The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal ObservationsHornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Science
The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations
Hornaday, William T. (William Temple)
Animal behavior
According to the author's information and belief, _these are
"the most intelligent" animals:_ The Chimpanzee is the most
intelligent of all animals below man. His mind approaches most
closely to that of man, and it carries him farthest upward toward
the human level. He can learn more by training, and learn more
easily, than any other animal.
The Orang-Utan is mentally next to the chimpanzee.
The Indian Elephant in mental capacity is third from man.
The high-class domestic Horse is a very wise and capable animal;
but this is chiefly due to its age-long association with man, and
education by him. Mentally the wild horse is a very different
animal, and in the intellectual scale it ranks with the deer and
antelopes.
The Beaver manifests, in domestic economy, more intelligence,
mechanical skill and reasoning power than any other wild animal.
The Lion is endowed with keen perceptive faculties, reasoning
ability and judgment of a high order, and its mind is
surprisingly receptive.
The Grizzly Bear is believed to be the wisest of all bears.
The Pack Rat (_Neotona_) is the intellectual phenomenon of
the great group of gnawing animals. It is in a class by itself.
The White Mountain Goat seems to be the wisest of all the mountain
summit animals whose habits are known to zoologists and sportsmen.
A high-class Dog is the animal that mentally is in closest touch
with the mind, the feelings and the impulses of man; and it is the
only one that can read a man's feelings from his eyes and his
facial expression.
The Marvelous Beaver. Let us consider this animal as an
illuminating example of high-power intelligence.
In domestic economy the beaver is the most intelligent of all
living mammals. His inherited knowledge, his original thought, his
reasoning power and his engineering and mechanical skill in
constructive works are marvelous and beyond compare. In his
manifold industrial activities, there is no other mammal that is
even a good second to him. He builds dams both great and
small, to provide water in which to live, to store food and to
escape from his enemies. He builds air-tight houses of sticks and
mud, either as islands, or on the shore. When he cannot live as a
pond-beaver with a house he cheerfully becomes a river-beaver.
He lives in a river-bank burrow when house-building in a pond
is impossible; and he will cheerfully tunnel under a stone wall
from one-pond monotony, to go exploring outside.
[Illustration: CHRISTMAS AT THE
PRIMATES' HOUSE Chimpanzees (with large ears) and orang-utans
(small ears). The animal on the extreme right is an orang of the
common caste]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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