drew in their legs and antennæ closely and lay most perfectly still.
Thus the brain-mechanism, which effected the keeping still whenever the
senses announced danger, would be more and more firmly established and
perfected in the course of selection.
Even nearly related animals may have quite different instincts
which secure them against danger. Thus in the group of pocket crabs
(Notopoda) there are some species which run away when danger threatens,
but others which anticipate the risk of discovery by masking themselves
to a certain extent. With the last pair of legs they hold over
themselves a large piece of sponge, which then grows till it often
leaves only the limbs and frontal region uncovered. Of course there
can be no question of consciousness in what the crab does, as is
proved by the fact that these crabs will, in case of necessity, take a
transparent piece of glass instead of the sponge; but the impulse to
cover themselves with something is strong in them, and finds expression
not only when they see a really protective substance, but even when
they see one which is transparent and therefore wholly useless for the
purpose. Crabs from which the sponge has been taken away wander about
until they find another; the impulse is thus set up not only by the
sight of the sponge or of a stone, but also by the feeling that their
back is uncovered. The large spider-crab of the Mediterranean (_Maja
squinado_) effects its disguise in a somewhat different manner. It has
peculiar hooked bristles on the back, and on these it hooks little
bunches of seaweed, often many of them, so that it is entirely covered
and looks like a bunch of wrack rather than like an animal. Here again
a bodily variation has gone hand in hand with the development of the
instinct to cover itself: the bristles of the back have become hooked.
Many instincts are accompanied by structural modifications, and in the
crabs which cover themselves with sponge or stone this is the case, for
the last pair of thoracic legs is turned towards the back, instead
of being set at the side of the body, as is usual among crabs. They
are thus enabled to hold the sponge much better and more permanently,
and as this is advantageous we may well ascribe the change to natural
selection.
Let us now turn our attention to another category of instincts, the
most common and most indispensable of all, those which lead to the
seeking and devouring of food.
The chicken just emerged from the egg picks up the seeds thrown to it
with no experience of what eating is, or what can be made to serve it
as food; its instinct for food expresses itself in picking up, and it
is awakened or stimulated to action by sight of the seeds. As Lloyd
Morgan in his excellent book on _Habit and Instinct_ well says, 'It
does not pick at the seeds because instinct says to it that this is
something to be picked up and tested, but because it cannot do anything
else.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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