Animals of experience (including men) are more skilful in adjusting themselves to environmental exigencies than the young and inexperienced, because of their store of initial impressions. It is a matter of common observation that young animals are more easily caught or killed or otherwise victimised than the old and experienced. Many animals, however, (and a good many men) are able to profit by a single impression. One dose of tartar emetic is generally sufficient to cure an egg-sucking dog, and it is a very stupid canine indeed that does not understand perfectly after one or two experiences with a porcupine or an unsavory skunk. ‘The burnt child dreads the fire,’ but so does the burnt puppy. Rengger states that his Paraguay monkeys, after cutting themselves only once with any sharp tool, would not touch it again, or would handle it with the greatest caution.[1e] Older trout are more wary than young ones, and fishes that have been much hunted and deceived become suspicious of traps. Rats, martins, and other animals cannot long be trapped in the same way, and partridges and other birds seldom fly against telegraph-wires the second season after the wires are put up. These animals, however, cannot learn to avoid these dangers from experience, for only a few of them are ever caught or struck. They must learn it from observing their unfortunate companions. Everyone who has read the story of Lobo, the big gray wolf of the Carrumpaw, cannot but wonder at the remarkable shrewdness shown by this old leader in baffling for years the tigers that hung upon his tracks.[9] Nansen states that the seals, before man invaded the Arctics, occupied the inner ice-floes to avoid the polar bear, but after man came they took to living on the outer floes in order to escape the persecutions of this new and more fearful enemy. Domestic animals, when first turned out in new regions, often die from eating poisonous weeds, but in some way soon learn to avoid them. Many animals, when pursuing other animals, or when being pursued, display a knowledge of facts very little understood by the majority of mankind, such as of places where scent lies or is obliterated, and the effects of wind in carrying evidence of their presence to their enemies. The hunted roebuck or hare will make circles, double on its own tracks, take to water, and fling itself for considerable distances through the air as cleverly as if it had read up all the theory of scent in a book. According to the London Spectator one of the large African elephants in the Zoological Gardens of that city restores to its entertainers all the bits of food which on being thrown to him fall alike out of his reach and theirs. He points his proboscis straight at the food, and blows it along the floor to the feet of those who have thrown it. He clearly knows what he is about, for if he does not blow hard enough to land the food the first time, he blows harder and harder until he does. The cacadoos (parrots) of Australia, before descending upon a field or orchard in search of food, send out a scouting party to reconnoitre the region and see that ‘all is well.’ Sometimes a second party is sent. If the report is favourable, the whole band advance and plunder the field in short order. These birds are exceedingly wary and intelligent, and seldom make mistakes. But ‘if man once succeeds in killing one of them, they become so prudent and watchful that they henceforward baffle all stratagems’.[3c] A short time ago a parrot at Washington, New Jersey, saved the life of its owner by summoning the neighbours to his relief. Cries of ‘Murder!’ ‘Help!’ ‘Come quick!’ coming from the home of the parrot, attracted the attention of neighbours, who ran to the house to find out the cause. ‘They found the owner of the parrot lying on the floor unconscious, bleeding from a great gash in his neck. He had been repairing the ceiling, and had fallen and struck his head against the stove. It required six stitches to close the wound, and the surgeon said that in only a few minutes the injured man would have been dead. A few years ago this parrot’s screams awakened its owner in time to arouse his neighbours and save them from a fire which started in the house next door.’
A friend of mine, who is thoroughly reliable, tells me that when he was a student at the University of Michigan a few years ago one of the professors of zoology there had a dog who was used by the department for experiments in digestion. The dog was compelled to wear a tube opening downward out of his stomach, and soon grew very weak and emaciated from the constant loss of food, which leaked out through this tube. After a time, however, the dog was observed to be growing unaccountably hale and strong. He was watched, and the poor creature was found to have struck upon an ingenious expedient to save his life. On eating his meal, he would go out to the barn, and, in order to prevent the artificial escape of the contents of his stomach, would lie down flat on his back between two boxes and remain there until his digested food had passed safely beyond the pylorus.
A few months ago, John, one of the monkeys at Lincoln Park, Chicago, was suffering from a terrible abscess on the cheek, and an operation became necessary in order to save the little fellow’s life. It was a pathetic sight to see the look of trust in the monkey’s eyes when the surgeon was ready to begin the operation, and the courage and fortitude displayed by the sufferer were almost human. At the first touch of the knife the monkey pressed his head hard against the knee of the assistant and grabbed the forefinger of each of the assistant’s hands, just as a person does who is about to undergo a painful operation. The swelling was first cut open and washed with antiseptic, when the cheek-bone was scraped and a small piece of it removed. After being again washed in antiseptic, the wound was sewed up, and John was lifted gently back into his cage—not, however, until he had licked the hands of the surgeon and kissed his face in gratitude. The little hero never uttered a sound from the time the knife first touched his face until he was put back into his cage. A similar act of intelligence is recorded of an orang. Having been once bled on account of illness, and not feeling well some time afterward, this orang went from one person to another, and, pointing to the vein in his arm, signified his desire to have the operation repeated. Both of these instances are examples of reason of a very high order—of a higher order, indeed, than many children and some grown people exhibit in similar circumstances. The chimpanzee, Mafuca, learned how to unlock her cage, and stole the key and hid it under her arm for future use. After watching the carpenter boring holes with his brad-awl, she took the brad-awl and bored holes in her table. She poured out milk for herself at meals, and always carefully stopped pouring before the cup ran over.
When baboons go on marauding expeditions, they show that they realise perfectly what they are doing by moving with great stealth. Not a sound is uttered. If any thoughtless youngster so far forgets the necessities of the occasion as to utter a single chatter, he is given a reminder in the shape of a box on the ear. ‘A certain Mr. Cops, who had a young orang, gave it half an orange one day, and put the other half away out of its sight on a high press, and lay down himself on the sofa. But the ape’s movements, attracting his attention, he only pretended to go to sleep. The creature came cautiously and satisfied himself that his master was asleep, then climbed up the press, ate the rest of the orange, carefully hid the peel among the shavings in the grate, examined the pretended sleeper again, and then went and lay down on his own bed.’ This incident is recorded by Tylor in his ‘Anthropology.’ ‘And such behaviour,’ he adds, ‘is to be explained only by supposing a train of thought to pass through the brain of the ape somewhat similar to what we ourselves call reason.’ These instances of undoubted intelligence and thought might be added to almost without number if there was room. Every person nearly who has been in the world any length of time, and has had occasion to associate with these so-called ‘machines,’ has seen for himself, often unexpectedly, many flashes of brightness among them.
It has been said that man differs from other animals, and is superior to them in the fact that he modifies his environment while other animals do not, but are modified by environment. Mr. Lester F. Ward makes this distinction in his ‘Pure Sociology.’ The distinction is no nearer the truth than other distinctions of like character that have from time to time been drawn between men and other animals. It is not much more than half true, if it is that, and does not by any means deserve the italics awarded to it by this writer. Many races of non-human beings have a far greater influence on their environment than many races of men have. Many tribes of men wander about naked, build no habitations, make no weapons, and feed upon the fruits, roots, insects, and such other chance morsels as they can pick up from day to day in their wanderings. Such races are far inferior in constructive activity to the birds, who build elaborate houses, and to the beavers, who not only construct substantial dwellings, but dam rivers, and cut down trees and transport them long distances, and dig artificial waterways, to be used as aids in their engineering enterprises. Compare the elaborate compartments of the Australian bower-birds, surrounded with ornamented and carefully-kept grounds, with the lean-to of many savage tribes, made by sticking two or three palm-leaves in the ground and leaning them against a pole. Even ants plant crops, make clearings, build roads and tunnels, etc. It must be remembered, too, that, however affirmative and masterful a race of men may become, it never succeeds, and never can succeed, in emancipating itself from the influences of environment. It is true that with the growth of intelligence among organic forms there has been a constant transfer of influence from the environment to the organism; but this transfer began, not with man by any means, but low down in the scale of animal life.
It has been said that man is the only animal that uses tools. But this is not true either, for animals as low in the scale of development as insects have been known to use tools. At least two different observers testify to having seen ground-wasps use small stones as hammers in packing the dirt firmly over their nests. Spiders use stones as weights to steady their webs in times of storm. Orangs throw sticks and stones at their pursuers, and certain tribes of Abyssinian baboons, when they go to battle with each other, carry stones as missiles. Monkeys often use stones to crack nuts with, and tame monkeys know very well how to use a hammer when it is given to them. In the London Zoological Gardens a monkey with poor teeth kept a stone hidden in the straw of its cage to crack its nuts with, and it would not allow any other monkey to touch the stone. ‘Here,’ says Darwin, in speaking of this case, ‘is the idea of property.’ Monkeys also use sticks as levers in prying open chests and lifting heavy objects. Cuvier’s orang used to carry a chair across the room and stand on it to lift the door-latch. Chimpanzees, who are very fond of making a noise, have been seen standing around a hollow log in the forest, beating it with sticks; and if we are to believe Emin Pasha, these ingenious parodies of men sometimes carry torches when they go at night on foraging expeditions. The Indian elephant, when travelling, will sometimes turn aside and break off a leafy branch from a roadside tree and carry it along in its trunk to sweep off the flies. As Dr. Wesley Mills says in his work on ‘The Nature and Development of Animal Intelligence,’ ‘It was formerly believed that animals cannot reason, but only those persons who do not themselves reason about the subject, with the facts before them, can any longer occupy such a position.’
[1a.] [1b.] [1c.] [1d.] [1e.] Romanes: Animal Intelligence; New York, 1899.
[2.] Cornish: Animals of To-day; London, 1898.
[3a.] [3b.] [3c.] Kropotkin: Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution; New York, 1902.
[4a.] [4b.] Darwin: Descent of Man, 2nd edit.; London, 1874.
[5a.] [5b.] Romanes: Mental Evolution in Animals; New York, 1898.
[6.] Morgan: Animal Behaviour; London, 1900.
[7.] Brehm: Thierleben; Leipzig, 1880.
[8.] Huxley: On the Origin of Species, lecture iii.
[9.] Thompson: Wild Animals I have Known; New York, 1900.
V. Conclusion.
It is enough. The ancient gulf scooped by human conceit between man and the other animals has been effectually and forever filled up. The human species constitutes but one branch in the gigantic arbour of life. And all the merit and all the feeling and all the righteousness of the world are not, as we have been accustomed to aver, congested into this one branch. And all of the weakness and deformity are not, as we have also been anxious to believe, found elsewhere. The reluctance of wrinkles and deformities to appear in the pictures of men, and of strength and beauty to appear in the representations of the other races of the earth, is to be accounted for by the highly elucidative fact that man is the universal portrait-painter. There is no one to tell man what he is and how he strikes others, and hence he is the ‘paragon of creation’—the inter-stellar pet, half clay and half halo—the image and pride of the gods—the flower and gem of the eternal spheres. Man is the only professional linguist in the universe. And it is fortunate for him that he is. For, if he were not, his auditories would be compelled to carry to his perceptive centres a great many sentiments he now never hears. He would be likely to hear a good deal said, and said with a good deal of feeling, about perpendicular brigand—grandiloquent kakistocrat swelling with self-righteousness—rhetorical hideful wrapped in pillage and gorged with decomposition—a voluble and sanctimonious squash with two sticks in it. The definition of man as it appears in the dictionary of the donkey probably runs something like this: ‘Man is an animal that walks on its hind-legs, invents adjectives with which to praise itself, and displays its greatest utility in proving that all sharks are not aquatic.’ We know what a lion looks like when painted by a man, but human eyes have never yet been allumined by the sardonic lineaments of a man painted by a lion. Being boiled alive in order to look well as corpses in store-windows, and having wooden pegs thrust into our muscles and left there to rot for a week or two to keep us in our agony from doing something desperate—we know what these experiences are like when they are delegated to lobsters, and we take no more serious part in them than to insure their infliction, but we are too fervent barbarians to bother our heads about what they are like from the crustacean point of view.
Let us be candid. Men are not all gentle men and humane, and not-men are not all inhuman. There are reptiles in broadcloth, and there are warm and generous hearts among those peoples who have so long suffered from human prejudice and ferocity. Let us label beings by what they are—by the souls that are in them and the deeds they do—not by their colour, which is pigment, nor by their composition, which is clay. There are philanthropists in feathers and patricians in fur, just as there are cannibals in the pulpit and saurians among the money-changers. The golden rule may sometimes be more religiously observed in the hearts and homes of outcast quadrupeds than in the palatial lairs of bipeds. The horse, who suffers and serves and starves in silence, who endures daily wrongs of scanty and irregular meals, excessive burdens and mangled flanks, who forgets cruelty and ingratitude, and does good to them that spitefully use him, and submits to crime without resistance, misunderstanding without murmur, and insult without resentment, is a better Christian, a better exemplar of the Sermon on the Mount, than many church-goers, in spite of the creeds and interdictions of men. And the animal who goes to church on Sundays, wearing the twitching skins and plundered plumage of others, and wails long prayers and mumbles meaningless rituals, and gives unearned guineas to the missionary, and on week-days cheats and impoverishes his neighbours, glorifies war, and tramples under foot the most sacred principles of morality in his treatment of his non-human kindred, is a cold, hard-hearted brute, in spite of the fact that he is cunning and vainglorious, and towers about on his hinders.