Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animalsKindermann, Henny
Science
Lola : $b or, The thought and speech of animals
Kindermann, Henny
Animal intelligence; Dogs -- Folklore
On the 20 May I took Lola to tea at S----. She did her work there
excellently--both in viva voce arithmetic, as well as in the written
tests put to her, and also counted dots, etc. After this the
conversation became general, and Lola was not noticed. But in the
course of the afternoon I told my friends that I had been to
Hagenbeck's Circus a few days before, and that I had seen a monkey
dressed as a man, and that it had eaten most daintily, cycled, and done
other tricks. This had been a mere casual remark, and in about an
hour's time I had returned home with Lola. But that same evening, when
I was sitting reading, Lola came and rapped my hands--inquiring--"wer
afe?" ( = who monkey?) I was at the moment so absent minded that I did
not grasp what she was after--but she repeated "afe!" Then it suddenly
flashed into my mind--and I did my best to illustrate the performance
to her entire satisfaction. I gave an earlier conclusive proof of her
memory when I mentioned her recollection of the yard-stick after the
very brief explanation I had given her on the subject two months
previously. Spontaneous remarks have been allotted a special chapter in
this book, and may assist in proving what has already been stated, but
I should like here to add an example of how animals put a matter "to
themselves," as it were, when the thing _heard_ has not been mentally
digested, so to speak--or may even be quite incomprehensible to them.
On 26 July, 1916, I said: "Lola! now _you_ think of something to ask
_me_!" "Yes!" "Well, what is it to be?" "Yes, o h o." "What is the
question? What am I to do with that word; the sentence is not complete,
is it?" "What means?" "You want to know what _oho_ means?" "Yes, yes!"
If we but consider the manner in which a dog will listen--with ears
erect--to every word we say, the question Lola put to me will seem most
natural! It even "comes naturally" to her to use words which are "above
her head," so to speak, as for instance, when she said "surogat"--and
in the case of Rolf, who referred to the "Urseele!" ( = the primeval
soul!) Words such as these are "picked up" by them much in the way that
children use words they do not know the meaning of: there may be
something in the sound that attracts them, but sometimes they make a
guess at the meaning, and in the case of animals, the guess is often a
very good one. In Lola this "Art of Guessing" almost led to a sort of
Romance!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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