Animal Intelligence / The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.

by George John Romanes

Similarly, in the same periodical (vol. xx., p. 220), Mr. Henry Clark writes:—

Some years ago a fine arts exhibition was held at Derby. A portrait of a Derby artist (Wright) was thus signalised:—'The artist's pet dog distinguished this from a lot of pictures upon the floor of the studio by licking the face of the portrait.'

Again, I learn from Dr. Samuel Wilks, F.R.S., that a friend of his, whom I shall call Mrs. E., has a terrier which recognised her portrait. 'The portrait is now (1881) hanging in the Royal Academy. When it first arrived home the dog barked at it, as it did at strangers; but after a day or two, when Mrs. E. opened the door to show the portrait to some friends, the dog went straight to the picture and licked the hand. The picture is a three-quarter length portrait of a lady with the hand at the bottom of the picture.'

Lastly, my sister, who is a very conscientious and accurate observer, witnessed a most unmistakable recognition of portraits as representative of persons on the part of a small but intelligent terrier of her own. At my request she committed the facts to writing shortly after they occurred. The following is her statement of them:—

I have a small terrier who attained the age of eight months without ever having seen a large picture. One day three nearly life-sized portraits were placed in my room during his absence. Two were hung up, and one left standing against the wall on the floor awaiting the arrival of a picture-rod. When the dog entered the room he appeared much alarmed by the sight of the pictures, barking in a terrified manner first at one and then at another. That is to say, instead of attacking them in an aggressive way with tail erect, as he would have done on thus encountering a strange person, he barked violently and incessantly at some distance from the paintings, with tail down and body elongated, sometimes bolting under the chairs and sofas in the extremity of his fear, and continuing barking from there. Thinking it might be merely the presence of strange objects in the room which excited him, I covered the faces of the portraits with cloths and turned the face of the one on the floor to the wall. The dog soon after emerged from his hiding-place, and having looked intently at the covered pictures and examined the back of the frame on the ground, became quite quiet and contented. I then uncovered one of the pictures, when he immediately flew at it, barking in the same frightened manner as before. I then re-covered that one and took the cover off another. The dog left the covered one and rushed at the one which was exposed. I then turned the face of the one on the floor to the room, and he flew at that with increased fierceness. This I did many times, covering and uncovering each picture alternately, always with the same result. It was only when all three paintings were uncovered at the same time, and he saw one looking at him in whatever direction he turned, that he became utterly terrified. He continued in this state for nearly an hour, at the end of which time, although evidently very nervous and apt to start, he ceased to bark. After that day he never took any more notice of the pictures during the three months he remained in the house. He was then absent from the house for seven months. On his return he went with me into the room where the portraits were hung, immediately on his arrival. He was evidently again much startled on first seeing them, for he rushed at one, barking as he had done on the first occasion, but he only gave three or four barks when he ran back to me with the same apologetic manner as he has when he has barked at a well-known friend by mistake.

It will have been observed that in all these cases the portraits, when first recognised as bearing resemblance to human beings, were placed on the floor, or in the ordinary line of the dog's sight. This is probably an important condition to the success of the recognition. That it certainly was so in the case of my sister's terrier was strikingly proved on a subsequent occasion, when she took the animal into a picture-shop where there were a number of portraits hanging round the walls, and also one of Carlyle standing on the floor. The terrier did not heed those upon the walls, but barked excitedly at the one upon the floor. This case was further interesting from the fact that there were a number of purchasers in the shop who were, of course, strangers to the terrier; yet he took no notice of them, although so much excited by the picture. This shows that the pictorial illusion was not so complete as to make the animal suppose the portrait to be a real person; it was only sufficiently so to make it feel a sense of bewildered uncertainty at the kind of life-in-death appearance of the motionless representation.

If, notwithstanding all this body of mutually corroborative cases, it is still thought incredible that dogs should be able to recognise pictorial representations,[268] we should do well to remember that this grade of mental evolution is reached very early in the psychical development of the human child. In my next work I shall adduce evidence to show that children of one year, or even less, are able to distinguish pictures as representations of particular objects, and will point at the proper pictures when asked to show these objects.

Coming now to cases more distinctly indicative of reason in the strict sense of the word, numberless ordinary acts performed by dogs indisputably show that they possess this faculty. Thus, for instance, Livingstone gives the following observation.[269] A dog tracking his master along a road came to a place where three roads diverged. Scenting along two of the roads and not finding the trail, he ran off on the third without waiting to smell. Here, therefore, is a true act of inference. If the track is not on A or B, it must be on C, there being no other alternative.

Again, it is not an unusual thing for intelligent dogs, who know that their masters do not wish to take them out, to leave the house and run a long distance in the direction in which they suppose their masters are about to go, in order that when they are there found the distance may be too great for their masters to return home for the purpose of shutting them up. I have myself known several terriers that would do this, and one of the instances I shall give in extenso (quoted from an account which I published at the time in 'Nature'); for I think it displays remarkably complex processes of far-seeing calculation:—

The terrier in question followed a conveyance from the house in which I resided in the country, to a town ten miles distant. He only did this on one occasion, and about five months afterwards was taken by train to the same town as a present to some friends there. Shortly afterwards I called upon these friends in a different conveyance from the one which the dog had previously followed; but the latter may have known that the two conveyances belonged to the same house. Anyhow, after I had put up the horses at an inn, I spent the morning with the terrier and his new masters, and in the afternoon was accompanied by them to the inn. I should have mentioned that the inn was the same as that at which the conveyance had been put up on the previous occasion, five months before. Now, the dog evidently remembered this, and, reasoning from analogy, inferred that I was about to return. This is shown by the fact that he stole away from our party—although at what precise moment he did so I cannot say, but it was certainly after we had arrived at the inn, for subsequently we all remembered his having entered the coffee-room with us. Now, not only did he infer from a single precedent that I was going home, and make up his mind to go with me, but he also further reasoned thus:—'As my previous master lately sent me to town, it is probable that he does not want me to return to the country; therefore, if I am to seize this opportunity of resuming my poaching life, I must now steal a march upon the conveyance. But not only so, my former master may possibly pick me up and return with me to my proper owners; therefore I must take care only to intercept the conveyance at a point sufficiently far without the town to make sure that he will not think it worth his while to go back with me.'