INTELLIGENCE OF SQUIERELS. 18S 



"feigning death." What is assumed is inactivity and passivity, more or less complete. 

 This, of course, bears a certain degree of resemblance to death itself. 



Returning, then, to the case of my feigning Red Squirrels, I should be inclined to 

 explain their behaviour somewhat as follows : — 



By inherited instinct, as well as by all those life experiences which had tatight them 

 that quiet and concealment of their usual activities were associated with escape from 

 threatened evils, these little animals were naturally led, under the unwonted circum- 

 stances of their confinement, to disguise in an extraordinary degree their real condition, 

 and even to imitate an unusual and unreal one. The mental process is a complex of 

 instinct pure and simple, with higher intellectual factors added ; aud the cases of these 

 squirrels thus feigning are among the clearest that, so far as I am aware, have ever been 

 recorded. The adaptations to effect escape prove that there was the employment of intel- 

 lectual processes of a pretty high order, possibly too complex, however, for analysis with 

 safety, but not beyond realisation in our own consciousness, and without the employment 

 of any abstract idea of death. 



That, however, the hypnotic element may play a part in the apparent feigning of 

 death by squirrels, seems clear from a case communicated to me by a student of the 

 Montreal Veterinary College, Mr. Craig. He had caught a Chipmunk and placed it in a 

 box, to find in a few moments that it was lying as if dead. Giving the creature liberty 

 to escape, it presently did so. On recapture, the same followed. Considering the relatively 

 low intelligence of this species of squirrel, and taking into account the case that Dr. 

 Romanes mentions of his watching an apparently feigning squirrel he had caught, when 

 he found that it had really died of fright, it seems to me, upon the whole, most reasonable 

 to attribute the behaviour of the Chipmunk in cjuestion to cataleptic or allied effects. 



It thus becomes manifest how varied, aud also how complex, these cases of so-called 

 feigning may be. The subject is all the more interesting, because it shews that there is 

 much that is common in the psychic life of human beings and that of the lower animals. 

 It places the study of their habits and intelligence on a higher plane, and furnishes new 

 motives for extending our inc[uiries and attempting to give unity to our conception of 

 nature in this as in other domains. 



Most remarkable evidence of high intellectual capacity has been furnished by the 

 conduct of elephants under surgical operations, as instanced by Romanes in his "Animal 

 Intelligence ;" and Principal McEachran has assured me that both dogs and horses have 

 shewn a similar intelligence by coming, of their own accord, to his veterinary hospital to 

 have injuries treated, after having been there and experienced the benefit therefrom. Dr. 

 Gr. P. Girdwood, a few days ago, gave me an account of what appeared to be a similar 

 manifestation in a Chickaree but recently caught ; though in this case so much, perhaps, 

 cannot be claimed. This Chickaree submitted, soon after being caged, to having parasites 

 removed from the skin, voluntarily remaining quiet during the act. 



"With regard to the psychological rank of the various species of squirrels, both from 

 what I have been able to learn from the writings of others and from my own observations, 

 the Chickaree must be placed, I conclude, at or very near the top of the list. The Chip- 

 munk and the Flying Squirrel seem to be, as already said, about equal in intelligence, and 

 both much below the Red Squirrel owing, perhaps, to the underground life of the one and 

 the nocturnal habits of the other ; possibly also to annual hibernation. 



Sec iv, 1887. 24. 



