Animal psychology

“ In the lengthy discussions which psychologists have carried on about the amount of intelligence displayed by lower mammals, or the amount of consciousness involved in the functions of the nerve-centres of reptiles, the same test has always been applied: Is the character of the actions such that we must believe them to be performed for the sake of their result? The result in question, as we shall hereafter abundantly see, is as a rule a useful one,—the animal is, on the whole, safer under the circumstances for bringing it forth. ”

“ Further, this also means—what is more important for the science of psychology—that the development of the mind in its early stages and in certain of its directions of progress is revealed most adequately in the animals.
Animal Instinct.—Turning to the animals, the first thing to strike us is the remarkable series of so-called animal Instincts. Everybody knows what animal instincts are like; it is only necessary to go to a zoölogical garden to see them in operation on a large scale. Take the house cat and follow her through the life of a single day, observing her actions. ”

“ Although the naturalist may, for his own convenience, class these reactions under general heads, he must not forget that in the animal it is a particular sensation or perception, or image which calls them forth.
At first this view astounds us by the enormous number of special adjustments it supposes animals to possess ready-made in anticipation of the outer things among which they are to dwell. Can mutual dependence be so intricate and go so far? Is each thing born fitted to particular other things, and to them exclusively, as locks are fitted to their keys? ”

“ It is indeed questionable whether comparative psychology has, as yet, accumulated a sufficient body of data to render such a task profitable or even possible. And the lower the level of intelligence with which we have to deal, the less reliable are the scanty psychological data which we can obtain. To interpret the mental processes which accompany the acts of even the higher animals is a hard task, requiring careful psychological analysis. Still harder is the task to infer the psychological basis of the actions of the lower animals. ”

“ But practically all psychologists are now united in repudiating such a conception of instinct. The instincts of all the higher animals, man included, are not of this hard and fast and definite type, but are modifiable through training and experience in many ways, even though they are influential in determining animal behavior. Let us see then what conception of instinct modern psychology has worked out. In man, as in all the higher animals, there is a highly developed nervous system, with multitudes of connections between its elements. ”

“ Standing, walking, buttoning and unbuttoning, piano-playing, talking, even saying one's prayers, may be done when the mind is absorbed in other things. The performances of animal instinct seem semi-automatic, and the reflex acts of self-preservation certainly are so. Yet they resemble intelligent acts in bringing about the same ends at which the animals' consciousness, on other occasions, deliberately aims. ”

“ The mating instinct, in unsophisticated members of the human species, is another perfect example. So is the hunting instinct in a dog; when this instinct is aroused, the animal makes a lot of movements of various sorts, responses to various particular stimuli, but evidently these movements are not sufficient to quiet the tendency, for they continue till the prey is captured. The behavior of a gregarious animal when separated from his fellows shows the same sort of thing. Take a young chick out of the brood and fence it away from the rest. ”

“ The difficulty of ascertaining whether intelligence has or has not been a factor is simply part of the inherent difficulty of comparative psychology—a difficulty on which sufficient stress has already been laid in an earlier chapter.
The great majority of the instinctive activities of animals have arisen through a co-operation of the factors, and it is exceedingly difficult in any individual case to assign to the factors their several values. ”

“ Each one of them then is an instinct, as instincts are commonly defined. But they contradict each other—'experience' in each particular opportunity of application usually deciding the issue. The animal that exhibits them loses the 'instinctive' demeanor and appears to lead a life of hesitation and choice, an intellectual life ”

“ The mystical view of an instinct would make it invariable. The physiological view would require it to show occasional irregularities in any animal in whom the number of separate instincts, and the possible entrance of the same stimulus into several of them, were great. And such irregularities are what every superior animal's instincts do show in abundance. ”

“ That is to say, if we observe an ant or a bee apparently exhibiting sympathy or rage, we must either conclude that some psychological state resembling that of sympathy or rage is present, or else refuse to think about the subject at all; from the observable facts there is no other inference open. Therefore, having full regard to the progressive weakening of the analogy from human to brute psychology as we recede through the animal kingdom downwards from man, still, as it is the only analogy available, I shall follow it throughout the animal series. ”

“ The real psychology of the animals, so far as we are able to grope our way toward it by deduction and induction combined, is a very different thing from the psychology of certain stories of animals which paved the way for the present vogue. ”

“ It is no detraction from the merit of these books, which have done great service in awakening a sympathetic understanding of the animals and sharpening our sense of kinship with all that breathe, to say that their psychology is human. Their animal characters think and feel as human beings would think and feel under like conditions. This marks the stage which these works occupy in the development of the animal story. ”

“ Its foundations are those primary emotional systems, in which the instincts play at first a more important part than the emotions; in them, and as instrumental to their ends, are found the powers of intelligence and will to which the animal attains. But even in animals there is found, some inter-organization of these systems, or, at least, some balance of their instincts, by which these are fitted to work together as a system for the preservation of their offspring and of themselves. ”

“ It is plain, then, that, no matter how well endowed an animal may originally be in the way of instincts, his resultant actions will be much modified if the instincts combine with experience, if in addition to impulses he have memories, associations, inferences, and expectations, on any considerable scale. An object O, on which he has an instinctive impulse to react in the manner A, would directly provoke him to that reaction. ”

“ THE HORSE OF MR. VON OSTEN CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND "CLEVER HANS"
If we would appreciate the interest that has been aroused everywhere by the wonderful horse solving arithmetical problems, we must first consider briefly the present state of the problem of animal consciousness. [C] Animal consciousness cannot be directly gotten at, and the psychologist must therefore seek to appreciate it on the basis of the animal's behavior and with the assistance of conceptions borrowed from human psychology. ”

“ We may say, as the result of observation, that instinctive acts are performed under such circumstances as exclude the possibility of guidance in the light of individual experience, and render it in the highest degree improbable that there exists any idea of the end to be attained. But this is a very different position from that of asserting the presence of a positive faculty or propensity which impels an animal to the performance of certain actions. ”

“ On this view, then, we may see in instinctive behaviour, and the multifarious automatic acts of animals, a means of providing experience of the right kind and on profitable lines. We may see in the play-instincts of the young a training ground for the more serious business of animal life—a theme developed by Professor Groos. We may see in the imitative tendency—the innate proclivity to follow a lead blindly and at first unintelligently—a further means of providing those useful items of experience which intelligence finds so serviceable. ”

“ It is, however, becoming more and more clearly evident that the discussion of the relation of the animal to the human mind, if it is to be made a subject of scientific inquiry, must be conducted on psychological lines by those who have devoted years of study to the subject. In this work such a discussion will be attempted, and animal behaviour will be treated as the precursor of human conduct, and as affording evidence of the germs from which the distinctively human mental attributes may have been evolved. ”

“ And if, instead of trusting to such general a priori considerations, we study with attention the conditions under which an animal so behaves as to lead us to infer that it profits by experience, we find that it is not the consciousness that [44] accompanies the behaviour which leads to future guidance, but the consciousness that arises from the results of the behaviour. Let us willingly grant that the newly hatched, and as yet inexperienced chick, when it pecks at a small object is conscious of a visual impression, and is conscious also of movements of its neck and beak. ”

“ That much of the behaviour of the higher animals is guided by experience similar to that which plays so large a part in their training under the experimental conditions of domestication is generally admitted. But what are the range and limits of animal intelligence, and whether it attains the level of rational conduct, in the restricted sense of the term “rational,” are questions open to discussion, to which answers are more likely to be obtained through experiment than by chance observations. ”

“ If an answer must be given to the question whether instinct or intelligence has priority in the course of the evolution of behaviour, it may be urged that, on theoretical grounds, the [174] claims of instinct are the stronger. Taking animals as we actually find them, however, they afford numberless examples of behaviour at first instinctive but subsequently modified, in greater or less degree, in accordance with the teachings of experience. Let us, first, assume that the environment is slowly changing, or has changed, in some definite manner. ”

“ When we see animals acting, without the teaching of experience, in the same sort of way in which we act after that teaching of experience, we, perplexed to explain this anomaly, pronounce the action instinctive. The bee and the bird build in this inexplicable manner. Probably a more minute investigation may enable us to resolve whatever we call Instinct into some delicacy of the senses, or some rapidity of the judgment, peculiar to the animal. ”

“ We shall have to consider, not only the kind of animal behaviour which implies intelligence, sometimes of a high order; not only such behaviour as animal play and courtship, which suggests emotional attributes; but also forms of behaviour which, if not unconscious, seem to lack conscious guidance and control. We shall deal mainly with the behaviour of the animal as a whole, but also incidentally with that of its constituent particles, or cells ”

“ It is no doubt exceedingly difficult, and perhaps impossible, to define where instinct ends, and reason begins, in animals. But that some of them are endowed with a faculty which does not come under the usual notion of instinct, by whatever other name we may choose to call it, will, I think, hardly allow of a dispute. This, as it strikes me, appears in the different degrees of intelligence which we are accustomed to recognize as elevating one species of animal above another,—as the half-reasoning elephant for instance, and the friend of man, the dog, above numberless others. ”

“ First of all I study the animal’s nature and disposition. No two animals are alike, any more than any two children are alike. Some animals are very nervous, are easily excited, while others are placid and docile and nothing seems to disturb them. But whatever the natural disposition nothing can be done without gaining the animal’s complete confidence. This I do by uniformly kind treatment. I always speak gently, mildly, never angrily or impatiently. Then I pet the animal at every opportunity, though with some, one must approach them at first, cautiously. ”

“ METHODS WITH THE ANIMAL MIND. In the study of animal minds, much depends upon the method employed. It seems to me that the problem- box method of the investigators of "animal behavior" leaves much to be desired. Certainly it is not calculated to develop the mental status of animals along lines of natural mental progression. To place a wild creature in a great artificial contrivance, fitted with doors, cords, levers, passages and what not, is enough to daze or frighten any timid animal out of its normal state of mind and nerves. ”

“ But no sooner does the chick, when it is hatched, begin to show wider modes of instinctive behaviour, than we invoke conscious intelligence for their explanation, seemingly forgetful of the fact that there is no logical ground for affirming that, while the marvellous delicacies of structure are of unconscious organic origin, the early modes of instinctive behaviour are due to the guidance of consciousness. ”