Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.Romanes, George John
Science
Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.
Romanes, George John
Animal behavior; Animal intelligence
ALTHOUGH we here pass into the sub-kingdom of animals the intelligence
of which immeasurably surpasses that of the other sub-kingdoms, it is
remarkable that these lowest representatives of the higher group are
psychologically inferior to some of the higher members of the lower
groups. Neither in its instincts nor in general intelligence can any
fish be compared with an ant or a bee--a fact which shows how slightly a
psychological classification of animals depends upon zoological
affinity, or even morphological organisation. For although a highly
competent authority, namely Van Baer, has said that a bee is as highly
organised an animal as a fish, though on a different type,[110] no one
would be found to assert that an ant or a bee is so much more highly
organised than a fish as its higher intelligence would require,
supposing degrees of intelligence to stand in necessary relation to
degree of organic development. And this consideration is not materially
altered if, instead of regarding the whole organism, we look to the
nervous system alone. There is no doubt that the cerebral hemispheres of
a fish, although small as compared with these organs in the higher
Vertebrata, are, bulk for bulk, enormous as compared with the
oesophageal ganglia or 'brain' of an insect; while the disproportion
becomes still greater if the cerebral hemispheres of a fish are compared
with their supposed analogues in the brain of an ant, viz., the
pedunculated and convoluted lobes which surmount the cephalic ganglion.
But here the relative smallness of the ant as a whole must be taken into
consideration, and also the fact that its brain is relatively much more
massive as well as more highly organised than that which occurs in any
other order of invertebrated animals, except, perhaps, the octopus and
his allies. Therefore, although the brain of a fish is formed upon a
type which by increase of size and complexity is destined in function
far to eclipse all other types of nerve-centre, we have to observe that
in its lowest stage of evolution as presented to science in the fishes,
this type is functionally inferior to the invertebrate type, where this
reaches its highest stage of evolution in the Hymenoptera.
_Emotions._
Fish display emotions of fear, pugnacity; social, sexual, and parental
feelings; anger, jealousy, play, and curiosity. So far the class of
emotions is the same as that with which we have met in ants, and
corresponds with that which is distinctive of the psychology of a child
about four months old. I have not, however, any evidence of sympathy,
which would be required to make the list of emotions identical; but
sympathy may nevertheless be present.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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