13 Animal explorers
Animals may not have been deliberate explorers but they were vital to European expeditions of exploration. Animals were present on European ships from their first entry into the Pacific, and they were essential to the overland exploration of the Australian continent. Their abilities facilitated expeditions, their needs (and the disruptions caused by their behaviour) were consuming concerns for many expedition leaders, and the independent advance of feral species into new regions offers a chance to reflect on what exploration actually is.
Animals were a familiar presence on the European vessels that came to the Pacific. They were so familiar that they were rarely recorded within voyage accounts, and they are absent from most modern histories of exploration, and from reconstructed vessels (displaced by a need to find room for modern sanitation and safety requirements). Animals formed part of expeditions’ supplies (producing eggs, milk, and meat), they were tools (cats managed vermin), companions (sailors made pets of cats, dogs, parrots, and monkeys), and some animals were present independently of their human hosts (attracted by the prospect of food). Yet, despite their presence they only occasionally appear in journals, generally when they startled indigenous people, when their requirements affected the operation of the ships, or when they suffered accidental death.
Animals were an important part of a functioning ship and supplies of desirable animals were replenished wherever and whenever possible. Pacific explorers stocked up on animals at ports passed on the way to the Pacific: the Cape Colony, and Batavia. Ships traded for animals within the Pacific: Tahiti was particularly valued for its supplies of pigs, while its chickens did not adapt well to shipboard life. And animals were captured when possible: James Cook’s crew captured turtles during their time at the Endeavour River, an act which caused conflict with the local people for whom the turtles were an important source of food and which they reasonably considered to be under their control.
European ships in the Pacific deposited animals, as well as collecting them. Various expeditions left living animals on islands in hope of enriching the lives of local people, while also establishing a supply for later European visitors. Tahiti was an early beneficiary, receiving a turkey and a goose from the Dolphin; cattle, pigs, dogs, goats from Domingo Bernardo de Bonechea Andonaegui’s 1772-3 expedition; and spaniels, goats, pigs, a goose, sheep, peacocks, turkeys, ducks, cows and a bull, horses, rabbits, cats, poultry, a monkey, and goats from Cook during his various sojourns there. On his voyage aboard the Resolution Cook also gifted Tahiti European rats, putting down a gangplank in an attempt to encourage them to leave his ship. In Aotearoa (New Zealand) some types of feral pigs are still referred to as Captain Cookers, and may well be descended from the pigs introduced by Cook