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
Some evidence of intelligence seems to be displayed by the razor-fish.
For the animals dislike salt, so that when this is sprinkled above their
burrows in the sand, they come to the surface and quit their
habitations. But if the animal is once seized when it comes to the
surface and afterwards allowed to retire into its burrow, no amount of
salt will force it again to come to the surface.[10]
With regard to snails, L. Agassiz writes: 'Quiconque a eu l'occasion
d'observer les amours des limaçons, ne saurait mettre en doute la
séduction déployée dans les mouvements et les allures qui préparent et
accomplissent le double embrassement de ces hermaphrodites.'[11]
Again, Mr. Darwin's MS. quotes from Mr. W. White[12] a curious exhibition
of intelligence in a snail, which does not seem to have admitted of
mal-observation. This gentleman 'fixed a land-shell mouth uppermost in a
chink of rock; in a short time the snail protruded itself to its utmost
length, and, attaching its foot vertically above, tried to pull the
shell out in a straight line. Not succeeding, it rested for a few
minutes and then stretched out its body on the right side and pulled its
utmost, but failed. Resting again, it protruded its foot on the left
side, pulled with its full force, and freed the shell. This exertion of
force in three directions, which seems so geometrically suitable, must
have been intentional.'
If it is objected that snail shells must frequently be liable to be
impeded by obstacles, and therefore that this display of manoeuvring
on the part of their occupants is to be regarded as a reflex, I may
remark that here again we have one of those incessantly recurring cases
where it is difficult to draw the line between intelligence and
non-intelligence. For, granting that the action is to a certain extent
mechanical, we must still recognise that the animal while executing it
must have remembered each of the two directions in which it had pulled
ineffectually before it began to pull in the third direction; and it is
improbable that snail shells are so frequently caught in positions from
which a pull in only one direction will release them, that natural
selection would have developed a special instinct to try pulling
successively in three directions at right angles to one another.
The only other instance that I have met with of the apparent display of
intelligence in snails is the remarkable one which Mr. Darwin gives in
his 'Descent of Man,' on the authority of Mr. Lonsdale. Although the
interpretation which is assigned to the fact seems to me to go beyond
anything that we should have reason to expect of snail intelligence, I
cannot ignore a fact which stands upon the observation of so good an
authority, and shall therefore quote it in Mr. Darwin's words:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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