HABITS 153 



not only that, but that the cells of our bodies are intelligent 

 likewise. 



The food taking activities of animals are admirably adapted 

 to illustrate the essential unity of behavior throughout the 

 animal kingdom. These activities have their roots hi the 

 fundamental processes of organic life. Intelligent food 

 getting is based on fundamental instinctive tendencies, 

 in fact is but a way in which these tendencies are shaped 

 in order a little more effectually to reach the goal. The 

 still hunt of the hungry lion, the expanded tentacles of the 

 hungry anemone or jelly-fish, the restless activity of the 

 starving protozoan are all expressions of a common state, 

 and are dictated by a common need. 



HABITS 



Even very primitive animals may acquire ways of acting 

 or responding to stimuli through the effects of their previous 

 experience. These habits, if we may call them such, are 

 usually not very permanent and tend to wear away after 

 the determining cause is removed. Jennings has observed 

 that specimens of the anemone Aiptasia annulata which 

 live in crevices among the rocks where in expanding they 

 have to bend their bodies in an irregular way still retain their 

 irregular movements in expanding after they have been 

 removed from their original habitats. This led him to make 

 some observations on normal anemones subjected to re- 

 peated stimulations. In one case "an individual attached 

 to a plane horizontal glass surface was bent in extension 

 far over to the left. Stimulating it repeatedly, it con- 

 tracted at each stimulation, then bent, in extending, again 

 to the left. This continued for fifteen stimulations, one 

 succeeding another as soon as the animal had become fully 

 extended. At the next contraction the animal turned and 



