278 EDUCATION OF ANIMALS BY EACH OTHER. 



in study ; they make efforts to excel, display an honourable 

 emulation or rivalry for instance, monkeys (Rengger). 

 Moreover, there is a recognition of their parents or elders 

 as their mentors (Houzeau) a recognition that implies or 

 includes obedience and respect. 



Much more general, or at least more obvious, than the 

 teaching of parents or elders is the teaching of experience. 

 Young, intelligent animals rapidly acquire experience and 

 profit by it, so that the behaviour of the old or experienced 

 and the young or inexperienced animal, under the same 

 circumstances, differs in a very marked way. Thus the 

 different results of experience and inexperience are some- 

 times well seen in the same troop of military horses in the 

 different behaviour of old and young animals in stampedes 

 or panics. Inexperience of man as an enemy is obvious in 

 certain unsophisticated wild animals. Young harriers hunt 

 without reflection, making no allowance for the doubling 

 of the hare, while the old ones leave the fatigues of the 

 chase to the } r oung, themselves watching and waiting for 

 their easier and proper opportunity (Houzeau). Experience 

 teaches, in the first place, what to trust or to fear, what to 

 eat, drink, or avoid, or what gives bodily pain. Thus a 

 London railway dog was deterred, by its having been once 

 burned by a red-hot cinder from the locomotive furnace, 

 from travelling a second time by the engine or tender ; it 

 speedily learned to avoid what had produced danger and 

 pain. Experience, too, enables hunted animals to avoid 

 snares. 



Animals apply their acquired experience to their conduct 

 in new cases or circumstances. They profit by failure or 

 non-success, which prompts them to make further and suc- 

 cessful efforts. Thus the dog, in swimming, learns to make 

 allowance for tides, eddies, and currents. Many animals 

 profit by the very accidents that befall them. The bee does 

 this after an attack on its nest by the death's-head moth ; 

 it accepts the incident as a warning of what is likely to 

 happen again, and it forthwith makes provision for the con- 

 tingency (Kirby and Spence). Bees also not only steady 

 falling combs, but they learn this lesson from their totter- 



