The Dawn of Reason; or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals

by Jr. James Weir

"October 19.—I put one in a small bottle with a friend from nest A. They did not show any enmity. I then put in a stranger, and one of them immediately began to fight with her."[37]

These experiments show that Myrmica ruginodis recognize their kin at sight, and that they are able to remember and recognize one another after long separations.

Lubbock states that Lasius flavus accept others of the same species as their friends, no matter how great a distance lies between the nests. His experiments were made with ants taken from contiguous nests as well as those located some distance apart, and, in one instance, with ants taken from a nest in another part of the country. He states that, in the last-mentioned experiment, "in one or two cases they seemed to be attacked, though so feebly that I could not feel sure about it; but in no case were the ants killed."[38]

My experiments and observations with this ant are directly the reverse. As long as the individuals experimented with belonged to contiguous nests, and were, probably, derived from the same root-stock, there was no fighting; but, in the case of ants taken from opposite sides of the house, which, probably, sprang from two different sources, there was, invariably, much fighting, in which not a few of the combatants lost their lives. Whether or not the American species of Lasius flavus are naturally more pugnacious than the English species, I know not; if they are, then this fact will account for the difference in behavior of the two species to a certain extent, though not entirely.

Others of the social Hymenoptera—for instance, bees and wasps—remember kindred. On one occasion, I clipped the wings of a wasp, and, after she had learned that she could no longer fly, placed her on a strange nest. She was at once attacked, and was soon stung to death. I kept a wasp confined in a glass for three weeks, carefully feeding her meanwhile, and then placed her on the nest from which she had been taken. She was at once recognized by the other wasps, which caressed her with their antennæ, and licked her with their tongues.

Bees, though they seem able to recognize kindred, and to remember them also for some time, do not show these faculties of the mind as plainly as do wasps and ants. This is probably due to the fact that bees are a later development, socially speaking, and are not as psychically mature as the other social insects.

In the higher animals the memory of kindred, especially in monkeys, is quite well developed, and is so well known that it does not need demonstration.

Memory of Strangers (Animals other than Kin).—The recognition of enemies can be noticed in animals quite low in the scale of life, and, although this psychical phase is almost universally instinctive, it carries with it certain elements of consciousness. As we ascend the scale, however, we discover that certain animals are capable of remembering other animals after a hostile encounter with them; thus, a pet squirrel remembered the turtle which had bitten him after two years had elapsed, and a white mouse showed, very plainly, that he had not forgotten the pet crow from whose clutches he had been rescued, even after three years had passed by. I might enumerate quite a number of instances like these, but think it hardly necessary; any one who has paid any attention to natural history has seen evidences of this phase of memory in animals. I will, however, give one more illustration of this form of memory, which, in my opinion, is quite remarkable. In my front yard, last summer, there dwelt a large colony of bumblebees. One day, in a moment of idleness, I tossed a tennis ball, with which I was teaching a young dog to retrieve, into the nest. The dog dashed after it, scratching up the ground and barking loudly; immediately the bees sallied forth, pounced upon the dog and stung him severely. During the entire summer this dog could never come near the nest without being stung; his companions, two in number, trotted to and fro on the path near which the nest was located without being noticed in the slightest degree by the bees. The disturber, and, to them, would-be ravisher and destroyer of their home, however, was always assailed and put to flight. He eventually learned to give that portion of the yard a wide berth, and could not be coaxed into coming within thirty yards of the home of his savage little foes.

Instances of memory of individuals, incited by friendship or regard, between animals of different species is quite rare among the lower animals (insects, reptiles, etc.), yet, I have fortunately been able to note this phase of memory as occurring in several animals, comparatively speaking, low in the scale of intellectual development. I have every reason for believing that even the toad remembers individuals, at least, it remembers the sound of some particular voice or whistle. It most certainly remembers localities and places, and that, too, when unaided by its sense of direction which it possesses in a high degree. A toad which I had under observation, and which I was in the habit of feeding, would come at my call or whistle, and this it learned to do after only two weeks of teaching. It would do this even in the middle of a hot summer day (toads feed at dusk and during the night), showing, thereby, that it remembered that this call meant food.

I have strong reasons for believing that certain spiders possess this phase of memory; at least, a certain lycosid once evinced such unmistakable evidences of a recognition of my individual person, that more than one observer became convinced that she knew me from other people. At the time these observations were made, I was confined to the house by sickness.