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
Animal intelligence varies in quantity and quality as much as
animals vary in size. Idiots, maniacs and sleeping persons are the
only classes of human beings who are devoid of intelligence and
reasoning power. Idiots and maniacs also are often devoid of the
common animal _instinct_ that ordinarily promotes self-
preservation from fire, water and high places. A heavily sleeping
person is often so sodden in slumber that his senses of smell and
hearing are temporarily dead; and many a sleeping man has been
asphyxiated by gas or smoke, or burned to death, because his
deadened senses failed to arouse him at the critical moment. (This
dangerous condition of mind can be cured by efforts of the will,
exercised prior to sleep, through a determination resolutely to
arouse and investigate every unusual sensation that registers
"danger" on any one of the senses.) The normal individual sleeps
with a subconscious and sensitive mind, from which thought and
reason have not been entirely eliminated.
Every act of a man or animal, vertebrate or invertebrate, is based
upon either _reason_ or _hereditary instinct._ It is a
mistake to assume that because an organism is small it
necessarily has no "mind," and none of the propelling impulse that
we call thought. The largest whale may have less intelligence and
constructive reasoning than a trap-door spider, a bee or an ant.
To deny this is to deny the evidence of one's senses.
A MEASURE FOR ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. The intelligence of an animal
may be estimated by taking into account, separately, its mental
qualities, about as follows:
1. General knowledge of surrounding conditions.
2. Powers of independent observation and reasoning.
3. Memory.
4. Comprehension under tuition.
5. Accuracy in the execution of man's orders.
Closely allied to these are the _moral qualities_ which go to
make up an animal's temperament and disposition, about as follows:
1. Amiability, which guarantees security to its associates.
2. Patience, or submission to discipline and training.
3. Courage, which gives self-confidence and steadiness.
4. A disposition to obedience, with cheerfulness.
All normal vertebrate animals exercise their intelligence in
accordance with their own rules of logic. Had they not been able
to do so, it is reasonable to suppose that they could never have
developed into vertebrates, reaching even up to man himself.
According to the laws of logic, this proposition is no more open
to doubt or dispute than is the existence of the Grand Canyon of
the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer
ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but
none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm
exists, and is not a debatable question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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