Another coon was given a food-box with a door fastened by a simple latch. The youngest child would have merely looked at the latch, lifted it with his hand, and taken his food. But it was too much for the coon. He scratched and scrambled and hunted all over the box; until in the violence of his efforts he fell off the top of the box and landed on his head. As he stood on his head in front of the box, pawing the air with all four legs at once, one hind foot chanced to catch on the latch, lifted it, and opened the door. So Mr. Coon got his dinner.
Next time he was hungry, what does he do but go and stand on his head in front of the box, and paw the air with his hind legs, till he hit the latch again, and got another dinner. In the course of half-a-dozen trials, the coon learned to put his paw in exactly the right place, and give just the right push to open the door at once. But all the time he continued to stand on his head to do it. It was not until the twenty-eighth attempt and the twenty-eighth dinner, that it occurred to the silly coon that he could lift the latch just as well standing right side up.
Still another student of animals has been testing rats. Now an old rat is proverbial for wisdom; they laugh at cats, and it is pretty nearly impossible to get them to go near a trap, unless they are nearly starved. Let’s see, then, some things that a wise rat does not know.
Rats, of course, are used to running thru holes in the walls of houses, drain pipes, and the like, and are clever enough at finding their way in such places. So this man made a set of passages, such as a rat would naturally live in, and put seven rats in it. These soon became at home, and would find their way at once thru the maze of passages to the spot where their food was kept, running at full speed. Then the man took a long straight passage with a sharp turn at the end, and shortened it up by three feet. The next time the rats were put in, they all started pell-mell for their food; but when they came to the shortened passage, tho it was broad day light, every one of the rats ran smash against the end wall; and it actually took as long for them to learn that the length of the passage had been changed, as it took to learn the way round in the first place. But when the passage was made longer than before, the rats ran their customary distance to the place where the side opening used to be; then turned and butted into the side wall. This they did time after time, and even after they had learned to turn at the right point one day, they were just as likely to butt the wall the next. Really, they did not seem able to think about the matter at all.
But I am saving the strangest case for the last. This is about a cow. The cow used to make a great deal of fuss for her owner because she would not stand to be milked unless she were allowed all the while to lick her calf. One day the calf died; then there was much trouble, and no milk at all. But the farmer understood the ways of cows. He took the calf’s skin, stuffed it with hay, and gave the mother that to lick at milking time. To be sure, the stuffed calf had neither head nor legs and didn’t look the least bit like a calf—but it was all right to lick, and the mother cow licked it contentedly and gave down her milk as before. One day, when the tender parent was caressing her little calf at milking time, she happened to unrip the seam where the skin was sewed up. The hay fell out; and the mother cow, without the slightest surprise or agitation, proceeded to devour the unexpected provender, and never left off until the little hay calf had entirely disappeared down her throat.
I understand that this practice of giving a cow the stuffed skin of its calf is the regular thing in some countries, where the cattle are wilder than with us. I am told also that a like device has to be employed with camels. Each camel refuses to be milked, unless she can have her little one to lick. But the natives are accustomed to kill and eat the little camel, and give the mother its skin. This answers exactly as well; but if they try to palm off another skin on her, she knows the difference at once. Out of a hundred living camel-calves or their stuffed skins, the mother camel will always pick her own, and never be content with any other. Yet she doesn’t bother her head over the difference between her live calf, and its dead skin lacking legs and head, with the hay stuffing sticking out of the seams! Truly, animals are as stupid about some matters as they are wise about others.
XVII
How We Differ From The Animals
How do we differ from all other living creatures? Not in having hands; the monkeys have four hands, and if hands were the test of humanity, would be twice as human as we. Not in lacking coats of fur or features; pigs and elephants have skins as bare as ours. Nor is it that we walk on two legs; the birds do that, and the kangaroos. The difference is not even in the fact that we have no tails; for some of the apes also are as tailless as we are. Besides, when you come to think of it, most animals do not have tails—insects do not, nor clams and oysters, nor sea-anemones and star-fish, nor corals and sponges, nor frogs and toads, nor jelly-fish; even the birds, unless you count the feathers as part, do not have tails that one could really wag.
After all, too, we human beings do have tails; or at least a string of tail bones, an inch or more long, tucked away inside our skins. This coccyx bone, as it is called, is the place where it hurts so fearsomely when you sit down too hard on a pebble or a bicycle bar, and it catches you in one little spot just at the end of the back bone. When that happens, you may remember that the difference between you and the animals is not altogether in tail bones. Once in a while, too, men do have veritable tails, as large as a finger, and round and curly like a pig’s.