If the means of subsistence run
short, creatures of like kind will fight together. Thus it is said
that seals which inhabit one and the same district will fight, male
with male, and female with female, until one combatant kills the
other, or one is driven away by the other; and their young do even
in like manner.
All creatures are at enmity with the carnivores, and the
carnivores with all the rest, for they all subsist on living
creatures. Soothsayers take notice of cases where animals keep apart
from one another, and cases where they congregate together; calling
those that live at war with one another 'dissociates', and those
that dwell in peace with one another 'associates'. One may go so far
as to say that if there were no lack or stint of food, then those
animals that are now afraid of man or are wild by nature would be tame
and familiar with him, and in like manner with one another. This is
shown by the way animals are treated in Egypt, for owing to the fact
that food is constantly supplied to them the very fiercest creatures
live peaceably together. The fact is they are tamed by kindness, and
in some places crocodiles are tame to their priestly keeper from being
fed by him.
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