ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



we can hardly suppose that she stops to reason as to which of 

 the three means of escape is likely to prove the most efficient. 



We must regard intelligent behavior, then, as a form of 

 activity growing out of individual experience rather than as 

 directly inherited. It may, however, become automatic. When 

 the necessity or desirability of the same act is constantly recur- 

 ring in the life of the individual under the same conditions, it is 

 performed repeatedly in the same manner, the manner which 

 experience has shown to be effective or satisfactory ; and in 

 time it becomes a habit, a mode of procedure as automatic as 

 the instinctive act, but differing from it in that it is an acquisi- 

 tion of individual experience, which according to most biologists 

 has not been inherited and cannot be transmitted. 



Intelligence manifests itself in animal life in the most varied 

 ways, for it is only through intelligence that the individual is 

 capable of adapting itself to the variable conditions of its envi- 

 ronment. Instead of the stereotyped methods of procedure 

 manifested in instinctive acts, we find different members of the 

 same species meeting these conditions in different ways and 

 thus exhibiting a distinct individuality ; even the same individual 

 will not necessarily meet the same conditions invariably in the 

 same way, and often in a complex situation the successful per- 

 formance of the act may be attained only after repeated experi- 

 ments, the correct solution being accidentally hit upon. But 

 because the animal thus exhibits intelligence, we must guard 

 against attributing to it the ability to reason. It is extremely 

 probable that a careful study of many forms of intelligent 

 behavior which seem to be the result of reasoning are simply 

 manifestations of intelligence. 



This distinction between simple intelligence and reason is a 

 very convenient and at the same time a very real one. Simple 

 intelligence prompts the animal to repeated experiments of 

 various means to meet a new condition, until by chance it 

 attains the successful method, and this result being obtained the 

 animal is entirely satisfied. Man on the other hand, confronted 

 by a condition requiring a new method of procedure, is capable 

 of considering the matter first in all its aspects, noting the 

 various possible solutions, weighing the factors which in each 

 are likely to lead to success or failure, until by a process of 



