Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

Here, again, it is the "abstract reasoning" that I question. Do the clever foxes resemble the intelligent workman A, or the abstract reasoner B? I believe that their actions are the result of perceptual inferences. They adopt their cunning devices after one or more foxes have been shot. Their keen perceptions (let me repeat that the perceptions of wild animals are extraordinarily keen) lead them to see that this food, quiet as it seems, has to be taken with caution.

With regard to the devices adopted, I think we need further information. Do Arctic foxes tunnel in the snow for any other purposes? What is the proportion of those who adopt this device to those who gnaw through the string? Have careful and reliable observers watched the foxes? or are their actions, as described by Dr. Rae, inferences, on the part of the trappers, from the state of matters they found when they came round to examine their traps? Without fuller information on these points, it is undesirable to discuss the case further. Even if we had full details, however, we should be as little able to get at the process of perceptual inference in the case of the fox as we are in the case of the intelligent workman, who sees the right thing to do, but cannot tell you how he reached the conclusion.

No one can watch the actions of a clever dog without seeing how practical he is. He is carrying your stick in his mouth, and comes to a stile. A young puppy will go blundering with the stick against the stile, and, perhaps, go back home, or get through the bars and leave the stick behind. But practical experience has taught the clever dog better. He lays down the stick, takes it by one end, and draws it backwards through the opening at one side of the stile. A friend tells me of a dog which was carrying a basket of eggs. He came to a stile which he was accustomed to leap, poked his head through the stile, deposited the basket, ran back a few yards, took the stile at a bound, picked up the basket, and continued on his course. "Intelligent fellow!" I exclaim. "Yes," says my friend, "he knew the eggs would break if he attempted to leap with the basket!" This is just the little gratuitous, unwarrantable, human touch which is so often filled in, no doubt in perfect good faith, by the narrators of anecdotes. Against such interpolations we must be always on our guard. It is so difficult not to introduce a little dose of reason.

Mr. Romanes obtained from the Zoological Gardens at Regent's Park a very intelligent capuchin monkey, on which his sister made a series of most interesting and valuable observations. This monkey on one occasion got hold of a hearth-brush, and soon found the way to unscrew the handle. After long trial, he succeeded in screwing it in again, and throughout his efforts always turned the handle the right way for screwing. Having once succeeded, he unscrewed it and screwed it in again several times in succession, each time with greater ease. A month afterwards he unscrewed the knob of the fender and the bell-handle beside the mantelpiece. Commenting on these actions, Mr. Romanes speaks[GY] of "the keen satisfaction which this monkey displayed when he had succeeded in making any little discovery, such as that of the mechanical principle of the screw."

I once watched, near the little village of Ceres, in South Africa, a dung-beetle trundling his dung-ball over an uneven surface of sand. The ball chanced to roll into a sand hollow, from which the beetle in vain attempted to push it out. The sides were, however, too steep. Leaving the ball, he butted down the sand at one side of the hollow, so as to produce an inclined plane of much less angle, up which he then without difficulty pushed his unsavoury sphere.

Now, it seems to me that, if we say, with Mr. Romanes, that the brown capuchin discovered the principle of the screw, we must also say that the dung-beetle that I observed in South Africa was acquainted with the principle of the inclined plane. Such an expression, I contend, involves an unsatisfactory misuse of terms. A mechanical principle is a concept,[GZ] and as such, in my opinion, beyond the reach of the brute—monkey or beetle. That of which the monkey is capable is the perceptual recognition of the fact that certain actions performed in certain ways produce certain results. Why they do so he neither knows nor cares to know. What the brown capuchin discovered was not the principle of the screw, but that the action of screwing produced the results he desired—a very different matter. My friend, Mr. S. H. Swayne, tells me that the elephant at the Clifton Zoo, having taking a tennis-racket from a boy who had been plaguing him, broke it by leaning it against a step and deliberately stepping on it in the middle, where it was unsupported. A most intelligent action. And it would have been a capital piece of exercise for the lad's reasoning power, had he been required to analyze the matter, to show why the elephant's action had the desired effect, and set forth the principle involved. I do not think the elephant himself possesses the faculty requisite for such a piece of reasoning. He is content with the practical success of his actions; principles are beyond him.

I will now give two instances of intelligence in vertebrates which exemplify phases of inference somewhat different from those which we have so far considered. Mr. Watson, in his "Reasoning Power of Animals,"[HA] tells of an elephant which was suffering from eye-trouble, and nearly blind. A Dr. Webb operated on one eye, the animal being made to lie down for the purpose. The pain was intense, and the great beast uttered a terrific roar. But the effect was satisfactory, for the sight was partially restored. On the following day the elephant lay down of himself, and submitted quietly to a similar operation on the other eye. No doubt the elephant's action here was, in part, the result of its wonderful docility and training. But there was also probably the inference that, since Dr. Webb had already given him relief, he would do so again. The anticipation of relief outmastered the anticipation of immediate discomfort or pain. I do not think, however, that any one is likely to contend that any rational analysis of the phenomena is necessarily involved in the elephant's behaviour.

The other instance I will quote was communicated by Mr. George Bidie to Nature.[HB] He there gives an account of a favourite cat which, during his absence, was much plagued by two boys. About a week before his return the cat had kittens, which she hid from her tormentors behind the book-shelves in the library. But when he returned she took them one by one from this retreat, and carried them to the corner of his dressing-room where previous litters had been deposited and nursed. Here abnormal circumstances and the reign of anarchy and persecution forced her to adopt a hiding-place where she might bring forth her young; but the return of normal conditions, sovereignty, and order led her to take up her old quarters under the protection of her master. Now, look at the description I have given in explanation of her conduct. See how it bristles with conceptual terms: "abnormal," with its correlative "normal;" "anarchy and persecution," "protection" and "order." All this, I believe, is mine, and not the cat's. For her there was a practical perception, in the one case of plaguing boys, in the other case of protecting master; and her action was the direct outcome of these perceptions through the employment of her intelligence.

Some stress has been laid on the occasional use of tools by animals. Mr. Peal[HC] observed a young elephant select a bamboo stake, and utilize it for detaching a huge elephant-leech which had fixed itself beneath the animal's fore leg near the body. "Leech-scrapers are," he says, "used by every elephant daily." He also saw an elephant select and trim a shoot from the jungle, and use it as a switch for flapping off flies. How far, we may ask, do such actions imply "a conscious knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained"?[HD] That, again, depends upon how much or how little is implied in this phrase.

A boy picks up a stone and throws it at a bird; he comes home and unlocks the garden-gate with a key; he enters his room, and removes the large "Liddell and Scott" which he uses as a convenient object to keep the lid of his play-box shut; he opens the box, and cuts himself a slice of cake with his pocket-knife. Then he goes to his tutor, who is teaching him about means and ends, and their relation to each other. He is told that the throwing of the stone was the means by which the death of the bird, or the end, was to be accomplished; that the use of the knife was the means by which the end in view, the severance of a piece of cake, was to be effected, and so on. He is led to see that the employment of a great many different things, differing in all sorts of ways—stones, keys, lexicons, and knives—may be classified together as means; and that a great many various effects, the death of a bird or the cutting a bit of cake, may be regarded as ends. He is told that when he thinks of the means and the ends together, as means and end, he will be thinking of their relationship. And it is explained to him that means and ends and their relationships are concepts, and involve the exercise of his reasoning powers.