Natural Wonders

by Edwin Tenney Brewster

There is still another way in which we are apt, I think, to overestimate the senses of animals. We know, for example, that a horse will find his way home on a dark night, when everything is pitch black, and the driver cannot see his hand before his face. We say that the horse must have wonderful sight to make out his way under such conditions.

The real fact is, however, that the horse goes straight home thru darkness and storm, not because his eyesight is good, but because it is poor. He is at home in the night, because he does not see especially well by day. Those of you who have read The Last Days of Pompeii (as everybody should, for it is a famous old story) will remember that when, during the eruption of Vesuvius, the city was darkened under the shower of ashes, so that the inhabitants wandered about in the streets completely lost and quite unable to find their way out, the blind girl was able to lead her friends straight to safety. She had always lived in the dark, and could find her way as well one time as another.

So it is with horses and other animals. They seem to see in the dark, when they really hear and smell. A horse especially depends for finding his way, on his muscular sense. While his driver is noticing houses and trees and sign-boards, the horse is noticing so long a pull up one hill, so much holding back down another, so much level stretch between. The man is lost when he cannot see his houses and sign-boards; but the horse’s hills and levels are still there.

You remember the rats that, when the passage in their maze was shortened, kept running full tilt against the end wall; and then when the passage was lengthened, kept turning too soon and butting into the side wall. The rats were depending on their muscular sense. They remembered their way as so long a straight run, then a turn. They could run as fast by night as by day, because they didn’t do much seeing either time.

We also depend on our muscular sense far more than we commonly realize. Doubtless we all know how to button our coats. But how do we know? We certainly do not know how it tastes, smells or sounds. I don’t think we often remember how it looks. What we do remember is the feeling of the buttons and the movements we make. But if we try buttoning with the other hand, or put on a coat that buttons on the other side, we feel as awkward as can be. We can see as well as before; the touch has not changed; there never was any taste, hearing, or smell. The difference is in the movements. The muscular sense is learning something new.

How hard it is to bat on the other side, to use any tool the other way round, or make any change which is strange to the muscular sense. That shows how much we all rely on it. If we play the piano, and remember pieces without the notes, it is by this muscular sense that we do it. Our fingers seem to know the tune; and in a sense, they really do. Surely, if a musician can find his way back and forth over the keyboard thru a long piece of music, by means of his muscular sense, it is not so remarkable that a horse should find its way home over the road, or a rat scamper thru its holes, guided by the same means. They don’t really see in the dark, they simply turn on another sense. We have it also; but mostly we trust to our eyes, instead.

There is another sense, too, on which animals are more given to depending than we are, and that is the sense of equilibrium and direction, which, as I have explained, has its seat in a part of the inner ear. You know the game where you are blindfolded, turn around three times, and then try to blow out a candle. If your direction-sense is at fault, as it generally is, you turn too far or not far enough, blow where the candle isn’t, and make everybody laugh. Men who have to find their way about over a wild country, explorers and the like, sometimes have this direction sense trained to a wonderful degree. They simply cannot get lost anywhere. The rest of us, who depend on street numbers and the sign-boards on the lamp posts, don’t have much use for this sense, and so never really learn to use it. Many animals depend on it a good deal. They find their way home in truly marvelous ways; and we say it is “instinct.” It really isn’t instinct, but just plain sight, hearing, smell, and direction sense. Men who have practiced their direction sense can find their way quite as well.

So in general, the animals haven’t different senses from ours, nor on the whole better ones. But they use them differently; and cultivate some senses which we let go to waste. For the most part, the animals depend on smell far more than we. Smell is apt to be their principal sense, as sight is ours. Because they don’t use their eyes as much as we do, they notice and remember more of what they learn thru their sense of direction and their muscular sense. But a man who tries hard can usually beat any animal at his own game.

The fact is, I suppose, that we, men and beasts and birds alike, have all the senses there are, all that any sort of creature could have anyway. Then each, according to his nature and habits, uses one more than the rest, to think and remember with.