Animal Life and Intelligence

by C. Lloyd Morgan

The animal is, in fact, a centre of continual waste and repair, of nicely balanced constructive and destructive processes. These are the invariable concomitants of life. Only so long as the constructive processes outbalance the destructive processes does growth continue. During the greater part of a healthy man's life, for example, the two processes, waste and repair, are in equilibrium. In old age, waste slowly but surely gains the mastery; and at death the balanced process ceases, decomposition sets in, and the elements of the body are scattered to the winds or returned to mother earth.

There are generally limits of growth which are not exceeded by any individuals of each particular kind of animal. But these limits are somewhat variable among the individuals of each kind. There are big men and little men, cart-horses and ponies, bloodhounds and lap-dogs. Wild animals, however, when fully grown, do not vary so much in size. The period of growth is also variable. Many of the lower backboned animals probably grow during the whole of life, but those which suckle their young generally cease growing after a fraction (in us from one-fourth to one-fifth) of the allotted span of life is past.

5. But animals not only grow—they also "grow up." The kitten grows up into a cat, which is somewhat different from the kitten. We speak of this growing up of an animal as its development. The proportion of the various parts and organs progressively alter. The relative lengths of the arms and legs, and the relative size of the head, are not the same in the infant as in the man or woman. Or, take a more marked case. In early spring there is plenty of frog-spawn in the ponds. A number of blackish specks of the size of mustard seeds are embedded in a jelly-like mass. They are frogs' eggs. They seem unorganized. But watch them, and the organization will gradually appear. The egg will be hatched, and give rise to a little fish-like organism. This will by degrees grow into a tadpole, with a powerful swimming tail and rounded head and body, but with no obvious neck between them. Legs will appear. The tail will shrink in size and be gradually drawn into the body. The tadpole will have developed into a minute frog.

There are many of the lower animals which go through a not less wonderful, if not more wonderful, metamorphosis. The butterfly or the silkworm moth, beginning life as a caterpillar and changing into a chrysalis, from which the perfect insect emerges, is a familiar instance. And hosts of the marine invertebrates have larval forms which have but little resemblance to their adult parents.

Such a series of changes as is undergone by the frog is called metamorphosis, which essentially consists in the temporary development of certain provisional embryonic organs (such as gills and a powerful swimming tail) and the appearance of adult organs (such as lungs and legs) to take their place. In metamorphosis these changes occur during the free life of the organism. But beneath the eggshell of birds and within the womb of mammals scarcely less wonderful changes are slowly but surely effected, though they are hidden from our view. There is no metamorphosis during the free life of the organism, but there is a prenatal transformation. The little embryo of a bird or mammal has no gills like the tadpole (though it has for a while gill-slits, pointing unmistakably to its fishy ancestry), but it has a temporary provisional breathing organ, called the allantois, pending the full development and functional use of its lungs.

All the higher animals, in fact—the dog, the chick, the serpent, the frog, the fish, the lobster, the butterfly, the worm, the star-fish, the mollusc, it matters not which we select—take their origin from an apparently unorganized egg. They all, therefore, pass during their growth from a comparatively simple condition to a comparatively complex condition by a process of change which is called development. But there are certain lowly forms, consisting throughout life of little more than specks of jelly-like life-stuff, in which such development, if it occurs at all, is not conspicuous.

6. They move about and sleep. This is true of our familiar domestic pets. The dog and the cat, after periods of restless activity, curl themselves up and sleep. The canary that has all day been hopping about its cage, or perhaps been allowed the freedom of the dining-room, tucks its head under its wing and goes to sleep. The cattle in the meadows, the sheep in the pastures, the horses in the stables, the birds in the groves, all show alternating periods of activity and repose. But is this true of all animals? Do all animals "move about and sleep"? The sedentary oyster does not move about from place to place; the barnacle and the coral polyp are fixed for the greater part of life; and whether these animals sleep or not it is very difficult to say. We must make our statement more comprehensive and more accurate.

If we throw it into the following form, it will be more satisfactory: Animals exhibit certain activities; and periods of activity alternate with periods of repose.

I shall have more to say hereafter concerning the activities of animals. Here I shall only say a few words concerning the alternating periods of repose. No organism can continue in ceaseless activity unbroken by any intervening periods of rest. Nor can the organs within an organism, however continuous their activity may appear, work on indefinitely and unrestfully. The heart is apparently restless in its activity. But in every five minutes of the continued action of the great force-pump (ventricle) of the heart, two only are occupied in the efforts of contraction and work, while three are devoted to relaxation and repose. What we call sleep may be regarded as the repose of the higher brain-centres after the activity of the day's work—a repose in which the voluntary muscles share.

The necessity for rest and repose will be readily understood. We have seen that the organism is a centre of waste and repair, of nicely balanced destructive and reconstructive processes. Now, activity is accompanied by waste and destruction. But it is clear that these processes, by which the substance of the body and its organs is used up, cannot go on for an indefinite period. There must intervene periods of reconstruction and recuperation. Hence the necessity of rest and repose alternating with the periods of more or less prolonged activity.