THE KEY TO ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



the lower animals not only do not reason, which 

 is just what I have been preaching myself, in season 

 and out of season, for some years past, but that, 

 with adult animals of the more intelligent species, 

 pure instinct, so far from being a controlling factor 

 in the creature's life, hardly has to be reckoned 

 with at all which is just the opposite of what I 

 have been preaching. The animal, our writer urges, 

 "forms habits precisely as we do, and, precisely 

 like ourselves, stores up, as habits, many common 

 experiences of life." My own contention is that the 

 wild animals act mainly from inherited habits or 

 instinct, and that their acquired habits, "so far 

 from being a controlling factor in the creature's 

 life, hardly have to be reckoned with at all." 



How the writer explains the conduct of animals 

 that have had no chance to store up experiences and 

 form habits the bird building its first nest, the 

 hen with her first brood of chickens speaking a 

 language she never before spoke, and her young 

 understanding a language they never before heard, 

 the heifer hiding her first calf in the bush, the 

 ground-bird decoying you away from her first nest 

 by fluttering over the ground as if half-disabled, 

 the puppy burying its first bone, perhaps on the 

 carpet or the kitchen floor, the chipmunk or the 

 wood-mouse laying up its first store of nuts, and a 

 score of other primary acts of the animals, which 

 they never could have learned as we learn, and 

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