The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals

All normal vertebrate animals exercise their intelligence in accordance with their own rules of logic. Had they not been able to do so, it is reasonable to suppose that they could never have developed into vertebrates, reaching even up to man himself.

According to the laws of logic, this proposition is no more open to doubt or dispute than is the existence of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm exists, and is not a debatable question.

To men and women who really know the vertebrate animals by contact with some of them upon their own levels, the reasoning power of the latter is not a debatable question. The only real question is: how far does their intelligence carry them? It is with puzzled surprise that we have noted the curious diligence of the professors of animal psychology in always writing of "animal behavior," and never of old-fashioned, common-sense animal intelligence. Can it be possible that any one of them really refuses to concede to the wild animal the possession of a mind, and a working intelligence?

Yes. Animals do reason. If any one truth has come out of all the critical or uncritical study of the animal mind that has been going on for two centuries, it is this. Animals do reason; they always have reasoned, and as long as animals live they never will cease to reason.

The higher wild animals possess and display the same fundamental passions and emotions that animate the human race. This fact is subject to intelligent analysis, discussion and development, but it is not by any means a "question" subject to debate. In the most intellectual of the quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, the display of fear, courage, love, hate, pleasure, displeasure, confidence, suspicion, jealousy, pity, greed and generosity are so plainly evident that even children can and do recognize them. To the serious and open-minded student who devotes prolonged thought to these things, they bring the wild animal very near to the "lord of creation."

To the question, "Have wild animals souls?" we reply, "That is a debatable question. Read; then think it over."

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. To put a wild sapajou monkey,- weak, timid and afraid,-in a strange and formidable prison box filled with strange machinery, and call upon it to learn or to invent strange mechanical processes, is like bringing a boy of ten years up to a four-cylinder duplex Hoe printing-and-folding press, and saying to him: "Now, go ahead and find out how to run this machine, and print both sides of a signature upon it."

The average boy would shrink from the mechanical monster, and have no stomach whatever for "trial by error."

I think that the principle of determining the mind of a wild animal along the lines of the professor is not the best way. It should be developed along the natural lines of the wild-animal mind. It should be stimulated to do what it feels most inclined to do, and educated to achieve real mental progress.

I think that the ideal way to study the minds of apes, baboons and monkeys would be to choose a good location in a tropical or sub- tropical climate that is neither too wet nor too dry, enclose an area of five acres with an unclimbable fence, and divide it into as many corrals as there are species to be experimented upon. Each corral would need a shelter house and indoor playroom. The stage properties should be varied and abundant, and designed to stimulate curiosity as well as activity.

Somewhere in the program I would try to teach orang-utans and chimpanzees the properties of fire, and how to make and tend fires. I would try to teach them the seed-planting idea, and the meaning of seedtime and harvest. I would teach sanitation and cleanliness of habit,-a thing much more easily done than most persons suppose. I would teach my apes to wash dishes and to cook, and I am sure that some of them would do no worse than some human members of the profession who now receive $50 per month, or more, for spoiling food.

In one corral I would mix up a chimpanzee, an orang-utan, a golden baboon and a good-tempered rhesus monkey. My apes would begin at two years old, because after seven or eight years of age all apes are difficult, or even impossible, as subjects for peaceful experimentation.

I would try to teach a chimpanzee the difference between a noise and music, between heat and cold, between good food and bad food. Any trainer can teach an animal the difference between the blessings of peace and the horrors of war, or in other words, obedience and good temper versus cussedness and punishment.

Dr. Yerkes' laboratory in Montecito, California, and his experiments there with an orang-utan and other primates, were in a good place, and made a good beginning. It is very much to be hoped that means will be provided by which his work can be prosecuted indefinitely, and under the most perfect conditions that money can provide.

I hope that I will live long enough to see Dr. Yerkes develop the mind of a young grizzly bear in a four-acre lot, to the utmost limits of that keen and sagacious personality.