Animal Behaviour

by C. Lloyd Morgan

It is just possible, though most improbable, that the bullfinch utilized its three weeks’ experience gained in the nest from which it was taken. But Mr. Jenner Weir describes[58] observations on canaries in which this source of experience is excluded. “It is usual,” he says, “with canary fanciers to take out the nest constructed by the parent birds, and to place a felt nest in its place, and when her young are hatched, and old enough to be handled, to place a second clean nest, also of felt, in the box, removing the other. But I never knew that canaries so reared failed to make a nest when the breeding time arrived. I have, on the other hand, marvelled to see how like a wild bird’s the nests are constructed. It is customary to supply them with a small set of materials, such as moss and hair. They use the moss for the foundation, and line with the finer materials, just as a wild goldfinch would do.”

Experiment seems, therefore, to show in a way, and with a clearness impossible of attainment by observation under natural uncontrolled conditions, that nest-building in birds is instinctive. That the manner and method of procedure is often modified in accordance with special conditions—that the instinctive outline of nidification receives its final touches through individual experience—is sometimes seen under nature, and more often under the semi-experimental conditions of domestication. Thus three pairs of pigeons in the Wilson Tower of Clifton College made their nests in 1898, as I am informed by Mr. H. C. Playne, of galvanized iron wire, pieces of which were left in a corner at the top of the tower, thus affording a parallel to the behaviour of the unconventional crow of Calcutta, mentioned by Mr. F. W. Headley,[59] which made its nest of soda-water bottle wires, which it picked up in a back yard. But even in this matter experiment serves to bring out clearly the selective influence which is exercised by intelligence. Bolton,[60] in 1792, observed a pair of goldfinches beginning to build their nest in his garden. They formed the ground-work of moss, grass, etc., as usual; but on his scattering small parcels of wool in different parts of the garden they, in great measure, left off the use of their own stuff and used the wool. Afterwards he gave them cotton, and they then used this instead of the wool; then he supplied fine down, and they finished their work with this, leaving the wool and cotton.

In studying the behaviour of wild animals under natural conditions, it must always be difficult to distinguish the congenital basis from the acquired elements; for both tend to bring about a working adjustment to the conditions of life, and we can seldom have opportunities of tracing the interplay of the factors which produce the instinct-habits of adult life. But under domestication we seek to bring about a new working adjustment to conditions imposed by man. The skilful trainer utilizes the natural instinctive tendencies as a basis; and, by a system of rewards and punishments, leads the intelligent modifications of behaviour along lines directed by his deliberate purpose. The conditions are largely those of experiment, and they bring out the play and range of intelligence in a way which would otherwise elude our observation. The training of falcons for the chase affords a good illustration, since they cannot be bred in confinement, and the effects of training cannot therefore be hereditary. The falconer’s object is to modify the congenital instinctive behaviour of a bird of prey for the purposes of sport. She is trained to the lure at first at short distances, and step by step through longer flights; she is taught by snatching away the lure to stoop at it repeatedly as often as it is jerked aside; and then she is trained on living quarry, at first under easy conditions, till eventually she can be flown at a wild bird. And as a result a well-trained falcon will follow her master from field to field, regulating her flight by his movements, always ready for a stoop when the quarry is sprung. The fact that she can be thus educated for her work shows that her behaviour is plastic, and can be moulded by intelligence. Experimental conditions reveal the fact; but under nature the moulding influence of intelligence is presumably not less important, though it is more directly in line with the congenital instinctive tendencies.

That much of the behaviour of the higher animals is guided by experience similar to that which plays so large a part in their training under the experimental conditions of domestication is generally admitted. But what are the range and limits of animal intelligence, and whether it attains the level of rational conduct, in the restricted sense of the term “rational,” are questions open to discussion, to which answers are more likely to be obtained through experiment than by chance observations.

Before giving some of the results of such experiment it will be well to revert to the distinction, which was drawn in the second chapter, between the lower or intelligent stage of mental development and the higher or rational stage. It will be remembered that rational processes were characterized by the fact that the situations contain the products of reflective thought, presumably absent in the earlier stages of development; that they were further characterized by a new purpose or end of consciousness, namely, to explain the situations which at an earlier stage are merely accepted as they are given in presentation or re-presentation; they require deliberate attention to the relationships which hold good among the several elements of successive situations; and they involve, so far as behaviour is concerned, the intentional application of an ideal scheme with the object of rational guidance.

On the other hand, the animal at the stage of intelligent behaviour deals with the circumstances of his comparatively simple life by making use of the particular situations which have been presented to consciousness in the course of his practical experience. If such an animal be placed in the midst of new circumstances he has to find out by a process of trial and error how they are to be met. After a longer or shorter period of trial, guided only by particular experiences, he chances to hit upon a mode of procedure which is successful. The successful act is then incorporated in a new situation; at first, perhaps, only incompletely. The association is eventually established by repetition, through which is acquired the habit of doing the right thing in the appropriate manner. Why he does this and not something else, in so far as he is intelligent and not rational, he probably neither knows nor has the wit to consider. The satisfaction of success suffices for intelligence as such. If the circumstances be so modified as to render the particular mode of meeting them ineffectual, after trying again and again in the old way, he will sometimes stumble upon the proper mode of overcoming the difficulty, and after doing so two or three times a new conscious situation involving the requisite associations will be established, and the appropriate behaviour will become habitual. But why this new mode of procedure rather than any other is adopted, intelligence as such does not know, because it does not analyze the situation and disentangle the essential relationships. The satisfaction of success again suffices. In a word, such an animal in the perceptual stage of mental development seems wanting in the power of reflection. He does not appear to show evidence of framing anything like a general scheme of knowledge which he can apply to the solution of particular problems, of a practical nature, involving difficulties and obstacles.

The method of intelligence—in the sense in which we are using this term—the method of varied trial and error with the utilization of chance success, is a lengthy and somewhat clumsy process; but it suffices. Now contrast it with the procedure of a rational animal, such as man is or may be. When he is confronted by a difficulty he is not content to meet it by trying this way, and that way, and another way, anyhow, and trusting to chance to bring success, but he considers the problem in all its relations with a view to ascertaining the essential nature of the difficulty. For each attempted mode of meeting the case he has a definite reason. He knows why he does this and not that. He has a plan or scheme which he puts into execution. And if it fail, he is not content till he finds out wherein the failure lay. This enables him to plan a better scheme. He sees why it is better; and if at last he be successful by a happy hit, as in the chance procedure of intelligence, he looks for the reason of it. And seeing why this fortunate attempt, unlike his previous efforts, just meets the case, he repeats it because he perceives that herein lies the essential solution of the difficulty. Both in the case of intelligence and in that of reason, as here distinguished, present procedure is based upon past experience; but reason has built upon the foundations thus laid an orderly scheme, and knows its whys and wherefores, while intelligence is at the mercy of chance associations. The reason for success it has not the wit to assign.

The essential difference between the two cases may be put in another way by saying that the intelligent being forms sensory impressions and sensory images linked together by bonds of association, combining and coalescing to constitute a conscious situation effective in behaviour under the guiding influence of pleasure and pain; while the rational being not only does all this, but goes further. He fixes his attention on the way in which the elements in the situation are connected and related; he builds an ideal framework on which the sensory impressions are set or move in an orderly manner. And it is this scheme, fashioned by reason and transforming the situation, which he utilizes in dealing with difficulties.

Yet another way of putting the same essential distinction is to say that intelligence deals with pictures, either directly presented to the senses or called up in re-presentation. If we state the matter thus, however, we must remember that the “pictures” may be painted in colours supplied by any of the senses; and that smells, tastes, sounds, touches, pressures, limb-movements, and so forth, are elements in the pictured product. Bearing this in mind, we may say that intelligence deals with sensory impressions and their revived images in concrete and particular situations; while reason analyzes the pictures, and extracts from them general notions in terms of which the pictures may be explained. For example, we picture a stone falling to the earth; but we explain it by the general notion of gravitative attraction. The conception forms part of our ideal scheme of knowledge, which is not itself picturable, though this or that example of its action may be presented or re-presented in sensory imagery.

Once more we may say—and this way of looking at the question arises naturally out of what has gone before—that intelligence deals with concrete examples, and does not rise to the abstract and general rule. The ideal scheme of reason is the result of abstraction and generalization. It is a framework of conceptions which can be applied to the particular facts which fall under observation to see whether it fits and meets the case. Intelligence has to deal with the facts as they present themselves, without the aid of an organized system of knowledge built up into an ideal scheme.