been held only tentatively by European writers on natural history.
Darwin does not seem to have been of this opinion at all. Wallace
shared it at one time in regard to the birds,--their songs and
nest-building,--but abandoned it later, and fell back upon instinct or
inherited habit. Some of the German writers, such as Brehm, Büchner,
and the Müllers, seem to have held to the notion more decidedly. But
Professor Groos had not yet opened their eyes to the significance of
the play of animals. The writers mentioned undoubtedly read the
instinctive play of animals as an attempt on the part of the parents
to teach their young.
That the examples of the parents in many ways stimulate the imitative
instincts of the young is quite certain, but that the parents in any
sense aim at instruction is an idea no longer held by writers on
animal psychology.
Of course it all depends upon what we mean by teaching. Do we mean the
communication of knowledge, or the communication of emotion? It seems
to me that by teaching we mean the former. Man alone communicates
knowledge; the lower animals communicate feeling or emotion. Hence
their communications always refer to the present, never to the past or
to the future.
That birds and beasts do communicate with each other, who can doubt?
But that they impart knowledge, that they have any knowledge to
impart, in the strict meaning of the word, any store of ideas or
mental concepts--that is quite another matter. Teaching implies such
store of ideas and power to impart them. The subconscious self rules
in the animal; the conscious self rules in man, and the conscious self
alone can teach or communicate knowledge. It seems to me that the
cases of the deer and the antelope, referred to by President Roosevelt
in the letter to me quoted in the last chapter, show the communication
of emotion only.
Teaching implies reflection and judgment; it implies a thought of, and
solicitude for, the future. "The young will need this knowledge," says
the human parent, "and so we will impart it to them now." But the
animal parent has consciously no knowledge to impart, only fear or
suspicion. One may affirm almost anything of trained dogs and of dogs
generally. I can well believe that the setter bitch spoken of by the
President punished her pup when it flushed a bird,--she had been
punished herself for the same offense,--but that the act was
expressive of anything more than her present anger, that she was in
any sense trying to train and instruct her pup, there is no proof.
But with animals that have not been to school to man, all ideas of
teaching must be rudimentary indeed. How could a fox or a wolf
instruct its young in such matters as traps? Only in the presence of
the trap, certainly; and then the fear of the trap would be
communicated to the young through natural instinct. Fear, like joy or
curiosity, is contagious among beasts and birds, as it is among men;
the young fox or wolf would instantly share the emotion of its parent
in the presence of a trap. It is very important to the wild creatures
that they have a quick apprehension of danger, and as a matter of fact
they have. One wild and suspicious duck in a flock will often defeat
the best laid plans of the duck-hunter. Its suspicions are quickly
communicated to all its fellows: not through any conscious effort on
its part to do so, but through the law of natural contagion above
referred to. Where any bird or beast is much hunted, fear seems to be
in the air, and their fellows come to be conscious of the danger which
they have not experienced.
What an animal lacks in wit it makes up in caution. Fear is a good
thing for the wild creatures to have in superabundance. It often saves
them from real danger. But how undiscriminating it is! It is said
that an iron hoop or wagon-tire placed around a setting hen in the
woods will protect her from the foxes.
Animals are afraid on general principles. Anything new and strange
excites their suspicions. In a herd of animals, cattle, or horses,
fear quickly becomes a panic and rages like a conflagration. Cattlemen
in the West found that any little thing at night might kindle the
spark in their herds and sweep the whole mass away in a furious
stampede. Each animal excites every other, and the multiplied fear of
the herd is something terrible. Panics among men are not much
different.
In a discussion like the present one, let us use words in their strict
logical sense, if possible. Most of the current misconceptions in
natural history, as in other matters, arise from a loose and careless
use of words. One says teach and train and instruct, when the facts
point to instinctive imitation or unconscious communication.
That the young of all kinds thrive better and develop more rapidly
under the care of their parents than when deprived of that care is
obvious enough. It would be strange if it were not so. Nothing can
quite fill the place of the mother with either man or bird or beast.
The mother provides and protects. The young quickly learn of her
through the natural instinct of imitation. They share her fears, they
follow in her footsteps, they look to her for protection; it is the
order of nature. They are not trained in the way they should go, as a
child is by its human parents--they are not trained at all; but their
natural instincts doubtless act more promptly and surely with the
mother than without her. That a young kingfisher or a young osprey
would, in due time, dive for fish, or a young marsh hawk catch mice
and birds, or a young fox or wolf or coon hunt for its proper prey
without the parental example, admits of no doubt at all; but they
would each probably do this thing earlier and better in the order of
nature than if that order were interfered with.
The other day I saw a yellow-bellied woodpecker alight upon a decaying
beech and proceed to drill for a grub. Two of its fully grown young
followed it and, alighting near, sidled up to where the parent was
drilling. A hasty observer would say that the parent was giving its
young a lesson in grub-hunting, but I read the incident differently.
The parent bird had no thought of its young. It made passes at them
when they came too near, and drove them away. Presently it left the
tree, whereupon one of the young examined the hole its parent had made
and drilled a little on its own account. A parental example like this
may stimulate the young to hunt for grubs earlier than they would
otherwise do, but this is merely conjecture. There is no proof of it,
nor can there be any.
The mother bird or beast does not have to be instructed in her
maternal duties: they are instinctive with her; it is of vital
importance to the continuance of the species that they should be. If
it were a matter of instruction or acquired knowledge, how precarious
it would be!
The idea of teaching is an advanced idea, and can come only to a being
that is capable of returning upon itself in thought, and that can form
abstract conceptions--conceptions that float free, so to speak,
dissociated from particular concrete objects.
If a fox, or a wolf, for instance, were capable of reflection and of
dwelling upon the future and upon the past, it might feel the need of
instructing its young in the matter of traps and hounds, if such a
thing were possible without language. When the cat brings her kitten a
live mouse, she is not thinking about instructing it in the art of
dealing with mice, but is intent solely upon feeding her young. The
kitten already knows, through inheritance, about mice. So when the hen
leads her brood forth and scratches for them, she has but one
purpose--to provide them with food. If she is confined to the coop,
the chickens go forth and soon scratch for themselves and snap up the
proper insect food.
The mother's care and protection count for much, but they do not take
the place of inherited instinct. It has been found that newly hatched
chickens, when left to themselves, do not know the difference between
edible and non-edible insects, but that they soon learn. In such
matters the mother hen, no doubt, guides them.
A writer in "Forest and Stream," who has since published a book about
his "wild friends," pushes this notion that animals train their young
so far that it becomes grotesque. Here are some of the things that
this keen observer and exposer of "false natural history" reports that
he has seen about his cabin in the woods: He has seen an old crow that
hurriedly flew away from his cabin door on his sudden appearance,
return and beat its young because they did not follow quickly enough.
He has seen a male chewink, while its mate was rearing a second brood,
take the first brood and lead them away to a bird-resort (he probably
meant to say to a bird-nursery or kindergarten); and when one of the
birds wandered back to take one more view of the scenes of its
infancy, he has seen the father bird pounce upon it and give it a
"severe whipping and take it to the resort again."
He has seen swallows teach their young to fly by gathering them upon
fences and telegraph wires and then, at intervals (and at the word of
command, I suppose), launching out in the air with them, and swooping
and circling about. He has seen a song sparrow, that came to his
dooryard for fourteen years (he omitted to say that he had branded him
and so knew his bird), teach _his year-old boy to sing_ (the italics
are mine). This hermit-inclined sparrow wanted to "desert the fields
for a life in the woods," but his "wife would not consent." Many a
featherless biped has had the same experience with his society-spoiled
wife. The puzzle is, how did this masterly observer know that this
state of affairs existed between this couple? Did the wife tell him,
or the husband? "Hermit" often takes his visitors to a wood thrushes'
singing-school, where, "as the birds forget their lesson, they drop
out one by one."
He has seen an old rooster teaching a young rooster to crow! At first
the old rooster crows mostly in the morning, but later in the season
he crows throughout the day, at short intervals, to show the young
"the proper thing." "Young birds removed out of hearing will not learn
to crow." He hears the old grouse teaching the young to drum in the
fall, though he neglects to tell us that he has seen the young in
attendance upon these lessons. He has seen a mother song sparrow
helping her two-year-old daughter build her nest. He has discovered
that the cat talks to her kittens with her ears: when she points them
forward, that means "yes;" when she points them backward, that means
"no." Hence she can tell them whether the wagon they hear approaching
is the butcher's cart or not, and thus save them the trouble of
looking out.
And so on through a long list of wild and domestic creatures. At first
I suspected this writer was covertly ridiculing a certain other
extravagant "observer," but a careful reading of his letter shows him
to be seriously engaged in the worthy task of exposing "false natural
history."
Now the singing of birds, the crowing of cocks, the drumming of
grouse, are secondary sexual characteristics. They are not necessary
to the lives of the creatures, and are probably more influenced by
imitation than are the more important instincts of self-preservation
and reproduction. Yet the testimony is overwhelming that birds will
sing and roosters crow and turkeys gobble, though they have never
heard these sounds; and, no doubt, the grouse and the woodpeckers drum
from promptings of the same sexual instinct.
I do not wish to accuse "Hermit" of willfully perverting the facts of
natural history. He is one of those persons who read their own fancies
into whatever they look upon. He is incapable of disinterested
observation, which means he is incapable of observation at all in the
true sense. There are no animals that signal to each other with their
ears. The movements of the ears follow the movements of the eye. When
an animal's attention is directed to any object or sound, its ears
point forward; when its attention is relaxed, the ears fall. But with
the cat tribe the ears are habitually erect, as those of the horse are
usually relaxed. They depress them and revert them, as do many other
animals, when angered or afraid.
Certain things in animal life lead me to suspect that animals have
some means of communication with one another, especially the
gregarious animals, that is quite independent of what we mean by
language. It is like an interchange or blending of subconscious
states, and may be analogous to telepathy among human beings. Observe
what a unit a flock of birds becomes when performing their evolutions
in the air. They are not many, but one, turning and flashing in the
sun with a unity and a precision that it would be hard to imitate. One
may see a flock of shore-birds that behave as one body: now they turn
to the sun a sheet of silver; then, as their dark backs are presented
to the beholder, they almost disappear against the shore or the
clouds. It would seem as if they shared in a communal mind or spirit,
and that what one felt they all felt at the same instant.
In Florida I many times saw large schools of mullets fretting and
breaking the surface of the water with what seemed to be the tips of
their tails. A large area would be agitated and rippled by the backs
or tails of a host of fishes. Then suddenly, while I looked, there
would be one splash and every fish would dive. It was a multitude,
again, acting as one body. Hundreds, thousands of tails slapped the
water at the same instant and were gone.
When the passenger pigeons were numbered by millions, the enormous
clans used to migrate from one part of the continent to another. I saw
the last flight of them up the Hudson River valley in the spring of
1875. All day they streamed across the sky. One purpose seemed to
animate every flock and every bird. It was as if all had orders to
move to the same point. The pigeons came only when there was
beech-mast in the woods. How did they know we had had a beech-nut
year? It is true that a few straggling bands were usually seen some
days in advance of the blue myriads: were these the scouts, and did
they return with the news of the beech-nuts? If so, how did they
communicate the intelligence and set the whole mighty army in motion?
The migrations among the four-footed animals that sometimes occur over
a large, part of the country--among the rats, the gray squirrels, the
reindeer of the north--seem to be of a similar character. How does
every individual come to share in the common purpose? An army of men
attempting to move without leaders and without a written or spoken
language becomes a disorganized mob. Not so the animals. There seems
to be a community of mind among them in a sense that there is not
among men. The pressure of great danger seems to develop in a degree
this community of mind and feeling among men. Under strong excitement
we revert more or less to the animal state, and are ruled by instinct.
It may well be that telepathy--the power to project one's mental or
emotional state so as to impress a friend at a distance--is a power
which we have carried over from our remote animal ancestors. However
this may be, it is certain that the sensitiveness of birds and
quadrupeds to the condition of one another, their sense of a common
danger, of food supplies, of the direction of home under all
circumstances, point to the possession of a power which is only
rudimentary in us.
Some observers explain these things on the theory that the flocks of
birds have leaders, and that their surprising evolutions are guided by
calls or signals from these leaders, too quick or too fine for our
eyes or ears to catch. I suppose they would explain the movements of
the schools of fish and the simultaneous movements of a large number
of land animals on the same theory. I cannot accept this explanation.
It is harder for me to believe that a flock of birds has a code of
calls or signals for all its evolutions--now right, now left, now
mount, now swoop--which each individual understands on the instant, or
that the hosts of the wild pigeons had their captains and signals,
than to believe that out of the flocking instinct there has grown some
other instinct or faculty, less understood, but equally potent, that
puts all the members of a flock in such complete rapport with one
another that the purpose and the desire of one become the purpose and
the desire of all. There is nothing in this state of things analogous
to a military organization. The relation among the members of the
flock is rather that of creatures sharing spontaneously the same
subconscious or psychic state, and acted upon by the same hidden
influence, in a way and to a degree that never occur among men.
The faculty or power by which animals find the way home over or across
long stretches of country is quite as mysterious and incomprehensible
to us as the spirit of the flock to which I refer. A hive of bees
evidently has a collective purpose and plan that does not emanate from
any single individual or group of individuals, and which is understood
by all without outward communication.
Is there anything which, without great violence to language, may be
called a school of the woods? In the sense in which a playground is a
school--a playground without rules or methods or a director--there is
a school of the woods. It is an unkept, an unconscious school or
gymnasium, and is entirely instinctive. In play the young of all
animals, no doubt, get a certain amount of training and disciplining
that helps fit them for their future careers; but this school is not
presided over or directed by parents, though they sometimes take part
in it. It is spontaneous and haphazard, without rule or system; but
is, in every case, along the line of the future struggle for life of
the particular bird or animal. A young marsh hawk which we reared used
to play at striking leaves or bits of bark with its talons; kittens
play with a ball, or a cob, or a stick, as if it were a mouse, dogs
race and wrestle with one another as in the chase; ducks dive and
sport in the water; doves circle and dive in the air as if escaping
from a hawk; birds pursue and dodge one another in the same way; bears
wrestle and box; chickens have mimic battles; colts run and leap;
fawns probably do the same thing; squirrels play something like a game
of tag in the trees; lambs butt one another and skip about the rocks;
and so on.
In fact, nearly all play, including much of that of man, takes the
form of mock battle, and is to that extent an education for the
future. Among the carnivora it takes also the form of the chase. Its
spring and motive are, of course, pleasure, and not education; and
herein again is revealed the cunning of nature--the power that
conceals purposes of its own in our most thoughtless acts. The cat and
the kitten play with the live mouse, not to indulge the sense of
cruelty, as some have supposed, but to indulge in the pleasure of the
chase and unconsciously to practice the feat of capture. The cat
rarely plays with a live bird, because the recapture would be more
difficult, and might fail. What fisherman would not like to take his
big fish over and over again, if he could be sure of doing it, not
from cruelty, but for the pleasure of practicing his art? For further
light on the subject of the significance of the play of animals, I
refer the reader to the work of Professor Karl Groos called "The Play
of Animals."
One of my critics has accused me of measuring all things by the
standard of my little farm--of thinking that what is not true of
animal life there is not true anywhere. Unfortunately my farm _is_
small--hardly a score of acres--and its animal life very limited. I
have never seen even a porcupine upon it; but I have a hill where one
might roll down, should one ever come my way and be in the mood for
that kind of play.[1] I have a few possums, a woodchuck or two, an
occasional skunk, some red squirrels and rabbits, and many kinds of
song-birds. Foxes occasionally cross my acres; and once, at least, I
saw a bald eagle devouring a fish in one of my apple-trees. Wild
ducks, geese, and swans in spring and fall pass across the sky above
me. Quail and grouse invade my premises, and of crows I have, at least
in bird-nesting time, too many.
[1] See comment on the story here alluded to on page 244.
But I have a few times climbed over my pasture wall and wandered into
distant fields. Once upon a time I was a traveler in Asia for the
space of two hours--an experience that ought to have yielded me some
startling discoveries, but did not. Indeed, the wider I have traveled
and observed nature, the more I am convinced that the wild creatures
behave just about the same in all parts of the country; that is, under
similar conditions. What one observes truly about bird or beast upon
his farm of ten acres, he will not have to unlearn, travel as wide or
as far as he will. Where the animals are much hunted, they are of
course much wilder and more cunning than where they are not hunted. In
the Yellowstone National Park we found the elk, deer, and mountain
sheep singularly tame; and in the summer, so we were told, the bears
board at the big hotels. The wild geese and ducks, too, were tame; and
the red-tailed hawk built its nest in a large dead oak that stood
quite alone near the side of the road. With us the same hawk hides its
nest in a tree in the dense woods, because the farmers unwisely hunt
and destroy it. But the cougars and coyotes and bobcats were no tamer
in the park than they are in other places where they are hunted.
Indeed, if I had elk and deer and caribou and moose and bears and
wildcats and beavers and otters and porcupines on my farm, I should
expect them to behave just as they do in other parts of the country
under like conditions: they would be tame and docile if I did not
molest them, and wild and fierce if I did. They would do nothing out
of character in either case.
Your natural history knowledge of the East will avail you in the West.
There is no country, says Emerson, in which they do not wash the pans
and spank the babies; and there is no country where a dog is not a
dog, or a fox a fox, or where a hare is ferocious, or a wolf lamblike.
The porcupine behaves in the Rockies just as he does in the
Catskills; the deer and the moose and the black bear and the beaver
of the Pacific slope are almost identical in their habits and traits
with those of the Atlantic slope.
In my observations of the birds of the far West, I went wrong in my
reckoning but once: the Western meadowlark has a new song. How or
where he got it is a mystery; it seems to be in some way the gift of
those great, smooth, flowery, treeless, dimpled hills. But the swallow
was familiar, and the robin and the wren and the highhole, while the
woodchuck I saw and heard in Wyoming might have been the "chuck" of my
native hills. The eagle is an eagle the world over. When I was a boy I
saw, one autumn day, an eagle descend with extended talons upon the
backs of a herd of young cattle that were accompanied by a
cosset-sheep and were feeding upon a high hill. The object of the
eagle seemed to be to separate the one sheep from the cattle, or to
frighten them all into breaking their necks in trying to escape him.
But neither result did he achieve. In the Yellowstone Park, President
Roosevelt and Major Pitcher saw a golden eagle trying the same tactics
upon a herd of elk that contained one yearling. The eagle doubtless
had his eye upon the yearling, though he would probably have been
quite satisfied to have driven one of the older ones down a precipice.
His chances of a dinner would have been equally good.
There is one particular in which the bird families are much more human
than our four-footed kindred. I refer to the practice of courtship.
The male of all birds, so far as I know, pays suit to the female and
seeks to please and attract her.[2] This the quadrupeds do not do;
there is no period of courtship among them, and no mating or pairing
as among the birds. The male fights for the female, but he does not
seek to win her by delicate attentions. If there are any exceptions to
this rule, I do not know them. There seems to be among the birds
something that is like what is called romantic love. The choice of
mate seems always to rest with the female,[2] while among the mammals
the female shows no preference at all.
[2] Except in the case of certain birds of India and Australia.