Animal Intelligence Part 38

My friend Mrs. A. S. H. Richardson sends me the following. The Rev. Mr.

Townsend, who narrated the episode, is personally known to her:--

An elephant was chained to a tree in the compound opposite Mr. Townsend's house. Its driver made an oven at a short distance, in which he put his rice-cakes to bake, and then covered them with stones and gra.s.s and went away. When he was gone, the elephant with his trunk unfastened the chain round his foot, went to the oven and uncovered it, took out and ate the cakes, re-covered the oven with the stones and gra.s.s as before, and went back to his place. He could not fasten the chain again round his own foot, so he twisted it round and round it, in order to look the same, and when the driver returned the elephant was standing with his back to the oven. The driver went to his cakes, discovered the theft, and, looking round, caught the elephant's eye as he looked back over his shoulder out of the corner of it. Instantly he detected the culprit, and condign punishment followed.

The whole occurrence was witnessed from the windows by the family.

FOOTNOTES:

[225] Plin., _Hist. Nat._, viii. 1-13.

[226] _De Solert. Anim._, c. 12.

[227] _Philosophical Transactions_, 1799, p. 40.

[228] See Bingley, _loc. cit._, vol. i., pp. 148-51.

[229] _Hist. Nat._, viii., 5.

[230] For these and other cases of vindictiveness, see Bingley, _loc.

cit._, vol. i., pp. 156-8.

[231] _Memoirs_, vol. i., p. 448.

[232] _Zoological Recreations_, p. 315.

[233] _Animal Biography_, i., pp. 156-8.

[234] _Anecdotes of Animals_, p. 276.

[235] _Habits and Instincts of Animals_, p. 37.

[236] _Reasoning Power of Animals_, chap. iv.

[237] Quoted in _Animal World_, March 1882.

[238] _Philosophical Transactions_, 1873.

[239] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 114.

[240] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 140.

[241] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 196.

[242] _Phil. Trans._, A.D. 1701, vol. xxiii., p. 1052.

[243] _Loc. cit._, p. 216.

[244] _Memoirs_, vol. ii., p. 64 _et seq._

[245] Jesse, _Gleanings in Natural History_, vol. i, p. 19.

[246] _Descent of Man_, p. 96.

[247] See _Animal Kingdom_, vol. iii., p. 374.

[248] _Reasoning Power of Animals_, pp. 54-5.

[249] Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. i., p. 155.

[250] Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. i., p. 155.

[251] See his letter to Sir E. Tennent in _Nat. Hist. of Ceylon_, pp.

118-20.

[252] _Indications of Instinct_, p. 129.

[253] _Descent of Man_, p. 69.

[254] _Natural History of Ceylon_, pp. 181-94.

[255] _Natural History of Ceylon_, pp. 181-94.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CAT.

THE cat is unquestionably a highly intelligent animal, though when contrasted with its great domestic rival, the dog, its intelligence, from being cast in quite a different mould, is very frequently underrated. Comparatively unsocial in temperament, wanderingly predaceous in habits, and lacking in the affectionate docility of the canine nature, this animal has never in any considerable degree been subject to those psychologically transforming influences whereby a prolonged and intimate a.s.sociation with man has, as we shall subsequently see, so profoundly modified the psychology of the dog.

Nevertheless, as we shall immediately find, the cat is not only by nature an animal remarkable for intelligence, but in spite of its naturally imposed disadvantages of temperament, has not altogether escaped those privileges of nurture which unnumbered centuries of domestication could scarcely fail to supply. Thus, as contrasted with most of the wild species of the genus when tamed from their youngest days, the domestic cat is conspicuously of less uncertain temper towards its masters--the uncertainty of temper displayed by nearly all the wild members of the feline tribe when tamed being, of course, an expression of the interference of individual with hereditary experience. And, as contrasted with all the wild species of the genus when tamed, the domestic cat is conspicuous in alone manifesting any exalted development of affection towards the human kind; for in many individual cases such affection, under favouring circ.u.mstances, reaches a level fully comparable to that which it attains in the dog. We do not know the wild stock from which the domestic cat originally sprang, and therefore cannot estimate the extent of the psychological results which human agency has here produced; but it is worth while in this connection to remember that the nearest ally of the domestic cat is the wild cat, and that this animal, while so closely resembling its congener in size and anatomical structure, differs so enormously from it in the branch of psychological structure which we are considering, that there is no animal on the face of the earth so obstinately untamable.

As regards the wild species of the tribe in general, it may be said that they all exhibit the same unsocial, fierce, and rapacious character.

Bold when brought to bay, they do not court battle with dangerous antagonists, but prefer to seek safety in flight. Even the proverbial courage of the lion is now known, as a rule, to consist in 'the better part of valour;' and those exceptional individuals among tigers which adopt a 'man-eating' propensity, s.n.a.t.c.h their human victims by stealth.

That the larger feline animals possess high intelligence would be shown, even in the absence of information concerning their ordinary habits, by the numerous tricks which they prove themselves capable of learning at the hands of menagerie-keepers; though in such cases the conflict of nature with nurture renders even the best-trained specimens highly uncertain in their behaviour, and therefore always more or less dangerous to the 'lion-kings.' The only wild species that is employed for any practical purpose--the cheetah--is so employed by utilising directly its natural instincts; it is shown the antelope, and runs it down after the manner of all its ancestors.

Returning now to the domestic cat, it is commonly remarked as a peculiar and distinctive trait in its emotional character that it shows a strongly rooted attachment to places as distinguished from persons.

There can be no question that this peculiarity is a marked feature in the psychology of domestic cats considered as a cla.s.s, although of course individual exceptions occur in abundance. Probably this feature is a survival of an instinctive attachment to dens or lairs bequeathed to our cats by their wild progenitors.

The only other feature in the emotional life of cats which calls for special notice is that which leads to their universal and proverbial treatment of helpless prey. The feelings that prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can only, I think, be a.s.signed to the category to which by common consent they are ascribed--delight in torturing for torture's sake. Speaking of man, John S. Mill somewhere observes that there is in some human beings a special faculty or instinct of cruelty, which is not merely a pa.s.sive indifference to the sight of physical sufferings, but an active pleasure in witnessing or causing it. Now, so far as I have been able to discover, the only animals in which there is any evidence of a cla.s.s of feelings in any way similar to these--if, indeed, in the case even of such animals the feelings which prompt actions of gratuitous cruelty really are similar to those which prompt it in man--are cats and monkeys. With regard to monkeys I shall adduce evidence on this point in the chapter which treats of these animals.

With regard to cats it is needless to dwell further upon facts so universally known.

_General Intelligence._

Coming now to the higher faculties, it is to be noted as a general feature of interest that all cats, however domesticated they may be, when circ.u.mstances require it, and often even quite spontaneously, throw off with the utmost ease the whole mental clothing of their artificial experience, and return in naked simplicity to the natural habits of their ancestors. This readiness of cats to become feral is a strong expression of the shallow psychological influence which prolonged domestication has here exerted, in comparison with that which it has produced in the case of the dog. A pet terrier lost in the haunts of his ancestors is almost as pitiable an object as a babe in the wood; a pet cat under similar circ.u.mstances soon finds itself quite at home. The reason of this difference is, of course, that the psychology of the cat, never having lent itself to the practical uses of, and intelligent dependency on, man, has never, as in the case of the dog, been under the c.u.mulative influence of human agency in becoming further and further bent away from its original and naturally imposed position of self-reliance; so that when now a severance takes place between a cat and its human protectors, the animal, inheriting unimpaired the transmitted experience of wild progenitors, knows very well how to take care of itself.

Having made these general remarks, I shall now pa.s.s on to quote a few instances showing the highest level of intelligence to which cats attain.