Whether land or sea animals are cleverer (23-26)

HERACLEON. Raise your brows, dear Phaedimus, and rouse yourself to defend us the sea folk, the island-dwellers ! This bout of argument has become no child’s play, but a hard-fought contest, a debate which lacks only the actual bar and platform.[*]

PHAEDIMUS. Not so, Heracleon, but an ambush laid with malice aforethought has been disclosed. While we are still tipsy and soused from yesterday’s bout, this gentleman, as you see, has attacked us with premeditation, cold sober. Yet there can be no begging off. Devotee of Pindar[*] though I am, I do not want to be addressed with the quotation

To excuse oneself when combat is offered

Has consigned valour to deep obscurity;

for we have much leisure[*]; and it is not our discourse that will be idle, but our dogs and horses, our nets and seines of all kinds, for a truce is granted for to-day because of our argument to every creature both on land and sea. Yet do not fear: I shall use it[*] with moderation, introducing no opinions of philosophers or Egyptian fables or unattested tales of Indians or Libyans. But those facts that may be observed everywhere and have as witnesses the men who exploit the sea and acquire their credit from direct observation, of these I shall present a few. Yet there is nothing to impede illustrations drawn from land animals: the land is wide open for investigation by the senses. The sea, on the other hand, grants us but a few dubious glimpses. She draws a veil over the birth and growth, the attacks and reciprocal defences, of most of her denizens. Among these there are no few feats of intelligence and memory and community spirit that remain unknown to us and so obstruct our argument. Then too, land animals[*] by reason of their close relationship and their cohabitation have to some extent been imbued with human manners; they have the advantage of their breeding and teaching and imitation, which sweetens all their bitterness and sullenness, like fresh water mixed with brine, while their lack of understanding and dullness are roused to life by human contacts. Whereas the life of sea creatures, being set apart by mighty bounds from intercourse with men and having nothing adventitious or acquired from human usage, is peculiar to itself, indigenous, and uncontaminated by foreign ways, not by distinction of Nature, but of location. For their Nature is such as to welcome and retain such instruction as reaches them. This it is that renders many eels tractable, like those that are called sacred in Arethusa[*]; and in many places there are fish which will respond to their own names,[*] as the story goes of Crassus’[*] moray, upon the death of which he wept. And once when Domitius[*] said to him, Isn’t it true that you wept when a moray died ? he answered, Isn’t it true that you buried three wives and didn’t weep ?

The priests’ crocodiles[*] not only recognize the voice of those who summon them and allow themselves to be handled, but open their mouths to let their teeth be cleaned by hand and wiped with towels. Recently our excellent Philinus came back from a trip to Egypt and told us that he had seen in Antaeopolis an old woman sleeping on a low bed beside a crocodile, which was stretched out beside her in a perfectly decorous way.

They have long been telling the tale that when King Ptolemy[*] summoned the sacred crocodile and it would not heed him or obey in spite of his entreaties and requests, it seemed to the priests an omen of his death, which came about not long after; whence it appears that the race of water creatures is not wholly unendowed with your precious gift of divination.[*] Indeed, I have heard that near Sura,[*] a village in Lycia between Phellus and Myra, men sit and watch the gyrations and flights and pursuits of fish and divine from them by a professional and rational system, as others do with birds.

But let these examples suffice to show that sea animals are not entirely unrelated to us or cut off from human fellowship. Of their uncontaminated and native intelligence their caution is strong evidence. For nothing that swims and does not merely stick or cling to rocks is easily taken or captured without trouble by man as are asses by wolves, bees by bee-eaters,[*] cicadas by swallows, and snakes by deer, which easily attract them.[*] This, in fact, is why deer are called elaphoi, not from their swiftness,[*] but from their power of attracting snakes.[*] So too the ram draws the wolf by stamping and they say that very many creatures, and particularly apes, are attracted to the panther by their pleasure in its scent.[*] But in practically all sea-creatures any sensation is suspect and evokes an intelligently inspired defensive reaction against attack, so that fishing has been rendered no simple or trivial task, but needs all manner of implements and clever and deceitful tricks to use against the fish.

This is perfectly clear from ready examples: no one wants to have an angler s rod too thick, though it needs elasticity to withstand the thrashing of such fish as are caught; men select, rather, a slender rod so that it may not cast a broad shadow and arouse suspicion.[*] In the next place, they do not thicken the line with many plies when they attach the loop and do not make it rough; for this, too, betrays the lure to the fish. They also contrive that the hairs which form the leader shall be as white as possible; for in this way they are less conspicuous in the sea because of the similarity of colour. The remark of the Poet[*]:

Like lead she[*] sank into the great sea depths,

Like lead infixed in hora of rustic ox

Which brings destruction to the ravenous fish -

some misunderstand this and imagine that the ancients used ox-hair for their lines, alleging that keras [*] means hair and for this reason keirasthai means to have one’s hair cut and koura is a haircut [*] and the keroplastes [*] in Archilochus[*] is one who is fond of trimming and beautifying the hair. But this is not so: they use horse-hair which they take from males, for mares by wetting the hair with their urine make it weak.[*] Aristarchus[*] declares that there is nothing erudite or subtle in these lines; the fact is that a small piece of horn was attached to the line in front of the hook, since the fish, when they are confronted by anything else, chew the line in two.[*] They use rounded hooks[*] to catch mullets and bonitos, whose mouths are small[*]; for they are wary of a broader hook. Often, indeed, the mullet suspects even a rounded hook and swims around it, flipping the bait with its tail and snatching up bits it has dislodged; or if it cannot do this, it closes its mouth and purses it up and with the tips of its lips nibbles away at the bait.[*]

The sea-bass is braver than your elephant[*]: it is not from another, but from himself without assistance, that he extracts the barb when he is caught by the hook; he swings his head from side to side to widen the wound, enduring the pain of tearing his flesh until he can throw off the hook.[*] The fox-shark[*] does not often approach the hook and shuns the lure; but if he is caught, he immediately turns himself inside out, for by reason of the elasticity and flexibility of his body he can naturally shift and twist it about, so that when he is inside out, the hook falls away.

Now the examples I have given indicate intelligence and an ingenious, subtle use of it for opportune profit; but there are others that display, in combination with understanding, a social sense and mutual affection, as is the case with the barbier[*] and the parrot-fish. For if one parrot-fish swallows the hook, the others present swarm upon the line and nibble it away; and the same fish, when any of their kind have fallen into the net, give them their tails from outside; when they eagerly fix their teeth in these, the others pull on them and bring them through in tow.[*] And barbiers are even more strenuous in rescuing their fellows: getting under the line with their backs, they erect their sharp spines and try to saw the line through and cut if off with the rough edge.[*]

Yet we know of no land animal that has the courage to assist another in danger - not bear or boar or lioness or panther. True it is that in the arena those of the same kind draw close together and huddle in a circle; yet they have neither knowledge nor desire to help each other. Instead, each one flees to get as far as possible from a wounded or dying fellow. That tale of the elephants[*] carrying brushwood to the pits and giving their fallen comrade a ramp to mount is monstrous and far-fetched and dictates, as it were, that we are to believe it on a king’s prescription - that is, on the writs of Juba.[*] Suppose it to be true: it merely proves that many sea creatures are in no way inferior in community spirit and intelligence to the wisest of the land animals. As for their sociability, I shall soon make a special plea on that topic.

Now fishermen, observing that most fish evade the striking of the hook by such countermoves as wrestlers use, resorted, like the Persians,[*] to force and used the dragnet, since for those caught in it there could be no escape with the help of reason or cleverness. For mullet and rainbow-wrasse[*] are caught by casting-nets and round nets, as are also the bream[*] and the sargue[*] and the goby[*] and the sea-bass. The so-called net fish, that is surmullet[*] and gilthead[*] and sculpin,[*] are caught in seines by trawling: accordingly it was quite correct for Homer[*] to call this kind of net a catch-all. Codfish,[*] like bass,[*] have devices even against these. For when the bass perceives that the trawl is approaching, it forces the mud apart and hammers a hollow in the bottom. When it has made room enough to allow the net to overrun it, it thrusts itself in and waits until the danger is past.

Now when the dolphin is caught and perceives itself to be trapped in the net, it bides its time, not at all disturbed but well pleased, for it feasts without stint on the fish that have been gathered with no trouble to itself. But as soon as it comes near the shore, it bites its way through the net and makes its escape. Yet if it should not get away in time, on the first occasion it suffers no harm: the fishermen merely sew rushes to its crest and let it go. But if it is taken a second time, they recognize it from the seam and punish it with a beating. This, however, rarely occurs: most dolphins are grateful for their pardon in the first instance and take care to do no harm in the future.[*]

Further, among the many examples of wariness, precaution, or evasion, we must not pass over that of the cuttlefish[*]: it has the so-called mytis [*] beside the neck[*] full of black liquid, which they call ink. [*] When it is come upon, it discharges the liquid to the purpose that the sea shall be inked out and create darkness around it while it slips through and eludes the fisherman’s gaze. In this it imitates Homer’s[*] gods who often in a dark cloud snatch up and smuggle away those whom they are pleased to save. But enough of this.