Questions.—What is said about the thinking of animals? What is told about a cat? What is said about the sports of animals? Tell about the ants. Tell about the owl. What is said about animals taking care of their young? Tell about the canary-bird. Tell about the orioles. What is said about the spider? What is said about animals building their dwellings?
CHAPTER XXXI.
MORE ABOUT THE THINKING OF ANIMALS.
Stories about the shepherd’s dog.
As animals think, they learn. Some learn more than others. The dog learns a good deal; so do the monkey and the elephant. Some are good at learning some particular things. The parrot learns to mimic talking, though it is quite stupid about some other things. The mocking-bird learns to imitate a great many different sounds. The shepherd’s dog, seen here, though he does not know as much about most things as dogs of some other kinds, understands particularly well how to take care of sheep. If he is trained to this business, he will show great skill in doing it. James Hogg, a Scotch poet, commonly called the Ettrick Shepherd, relates many wonderful anecdotes of his dog, whom he called Sirrah. He says that one night a large flock of lambs got out from their fold and ran away among the hills. When the shepherd said, “Sirrah, they’re a’ awa’!” the dog dashed off after them, and was soon out of sight. The shepherd also, and his man, started off in pursuit. They searched all night, but could find nothing of the dog or the lambs; but in the morning they espied Sirrah standing guard at the mouth of a gorge, or narrow pass, and anxiously looking for his master to come. He had succeeded in finding all the scattered lambs, and here they were in this gorge, into which he had driven them. It is told of another dog of this kind that he would pick out any stray sheep from the midst of a whole flock, and drive it back to the flock to which it belonged. This dog was once observed trying to drive a flock over a bridge which they were afraid to cross. He managed very well, and at length succeeded in getting them over. It was amusing to see how he did it. At one moment he was driving up some of the scattered ones, and the next he was among the foremost, urging them forward. After a while he made some of the foremost pass over, and then the whole flock followed.
Animals build always the same way, and have no new fashions.
Though animals think and learn, they do not have much originality. They always do things very much in the same way. They do not keep contriving some new ways of doing things as men do. Each kind of bird has its own way of building a nest, and it is always the same way. The robins build their nests now just as they did hundreds of years ago. The moles build their tunneled habitations under ground year after year after the plan that you see on page 112. And so of other animals. They have no new fashions, and learn none from each other. But men, you know, are always contriving new ways of building houses, or learning them from other men.
What is done by instinct.
Many of the things that animals know how to do they seem to know either without learning, or without learning in the same way that we learn. They are said to do such things by instinct; but what instinct really is no one can tell. It is by this instinct that birds build their nests, and bees their honeycombs, and beavers their dams and huts. If these things were all contrived and thought out just as men contrive houses, there would be some changes in the fashions of them, and some improvements. Nearly all that we know about this instinct is that some very nice things are done by it, without much thinking being mixed up with it.