Legend has it that King Solomon’s ring, also known as the Seal of Solomon, conferred on him the ability to command the supernatural and to speak with animals. Despite the enticing title, the book has nothing to do with King Solomon and his famous ring, or Jewish history, or the Israel-Palestine conflict (since this topic is on everyone’s mind these days…). Instead, it consists of interesting stories about the animals that the author raised to observe their behaviors. Widely considered “the father of ethology”, Konrad Lorenz won Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1973 for his foundational contributions to the study of non-human animal behaviors. King Solomon’s Ring, published in 1949 and written for a popular audience, remains his best-known book. Lorenz was a controversial figure due to his association with Nazism, which apparently came to light only after his death. According to Wiki, not only was Lorenz a Nazi, but he served as a psychologist in the notorious Office of Racial Policy during the war. In his application for the party membership, Lorenz pledged to devote “his whole scientific work to the ideas of the National Socialists”. That said, I found no racial slurs, dog-whistles or anything that can be construed as remotely antisemitic or hateful in the book. Quite the contrary, the book was a relaxing and enjoyable read that made me giggle more than any book in recent memory. Beyond fascinating facts about animals, the reader will also be confronted with thought-provoking questions concerning human nature and the relationship between men and animals.
Lorenz described many species of animals that he kept in and around his home, ranging from fish and birds to dogs and monkeys. Notably, he did not keep these animals in captivity but instead let them – to the extent possible – freely wander around on his property, even in his office. In some sense this was the mandate of his work, since only free ranging animals can “be themselves” and thereby reveal their natural behaviors. However, to Lorenz these animals were more than just a research subject. He lived with them, bonded with them, and cherished their company. He saw humanity in these animals – or animal traits in humans, depending on your perspective – because humans, in a quite literal sense, are their descendants. As a result, his writing adores and humanizes them.
I was never a big fan of animals. Growing up in a small and poor city in China, where few families keep pets in their home, I was naturally disposed to be afraid of most animals, including dogs and cats. Yet, I think even I would find the gaze of Lorenz’s beloved dog, named Tito, irresistible. Tito was an Alsatian (or German Shepherd), famous for being “exaggeratedly faithful”. Lorenz recalled that Tito would remain lying at his feet for hours and hours as he works at his desk, and
she was far too tactful to whine or to call attention to herself by the slightest sign. She just looked at me. And this gaze of the amber-yellow eyes in which was written the question “Are you ever going to take me out?”, was like the voice of conscience and easily penetrated the thickest walls.
Lorenz injected a delightful sense of humor into his storytelling that is truly infectious. I remember several instances when I laughed so loudly in my office that people in the hallway could probably hear me. His vivid account of the territory-setting battle between two stickleback fish was a great example. He wrote, describing how the distance from a male fish’s nest is a reliable predictor for the strength of not only his will, but also his actual ability to defeat his rival,
In the immediate neighborhood of his nest, even the smallest male will defeat the largest one…. The vanquished fish invariably flees homeward and the victor, carried away by his successes, chases the other furiously, far into its domain. The further the victor goes from home, the more his courage ebbs, while that of the vanquished rises in proportion. Arrived in the precincts of his nest, the fugitive gains new strength, turns right about and dashes with gathering fury at his pursuer. A new battle begins, which ends with absolute certainty in the defeat of the former victor, and off goes the chase again in the opposite direction.
On another occasion, Lorenz saw a father jewel fish accidentally swallow, at the same time, his own baby—a duty he routinely performs to save his children from drowning—and an earthworm, his favorite food. The father thus faced a dilemma, as in his mouth were two different things “of which one must go into the stomach and the other into the nest”. Lorenz recalled with amusement what unfolded next,
The fish stood stock still with full cheeks, but did not chew. If ever I have seen a fish think, it was in that moment! … For many seconds he stood riveted and one could almost see how his feelings were working. Then he solved the conflict in a way for which one was bound to feel admiration: he spat out the whole contents of his mouth: the worm fell to the bottom, and the little jewel fish, becoming heavy in the way described above, did the same. Then the father turned resolutely to the worm and ate it up, without haste but all the time with one eye on the child which “obediently” lay on the bottom beneath him. When he had finished he inhaled the baby and carried it home to its mother.
Using his jackdaw bird colony, Lorenz repeatedly explores what appears to be an important theme of the book: the similarities and differences between human and animal behaviors.
He observed how jackdaws teach their youth about the danger of the enemy by making a rattling sound in response to a dangling black object in sight. This is remarkably “human” for two reasons. First, knowledge is passed on to the next generation through “learning” rather than “inheritance”. Second, like jackdaws, humans also fall victim to such blind, instinctive reactions (the black object). I am certain Lorenz had his former Fuhrer in mind when he asked,
“Do not whole peoples all too often react with a blind rage to a mere dummy presented to them by the artifice of the demagogue?”
Lorenz observed that a “married” jackdaw couple would not only take each other to love and to cherish till death do they part, but also, apparently, maintain “the glowing fires of the first season of love” throughout their marriage. Even after many years, he wrote, “the male still feeds his wife with the same solicitous care, and finds for her the same low tones of love, tremulous with inward emotion, that he whispered in his first spring of betrothal and of life”. At first glance such a relationship feels amazingly human; but if you pause and think again, you realize it is in fact quite nonhuman, if not superhuman. Although humans may live in a life-long marital union, Lorenz lamented, they tend to forget “the thrilling enchantment of courtship’s phrases entirely” as time goes on, and only perform the ritual of their marriage “with the mechanical apathy common to other everyday practices”.
It is well known that a definite order – by which each animal is afraid of those above them in rank – exists in many social animals. Lorenz’s jackdaw colony is no exception. The interesting twist is that a female jackdaw can acquire a higher rank by marrying a male who ranks above her – a social mobility that is, unfortunately, not available to a male (again, how very human this is!). If the bird marries the king, she will be granted by every member of the colony the status of a queen. When this happens, the news of the marriage, and hence the promotion of the wife, spreads quickly in the colony. The funniest part of the story is how the newly crowned queen, having suddenly risen far beyond her own station, would “conduct herself with the utmost vulgarity” when she encounters other jackdaws whom she must look up to only a few days earlier:
She lacked entirely that noble or even blasé tolerance which jackdaws of high rank should exhibit towards their inferiors. She used every opportunity to snub former superiors, and she did not stop at gestures of self-importance, as high-rankers of long standing nearly always do.
Establishing a pecking order is one way by which social animals resolve conflicts without suffering excessive casualties. Lorenz mentioned another mechanism that I shall call the surrender’s inhibition. According to this law, a victor emerging from a bloody battle for dominance would be inexplicably “forbidden” from hurting the loser, as long as the latter surrenders, i.e., offering to his adversary the most vulnerable part of their body as a submissive gesture. Humans evidently have inherited the habit of making submissive gestures (e.g., kneeling and bowing) when facing a dominant aggressor. Unfortunately, such an appeal to mercy is not as failproof among humans as in the animal world. Homer’s heroes, noted Lorenz, often killed supplicants “without compunction”. Bai Qi, a Qin Kingdom general, killed 400,000 surrendered soldiers after the Battle of Changping, a prelude to the kingdom’s brutal campaign to unite China under imperial rule. Mongols, of course, had an abhorrent reputation for indiscriminately slaughtering entire cities of people when they faced even the slightest resistance during their conquests. Nor do we have to go back to primeval or medieval times for the evidence of our species’ sub-animal barbarity. About three weeks ago, on October 7th, 2023, Hamas militants invaded Israel and killed more than 1,000 civilians, including many children and elderly – many of the victims, I imagine, would have begged for their lives, but to no avail. Why?
Lorenz argues that the surrender’s inhibition is a result of evolutionary adaptation. That is, for a species to survive, it must develop a social inhibition to prevent the abuse of its lethal weapon which could endanger the existence of the species. However, we humans make our weapons “of our own free will” rather than grow them on our bodies as dictated by nature. Because human weaponry developed so rapidly relative to the time scale of evolution, our instincts could not keep up with it, leading to a lack of adequate inhibition in its usage. There is a certain truth to this argument. However, humans also have far more reasons to murder the members of their own species than the imperative of survival. Ideology, for example, offers a powerful motive for mass killing infidels, heretics, or those who happen to have an intolerable identity. In the end, Lorenz expressed optimism that humans can learn from animals, that if anyone slaps us on the right cheek, we should, as Bible teaches us, turn to him the other cheek also. This is not so that our enemy may strike us again, explained Lorenz, “but to make him unable to do it”. I admire his faith in humanity and wish he was right, but I am deeply skeptical whether this age-old wisdom would have saved anyone who was killed by Hamas fighters on October 7th.