ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on self-injurious maladaptive actions in mammals under the following heads: sucking by the new-born young; food-getting by adults; avoidance of danger. Among mammals activities arising from the impulse to escape from death or injury threatened by some external agent present an important type of maladaptation. The failure in adaptiveness in these activities can be traced to the two sources of underdevelopment of the sense of danger, or insufficiency of fear, and of overdevelopment of this sense, or excess of fear. Instances of underdevelopment of the danger sense in the relation of wild animals with men are so plentiful that it is hard to select the few to which space can be given. An example of a type of dangerous fearlessness dependent, not upon mental dullness, but upon alert curiosity is furnished by the American or pronghorn antelope.
