Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885

by Various

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THE SECOND RANK.

A ZOOLOGICAL STUDY.

It is a suggestive sign of our naturalistic times that so many first-class towns in Europe and America contemplate the establishment of Zoological Gardens. In the United States alone five cities have successfully executed that project. Travelling menageries have taken the place of the mediæval pageants. Natural histories begin to supersede the ghost-stories of our fathers. The scientific literature of four different nations has monographs on almost every known species of beasts and birds.

With such data of information it seems rather strange that the problem of precedence in the scale of animal intelligence should still be a mooted question. The primacy of the animal kingdom remains, of course, undisputed; but the dog, the elephant, the horse, the beaver,—nay, the parrot, the bee, and the ant,—have found learned and uncompromising advocates of their claims to the honors of the second rank.

Russel Wallace and Dr. Brehm have agitated the question, but failed to settle it,—even to their own satisfaction. The reason, I believe, is that the exponents of the different theories have failed to agree on a definite standard of comparison. The mathematical principle implied in the construction of a honey-comb, we are told, can challenge comparison with the ripest results of human science. The acumen of a well-trained elk-hound, a philosophical sportsman assures us, comes nearer to human reason than any other manifestation of animal sagacity. Elephant-trainers, too, adduce instances that almost pass the line of distinction between intuitive prudence and the results of reflection. Yet if those distinctions suffice to define the difference between reason and the primitive instincts, they should reduce the scope of the question in so far as to make it clear that, instead of measuring the degree of the development of special faculties of the animal mind, we should ascertain the direction of those faculties. Instinct tends to promote the interests of the species, and is limited to the more or less skilful, but monotonous, performance of a special task. Within that limited sphere its competence is perfect. Reason may be often at fault, but its capacity enlarges with practice, and the scope of its application is unlimited. It may be exerted in the interest of the species, of the tribe, of the family; it may devote itself to the service of an abstract principle or subserve the purposes of individual caprice. It differs from instinct as a piano differs from a barrel-organ. The pianist has to master his art by years of toil, but can apply it to all possible variations or extravaganzas of music. The organ-grinder can delight his audience as much by his first as by his last performance, but his répertoire is limited. Reason is indefinite, free, and versatile. Instinct is exact, but circumscribed.

Tested by that standard, the difference between the intelligence of the higher quadrumana—the anthropoid apes, the baboons, and several species of the macaques—and that of their dumb fellow-creatures is so pronounced that it amounts to a difference of kind as well as of degree. Borné, literally limited, but used in French as a synonyme of short-witted, is the term that best characterizes the actions of all other animals, as compared with the graceless but amazingly versatile and well-planned pranks of our nearest relatives. The standard of usefulness would, indeed, degrade the perpetrators of these pranks below the rank of the dullest donkey; but as a criterion of intelligence the application of that test should rather be reversed.

Watch a colony of house-building insects, their faithful co-operation, their steady, exact adaptation of right means to a fixed purpose, and compare their activity with that of a troop of ball-playing boys. Does not the gratuitous ingenuity of the young bipeds indicate a far higher degree of intelligence? Does it argue against the quality of that intelligence that any novel phenomenon—a funnel-shaped cloud, the appearance of a swarm of bats or unknown birds—would divert the ball-players from their immediate purpose? Monkeys alone share this gift of gratuitous curiosity. A strange object, a piece of red cloth fluttering in the grass, may excite the interest of a watch-dog or of an antelope. They may approach to investigate, but for subjective purposes. They fear the presence of an enemy. A monkey's inquisitiveness can dispense with such motives. In my collection of four-handed pets I have a young Rhesus monkey (Macacus Rhesus), by no means the most intelligent member of the community, but gifted with an amount of meddlesome pluck which often makes it necessary to circumscribe the freedom of his movements. One day last spring, when he joined an assembly of his fellow-boarders on a sunny porch, the shortness of his tether did not prevent him from picking a quarrel with a big raccoon. After a few sham manoauvres the old North American suddenly lost his temper and charged his tormentor with an energy of action that led to an unexpected result,—for in springing back the Rhesus snapped his wire chain, and in the next moment went flying down the lane toward the open woods. But just before he reached the gate he suddenly stopped. On a post of the picket-fence the neighbors' boys had deposited a kite, and the Rhesus paused. The phenomenon of the dangling kite-tail, with its polychromatic ribbons, eclipsed the memory of his wrongs and his mutinous projects: he snatched the tail, and with the gravity of a coroner proceeded to examine the dismembered appendage. If he had mistaken the apparatus for a trap, the result of the dissection must have reassured him; but he continued the inquest till one of his pursuers headed him off and drove him back to his favorite hiding-place under the porch, which he reached in safety, though in the interest of science he had encumbered himself with a large section of kite-paper.

On my last visit to New York I bought a female Chacma baboon that had attracted my attention by the grotesque demonstrativeness of her motions, and took her on board of a Norfolk steamer, where she at once became an object of general enthusiasm. The next morning Sally was taking her breakfast on deck, when she suddenly dropped her apple-pie and jumped upon the railing. Through the foam of the churned brine her keen eye had espied a shoal of porpoises, and, clinging to the railing with her hind hands, she continued to gesticulate and chatter as long as our gambolling fellow-travellers remained in sight.

Menagerie monkeys, too, are sure to interrupt their occupations at the sight of a new-comer,—a clear indication that monkeys, like men, possess a surplus of intelligence above the exigencies of their individual needs. Yet these exigencies are by no means inconsiderable. Unlike the grazing deer and the deer-eating panther, the frugivorous monkeys of the tropics are the direct competitors of the intolerant lord of creation. The Chinese macaques, the Moor monkey, the West-African baboons, have to eke out a living by pillage. The Gibraltar monkey has hardly any other resources. Nor has nature been very generous in the physical equipment of the species. Most monkeys lack the sharp teeth that enable the tiger to defy the avenger of his misdeeds. Without exception they all lack the keen scent that helps the deer to elude its pursuers. But their mental faculties more than compensate for such bodily deficiencies. In the Abyssinian highlands the mornings are often cold enough to cover the grass with hoar-frost, yet the frost-dreading baboons choose that very time to raid the corn-fields of the natives. They omit no precaution, and it is almost impossible to circumvent the vigilance of their sentries. Prudence, derived from providence,—i.e., prevision, the gift of fore-seeing things,—is in many respects almost a synonyme of reason. Physically that gift is typified in the telescopic eyes which monkeys share with a few species of birds, but with hardly any of their mammalian relatives, except man in a state of nature. Mentally it manifests itself in a marvellous faculty for anticipating danger. Last summer Sally, the above-mentioned baboon, contrived to break loose, and took refuge on the top of the roof. I do not believe that she intended to desert, but she was bent on a romp, and had made up her mind not to be captured by force. A chain of eight or nine feet dangled from her girdle, and she persistently avoided approaching the lower tier of shingles, to keep that chain from hanging down over the edge, but was equally careful not to venture too near the extremities of the roof-ridge, for there was a skylight at each gable. She kept around the middle of the roof; and we concluded to loosen a few shingles in that neighborhood and grab her chain through the aperture, while a confederate was to divert her attention by a continuous volley of small pebbles. But somehow Sally managed to distinguish the hammer-strokes from the noise of the bombardment, and at once made up her mind that the roof had become untenable. The only question was how to get down; for by that time the house was surrounded by a cordon of sentries. As a preliminary measure she then retreated to the top of the chimney, and one of our strategists proposed to dislodge her by loading the fireplace with a mixture of pine-leaves and turpentine. But better counsel prevailed, and we contented ourselves with firing a blank cartridge through the flue. Sally at once jumped off, but regained her vantage-ground on the roof-ridge, and we had to knock out a dozen shingles before one of our fourteen or fifteen hunters at last managed to lay hold of her chain.