MENTAL CAPACITY OF THE ELEPHANT. 497 

 MENTAL CAPACITY OF THE ELEPHANT. 



By WILLIAM T. HORNADAY. 



ACCORDING to the popular idea, man is the only animal en- 

 dowed with reason. Even after modern scientific classification 

 forced from all the humiliating admission that man is an animal, the 

 idea of his supreme superiority over all the rest of the animal king- 

 dom was embalmed in the formula, " Man is a reasoning being." The 

 reasoning faculty is, to the popular mind, the gulf which separates 

 him from the so-called dumb brutes, wide, fathomless, and impassable. 

 While there are many who believe that this gulf which separates rea- 

 son from absence of reason is occasionally bridged over, as it were, in 

 the case of individual animals of phenomenal intelligence, there are a 

 few who deny its existence altogether. Whenever enough evidence 

 is accumulated to compel the unconditional surrender of the ground 

 man has assigned for his exclusive occupancy, whenever it is clearly 

 and conclusively shown that man's intellectual supremacy over the 

 lower animals is due to the degree and not to the quality of his in- 

 tellect, it will mark the beginning of a new era in psychological 

 thought. 



The principal purpose of this paper is to show the scope and qual- 

 ity of intelligence displayed by the animals of a certain species, the 

 elephant, and to afford some data for a comparison of the mental pro- 

 cesses of this animal with those of man. 



Of late years, or we may even say during the last decade, the ques- 

 tion as to whother any of the lower animals are ever capable of reason- 

 ing: has been often discussed. Hundreds of instances of unusual intelli- 

 gence displayed by domestic animals have been related, and in many 

 cases the actions of certain individuals have been admitted to be the re- 

 sult of reasoning. The dog has furnished a far greater number of such 

 instances than any other animal, but we believe that this is due not so 

 much to his superior intelligence as to the fact that he is brought into 

 closer relations with his master, man, than is any other animal. A 

 great many stories are told of the horse, cat, and elephant, and a few 

 others detailing the performances of three or four remarkably intelli- 

 gent chimpanzees and orangs have been repeated until they are now 

 worn threadbare. Siamangs, baboons, and other members of the 

 monkey tribe, parrots, canaries, and even fleas, have also attracted at- 

 tention by their intelligent independent actions, or their performances 

 under training. It appears that by universal consent the dog has 

 been given the first place in the arrangement of animals according to 

 their intelligence. Dr. W. L. Lindsay, however, who has made a care- 

 ful, critical, and highly elaborate study of the subject of " Mind in the 

 Lower Animals," thus arranges the orders of mammalia in a descend- 



TOL. XXIII. 32 



