JOURNAL OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



Vol. 7 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER No. 6 



THE BEHAVIOR OF LIMPETS WITH PARTICULAR 

 REFERENCE TO THE HOMING INSTINCT 



MORRIS M. WELLS 



University of Chicago 



INTRODUCTION 



More than casual interest attaches to the behavior of animals 

 that possess marked homing ability and it is of importance 

 that the detailed behavior of such forms be recorded. Certain 

 investigators have maintained that homing is a type of behavior 

 set apart from the ordinary reactions of animals and in an 

 attempt to explain the homing ability have hypothecated a 

 sixth sense or some even less demonstrable factor. No morpho- 

 logical foundation for such hypotheses seems discoverable and 

 we must, therefore, look to a detailed examination into the 

 behavior of homing animals for an explanation of the homing 

 instinct. We need not, I believe, look for this explanation to 

 result from some startling discovery, but rather, expect it to 

 emerge from an apparent hodge-podge of miscellaneous facts 

 relating to animal behavior. It is not likely that the homing 

 instinct is peculiar to any particular type of organism but it 

 is rather inherent in all protoplasm. In the process of evolu- 

 tion certain groups of animals seem to have developed the 

 homing ability to a higher degree than have other groups, but 

 this is true for all other types of animal behavior. In the so- 

 called homing species, the variations in the ability of the indi- 

 viduals to home are so marked and the instances of homing 

 behavior in so-called non-homing species are so numerous, that 

 one cannot but believe that animals differ quantitatively rather 

 than qualitatively in the possession of this instinct. 



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