{Fox-hunting}[24th March 1970]

[Redbook1:135-137][19700324:0000]{Fox-hunting}[24th March 1970]

Thursday 19^th March 1970.

            The fox is not rational, he is instinctive.  When he is chased, he feels insecure, and he feels the need to get away just as he does from any noise or alarm.  He does not feel fear of death, as a human would, because he has not sufficient imagination to show him what will happen if he is caught.  Of this I am as near as no matter certain.  He fears being caught in itself, and this he fears whenever he is alarmed by anything.  I doubt whether there are greater and lesser degrees of fear for a fox: he is either asleep, or wary, or alerted to danger, or running from danger.  He may continue to run after he would like to stop, but he will not push himself past the point of utter exhaustion, like a human does, through fear of death: he will only do so because he is still being alarmed, and the alarm will be no greater when he is exhausted than when he started running.  His discomfort will grow the further he runs, just as a human's would, but there the resemblance ends: for first, as is well known and proven to those who live in the country, his ability to feel pain is lower than ours -- far lower; and secondly, he is designed for this sort of work -- running, I mean.  To put it crudely, he is in far better condition than we are, and he is designed more for field-work and less for brain-power than we.

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