The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals

and year out comes the eternal question,

ate. What animals are the best e

best be expressed in figures. Opinions that are based upon only one or two sets of facts are

e poverty of first-hand, eye-witness evidence. When we enter the field of evidence that must stand in quotation marks, we cease to know where we will come out. We desire to state that nearly all of the figures in the attached table of estimates are based upon the author's own observations, made during a per

ning o

vertically above the columns, with the last column unnamed

Perceptive Faculties

n Training Efficienc

of the Senses

im

. . .100 100 100 100 75

. . .100 100 100 75 1

. . . . .50 50 50 50

ula

. . .100 100 100 100 1

. . . .25 25 25 25

. . . . . .50 25 25

. .100 100 100 25

. . .100 100 50 25

. . .100 100 100 25

. .100 100 100 75 75

niv

. . . . . .100 100 50 7

. . . . . .100 75 50 5

. . . .100 100 50 25

n)100 100 50 25 50

. . . . . 100 100 100

. . . . . . 100 75 50

. . . . . 100 100 50 7

. . . .50 100 75 75 7

. . . . .100 100 100 2

. . . . .100 100 100 25

most intelligent of all animals below man. His mind approaches most closely to that of man, and it carries him f

s mentally next

in mental capacity

to its age-long association with man, and education by him. Mentally the wild horse is a

more intelligence, mechanical skill and r

ties, reasoning ability and judgment of a high

believed to be the

al phenomenon of the great group of gnaw

st of all the mountain summit animals whose

the mind, the feelings and the impulses of man; and it is the only one

der this animal as an illuminating

l activities, there is no other mammal that is even a good second to him. He builds dams both great and small, to provide water in which to live, to store food and to escape from his enemies. He builds air-tight houses of sticks and mud, either as islands, or on the

es (with large ears) and orang-utans (small ears). The an

ash" to cumber the ground. He buries green branches, in great quantity, in the mud at the bottom of his pond, so that in winter he can g

are wise, you can induce beavers to build their d

build a dam forty feet long, at a point about thirty feet from the iron fence where the brook ran out. On th

down. Above it the water soon formed a little pool and began to flow over the top e

s and fresh mud placed like a dam against the

here,-if you don't mind. It wil

r language that action said: "No; we wou

and sticks piled again

sist upon bui

rance of their materi

inst the fence! You must

rs began to build ov

to make a fuss about it, we

ggested it to them, and after that our only trouble was to keep

ctured about him, in the language that the General Reader understands. They are as follows: "The American Beaver and His Works," Lewis H.

wned and educated by Herr von Osten, in Germany. The German scientists who first came in touch with "Hans" we

ount and read, deal with decimals and fractions, spell out answers to questions with his right hoof, and recognize people f

man like Schillings, who was a complete stranger, seemed immaterial; and this went

rning and his performances were astounding, and even uncanny. I do not care how he was trained, nor by what process he received ideas and reacted to them! He was a phenomeno

ished that task. The chief instrument in this was no less a man than the director of the "Psychological Institute" of the Berlin University, Professor Otto Pfungst. He found that when Hans was put on the witness stand and subjected to rigid cross e

ess of the German mind! The wonderful fact that Hans could remember and recognize and reproduce the ten digits was entirely lost to view. At once a shout

ad no sense of proportion. He truly WAS a thinking horse; and we are sure that there are millions of men whose minds could no

r one moment that animal mind and intelligence is limited to the brain-bearing vertebrates. The scope and activity of the notochord in some of the invertebrates present phenomena far more won

I will flash upon the screen, for a moment only, the trap-door spider. This wonderful insect personage has been exhaustively studied by Mr. Raymond L. Ditmar

it is closed there is no indication of the burrow. Moreover, the inside portion of the door of some species is so constructed that it may be "latched," there being two holes near the edge, precisely placed where the curved fangs may be inserted and t

op carefully counterfeits the surrounding ground. 2. The door with silken hinge, held open by a

ther material than the silken lining employed by many burrowing spiders. In the excavation of the tube and retention of the walls, the spider appears to employ a glairy substance, which thoroughly saturates the soil and renders the int

the work is done from the outside, the spider first spinning a net-like covering over the mouth of the tube. This is thickened by weaving the body over the net, each motion leaving a smoky trail of silk. Earth i

ch often calmly rest an hour without a move,-it appears that the edges of the door are now subjected, by the stout and sharp fangs, to a cutting process like that of a can opener, leaving a portion of the marginal silk to ac