hours on end, a recreation that seemed to amuse him in some strange way. Occasionally he would succeed in working himself up into a frenzy, and the swinging would change to a violent, jerky dance, but a word from his mahout was always sufficient to restore order and calm. It was only very rarely that Jadhav indulged in such antics—ordinarily he was suave and dignified, serene and nonchalant as only an elephant can be. I have not seen a gentler, more tractable creature than this elephant. His strength was incalculable—I have seen him toss a boulder aside with a casual flick of his trunk—and still he never rebelled. His mahout was devoted to him, but at times, when Jadhav was particularly stupid or inattentive, the man would lose his temper and then a truly comic scene would ensue. The mahout would stand in front of his charge and lecture to him on the gravity of his misconduct and then he would deal out the punishment, deliberately, almost unwillingly, like a man discharging an unpleasant duty. And Jadhav would stand penitent and still throughout, and at the end of it he would throw up his trunk in a huge salam and trumpet shrilly to announce that the episode was concluded … .
1939
41
Amrit Mahal
Today there is a welling enthusiasm for mechanization in our country, especially in regard to transport and agriculture. I hope I am not atavistic in my values, but I cannot help feeling at times that we are rather carried away by this new-found enthusiasm. Quite recently I overheard a friend explaining to another the virtues of a particular make of tractor, suitable for small holdings, about which he had heard.
No salesman, boosting his stock, could have been more full of rosy words, but listening to my friend the conviction grew upon me that two or three pairs of Amrit Mahal bullocks could do all that was claimed for the tractor, at less cost and without needing replacements and spare parts. And they could supply manure, solve the problem of inter-vill
age transport, and be useful about the farm in a dozen other ways, in addition.
Writing in 1818, the commissioner of Mysore said, of these magnificent bullocks: ‘They are active, fiery, and walk faster than the troops. In a word they constitute a distinct species, and possess the same superiority over other bullocks in every valuable quality that Arabs do over other horses.’ Long before this, and long afterwards, the speed, stamina and mettle, of the breed were highly valued by the armed forces—Hyder Ali and Tippu Sultan used them as pack animals in their rapid campaigns, these bullocks distinguished themselves with the English Army in Afghanistan, and the Iron Duke (who knew his Mysore well) missed them in Spain during the Peninsular War.
Amrit Mahal bullocks were used in Mesopotamia during World War I, and the GOC Force ‘D’, Baghdad, reported: ‘They can walk as fast as a mule on the march, and are steadier when crossing pontoon bridges and over bad roads, and in spite of the difficulty of giving them the rations to which they have become accustomed, have stood the climate well.’
The transport corps of armies are less dependent on pack animals now, but the Amrit Mahal breed is by no means outmoded or just an interesting relic of a military past. Thousands of miles of winding, intersecting cart tracks mark the Indian countryside, often merely a pair of parallel ruts worn through scrub and hill jungle. The man who thinks that mechanized transport will soon displace bullock carts here must be singularly motor-minded, unrealistic and unobservant. Bullocks for the plough and cart are a vital and integral part of life in India, and in this country of small, detached holdings, draught bullocks are good for centuries to come.