Animal Behaviour

by C. Lloyd Morgan

Fig. 18.—Leaf-case of Birch-weevil.

If, however, we are to regard these severally as criteria of intelligence, each should serve to differentiate intelligent from instinctive behaviour. But this is not the case. The precision of the adjustment cannot be regarded as a criterion of intelligence, for many instinctive acts are remarkably precise. No grocer’s assistant rolls a paper funnel with more precision than is displayed by the birch-weevil (Rhynchites betulæ) in constructing the leaf-case in which her eggs are laid. Curved incisions of constant form are made on either side of the midrib, and are “of just the right shape to make the overlaps in the rolling, and to retain them rolled up with the least tendency to spring back,”[49] while the tip of the leaf is rolled into a second smaller funnel, which is tucked in to close the opening of the first, after the eggs have been deposited. “The eggs hatch in their dark place, each giving rise to an eyeless maggot, which ultimately leaves the funnel for the earth.... Hence the beetle cannot be considered to have ever seen a funnel, and certainly has never witnessed the construction of one, though, when disclosed, it almost immediately sets to work to make funnels on the complex and perfect system” characteristic of the species. This is but one example of instinctive precision out of the many which could be cited. We may say, then, that though, when an act is otherwise shown to be intelligent, the precision is a criterion of the level attained by the intelligence, still it cannot be said to be a criterion which serves to distinguish intelligent from instinctive behaviour.

Nor can we regard apparent prevision (which is sometimes advanced as a criterion of intelligence) as specially distinctive of intelligent acts regarded objectively in the study of animal behaviour. For, as we have had occasion to show, there are many instincts which display an astonishing amount of what may be termed “blind prevision”—instance the instinctive regard for the welfare of unborn offspring which the mother will never see, and the instinctive preparation for an unknown future existence in the case of insect larvæ.

Nor, again, is the complexity of the adjustment distinctive of intelligence as contrasted with instinct. We have cited examples which afford evidence of much complexity in instinctive behaviour. The construction and storage of the nest among solitary wasps, and their methods of capturing and conveying the insects or spiders on which they prey, are sufficiently complex. So, too, is the behaviour of the Sitaris larva which attaches itself to the male bee, passes to the female, and then slips on to the eggs she lays; and so, again, is that of the Yucca moth, which collects pollen from the anthers, conveys it to the stigma, and then lays her eggs among the ovules. These cases show, too, that the circumstances may be dealt with in such a way as to extract from them the maximum of benefit. It would be difficult intelligently to improve upon the manner of dealing with the circumstances displayed in many familiar modes of instinctive procedure.

There remain the novelty of the adjustment and the individuality displayed. And here we seem to have valid criteria of intelligent behaviour. The ability to perform acts in special adaptation to new circumstances, and the individuality manifested in dealing with the complex conditions of a variable environment,—these seem to be distinctive features of intelligence. On the other hand, in instinctive behaviour there seems to be no choice; the animal is impelled to their stereotyped performance through impulse, as by a stern necessity; they are so far from novel that they are performed by every like individual of the species, and have been so performed by their ancestors for generations; and in performing the instinctive act, the animal seems to have no more individuality or originality than a piece of adequately wound clockwork.

Granting, then, that behaviour is shown to be intelligent by the fact that there is evidence of profiting by experience, we may say that the level attained by the intelligence is indicated by the complexity of the adjustment, its precision, the individuality shown, the amount of prevision disclosed, and in its being such as to extract from the circumstances the maximum of benefit. Many of these points, however, serve equally well to mark the level of instinctive procedure.

II.—Intelligent Behaviour in Insects

It is, as we have seen, among the higher invertebrates, especially in insects, that some of the most remarkable and complex instincts may be found. There is,[50] however, a tendency to ascribe the behaviour of insects entirely to instinct, without sufficient evidence that neither imitation, instruction, nor intelligent learning play any part. This is, perhaps, a survival of the old-fashioned view that all the acts of the lower animals are performed from instinct, whereas those of human beings are to be regarded as rational or intelligent. In popular writings and lectures, for example, we frequently find some or all of the following activities of ant-life ascribed to instinct: recognition of members of the same nest; powers of communication; keeping aphides for the sake of their sweet secretion; collection of aphid eggs in October, hatching them out in the nest, and taking them in the spring to the daisies, on which they feed, for pasture; slave-making and slave-keeping, which, in some cases, is so ancient a habit that the enslavers are unable even to feed themselves; keeping insects as beasts of burden, e.g. a kind of plant-bug to carry leaves; keeping beetles, etc., as domestic pets; habits of personal cleanliness, one ant giving another a brush-up, and being brushed-up in return; habits of play and recreation; habits of burying the dead; the storage of grain and nipping the budding rootlet to prevent further germination; the habits described by Dr. Lincecum, and to a large extent confirmed by Dr. McCook, that Texan ants prepare a clearing around their nest, and six months later harvest the ant-rice, a kind of grass of which they are particularly fond, even, according to Lincecum, seeking and sowing the grain which shall yield this harvest; the collection by other ants of grass to manure the soil on which there subsequently grows a species of fungus upon which they feed; the military organization of the ecitons of Central America; and so forth. Now, the description of the habits of ants forms one of the most interesting chapters in natural history. But to class them all as illustrations of instinct is a survival of an old-fashioned method of treatment.

To put the matter in another way. Suppose that an intelligent ant were to make observations on human behaviour as displayed in one of our great cities or in an agricultural district. Seeing so great an amount of routine work going on around him, might he not be in danger of regarding all this as evidence of hereditary instinct? Might he not find it difficult to obtain satisfactory evidence of the establishment of our habits, of the fact that this routine work has to some extent to be learnt? Might he not say (perhaps not wholly without truth), “I can see nothing whatever in the training of the children of these men to fit them for their life-work. The training of their children has no more apparent bearing upon the activities of their after-life than the feeding of our grubs has on the duties of ant-life. And although we must remember,” he might continue, “that these large animals do not have the advantage which we possess of awaking suddenly, as by a new birth, to their full faculties, still, as they grow older, now one and now another of their deferred instincts is unfolded and manifested. They fall into the routine of life with little or no training as the period proper to the various instincts arrives. If learning thereof there be, it has at present escaped our observation. And such intelligence as their activities evince (and many of them do show remarkable adaptation to uniform conditions of life) would seem to be rather ancestral than of the present time; as is shown by the fact that many of the adaptations are directed rather to past conditions of life than to those which now hold good. In the presence of new emergencies to which their instincts have not fitted them, these poor men are often completely at a loss. We cannot but conclude, therefore, that, although shown under somewhat different and less favourable conditions, instinct occupies fully as large a space in the psychology of man as it does in that of the ant, while their intelligence is far less unerring and, therefore, markedly inferior to our own.”

Of course, the views here attributed to the ant are very absurd. But are they much more absurd than the views of those who, on the evidence which we at present possess, attribute all the varied activities of ant-life to instinct? Take the case of the ecitons, or military ants, or the harvesting ants, or the ants that are said to keep draught-bugs as beasts of burden: have we sufficient evidence to enable us to affirm that these modes of behaviour are purely instinctive and not intelligent; that all the varied manœuvres of the military ants, for example, are displayed to the full without any learning or imitation, without teaching and without intelligence on the part of every individual in the army.