Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
In the acts already described we see fitting coördinations at work in
the chick’s reactions to space-facts. A few more samples may be given.
In jumping down from heights the chick does not walk off or fall off
(save rarely), but jumps off. He meets the situation “loneliness on a
small eminence” by walking around the edge and peering down; he meets
the situation “sight of fellow chicks below” by (after an amount of
hesitation varying roughly with the height) jumping off, holding his
stubby wings out and keeping right side up. He lands on his feet almost
every time and generally very cleverly. A four days’ chick will jump down
a distance eight times his own height without hurting himself a bit. If
one takes a chick two or three weeks old who has never had a chance to
jump up or down, and puts him in a box with walls three times the height
of the chick’s back, he will find that the chick will jump, or rather
fly, nearly, if not quite, over the wall, flapping his wings lustily
and holding on to the edge with his neck while he clambers over. Chicks
one day old will, in about 57 per cent of the cases, balance themselves
for five or six seconds when placed on a stiff perch. If eight or nine
days old, they will, though never before on any perch or anything like
one, balance perfectly for a minute or more. The muscular coördination
required is invoked immediately when the chick feels the situation “feet
on a perch.” The _strength_ is lacking in the first few days. From the
fifth or sixth day on chicks are also able (their ability increases with
age) to balance themselves on a slowly swinging perch.
Another complex coördination is seen in the somewhat remarkable instinct
of swimming. Chicks only a day or two old will, if tossed into a pond,
head straight for the shore and swim rapidly to it. It is impossible to
compare their movements in so doing with those of ducklings, for the
chick is agitated, paddles his feet very fast and swims to get out, not
for swimming’s sake. Dr. Bashford Dean, of Columbia University, has
suggested to me that the movements may not be those of swimming, but only
of running. At all events, they are utterly different from those of an
adult fowl. In the case of the adult there is no vigorous instinct to
strike out toward the shore. The hen may try to fly back into the boat
if it is dropped overboard, and whether dropped in or slung in from the
shore, will float about aimlessly for a while and only very slowly reach
the shore. The movements the chick makes do look to be such as trying to
run in water might lead to, but it is hard to see why a hen shouldn’t run
to get out of cold water as well as a chick. If, on the other hand, the
actions of the chick are due to a real swimming instinct, it is easy to
see that, being unused, the instinct might wane as the animal grew up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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