WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW? 



When I was a boy and saw, as I often did on my 

 way to school, where a squirrel had stopped on his 

 course through the woods and dug down through 

 two or three feet of snow, bringing up a beech-nut 

 or an acorn, I used to wonder how he knew the nut 

 was there. I am now convinced that he smelled it. 



Why should he not ? It stands the squirrel in hand 

 to smell nuts ; they are his life. He knows a false nut 

 from a good one without biting into it. Try the 

 experiment upon your tame chipmunk or caged gray 

 squirrel, and see if this is not so. The false or dead 

 nut is lighter, and most persons think this fact guides 

 the squirrel. But this, it seems to me, implies an 

 association of ideas beyond the reach of instinct. A 

 young squirrel will reject a worthless nut as promptly 

 as an old one will. Again the sense of smell is the 

 guide ; the sound-meated nut has an odor which the 

 other has not. All animals are keen and wise in 

 relation to their food and to their natural enemies. 

 A red squirrel will chip up green apples and pears 

 for the seeds at the core : can he know, on general 

 principles, that these fruits contain seeds ? Does 

 not some clue to them reach his senses ? 



I have known gray squirrels to go many hundred 

 yards in winter across fields to a barn that contained 

 grain in the sheaf. They could have had no other 

 guide to the grain than the sense of smell. Watch a 

 chipmunk or any squirrel near at hand : as a friend 

 of mine observed, he seems to be smelling with his 

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