VI. ANIMAL BEHAVIOR, WITH EXAMPLES 



THE activities of animals can be classified into two 

 groups, namely: those of instinct, and those of 

 intelligence. Romanes ^ believed that there is ample 

 evidence to show that instincts may arise, either by 

 natural selection fixing on purposeless habits which chance to 

 be profitable, so converting these habits into instincts without 

 intelligence being even concerned in the process; or by habits, 

 originally intelhgent, becoming automatic by repetition. 

 These principles, when working in cooperation, have greater 

 influence in evolving instincts than either of them can have 

 when working alone. 



Reason^ is defined as "the faculty which is concerned 

 in the intentional adaptation of means to ends. It, therefore, 

 implies the conscious knowledge of the relation between means 

 employed and ends attained, and may be exercised in adaptation 

 to circumstances, novel alike to the experience of the individual 

 and to that of the species. In other words, it implies the power 

 of perceiving analogies or ratios, and is in this sense equivalent 

 to the term 'ratiocination,' or the faculty of deducing inferences 

 from perceived equivalency of relations." 



Instincts are usually complex acts performed previous to 

 experience and in a similar manner by all members of the 

 same sex and race. For example, in the case of the Golden 

 Sphex wasp, instincts are shown in the "behavior of stinging, 

 the taking of particular kinds of prey, the method of attacking, 

 capturing, and carrying its prey, and the making of the nest. 

 Jennings believes that in the lowest organism, the Amoeba, 

 the behavior is not as a rule on the tropism plan^ — or a set, 

 forced method of reaction to each particular agent — but 



' "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 267. 



' Tropism is a belief that all vital phenomena will in last analysis prove 

 to be the same forces and activities already known to us in the inorganic 

 world. 



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