CHAPTER XII. 



ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 



In no branch of study is the student confronted with more difficul- 

 ties in the way of separating fact from interpretation, and explanation 

 from description, than in the field of Animal Psychology, and this, not- 

 withstanding the fact that Animal Psychology owes its entire value to 

 its ability to explain and not -to describe. 



The tendency of the human mind to read into -an animal's actions 

 the same motives and reasons that cause man to react in a similar man- 

 ner is difficult to overcome. In fact a definite word, anthropomorphism, 

 is in common use among psychologists to describe just this tendency to 

 humanize animals. 



Still, the only way we have of interpreting the behavior of an ani- 

 mal must be in terms of human understanding, for we have neither lan- 

 guage nor imagery which can bring to us the sensations, emotions, and 

 driving force of an organism so totally unlike ourselves as an insect, for 

 example. 



As one writer has said, anger with us is always associated with an 

 increase in heart beat and a more rapid breathing, and our nerves are 

 all "set on edge," but an insect has a totally different set of blood-ves- 

 sels, an entirely different breathing apparatus and a different nervous 

 system. What are its accompanying sensations when it feels angry? 

 In fact, a wasp often bites off its own abdomen when angry. How can 

 we, when our respective organisms are so unlike, know much about how< 

 such animals feel? 



Further, all of us have observed that probably most plays and nov- 

 els hinge their plot entirely on some misunderstanding. If human be- 

 ings, who have a common language to make themselves understood, 

 are so frequently misunderstood, how much more will we not misun- 

 derstand and misread the actions of animals entirely unable to tell us 

 anything in terms which are understandable to both? 



It is for reasons of this kind that many throw up their hands in 

 despair and insist that we never can know anything at all about the 

 animal mind, but that if we wish to establish an animal psychology 

 anyway, there is only one way to go about it, and that is, merely to 

 study the behavior in the laboratory under set conditions so that we 

 can learn just how each animal reacts to a given stimulus. Such a 

 method assumes that all animals of the same sex, of the same age, in 

 the same state of health, will always react in exactly the same way when 

 the same stimulus is applied under the same conditions. 



We shall go on from this point a little later, after the student un- 

 derstands several important terms. 



