The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals | Page 6

wild animal the possession of a
mind, and a working intelligence?
Yes. Animals do reason. If any one truth has come out of all the critical
or uncritical study of the animal mind that has been going on for two
centuries, it is this. Animals do reason; they always have reasoned, and
as long as animals live they never will cease to reason.
The higher wild animals possess and display the same fundamental
passions and emotions that animate the human race. This fact is subject
to intelligent analysis, discussion and development, but it is not by any
means a "question" subject to debate. In the most intellectual of the
quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, the display of fear, courage, love, hate,
pleasure, displeasure, confidence, suspicion, jealousy, pity, greed and
generosity are so plainly evident that even children can and do

recognize them. To the serious and open-minded student who devotes
prolonged thought to these things, they bring the wild animal very near
to the "lord of creation."
To the question, "Have wild animals souls?" we reply, "That is a
debatable question. Read; then think it over."
METHODS WITH THE ANIMAL MIND. In the study of animal
minds, much depends upon the method employed. It seems to me that
the problem- box method of the investigators of "animal behavior"
leaves much to be desired. Certainly it is not calculated to develop the
mental status of animals along lines of natural mental progression. To
place a wild creature in a great artificial contrivance, fitted with doors,
cords, levers, passages and what not, is enough to daze or frighten any
timid animal out of its normal state of mind and nerves. To put a wild
sapajou monkey,-- weak, timid and afraid,--in a strange and formidable
prison box filled with strange machinery, and call upon it to learn or to
invent strange mechanical processes, is like bringing a boy of ten years
up to a four-cylinder duplex Hoe printing-and-folding press, and saying
to him: "Now, go ahead and find out how to run this machine, and print
both sides of a signature upon it."
The average boy would shrink from the mechanical monster, and have
no stomach whatever for "trial by error."
I think that the principle of determining the mind of a wild animal
along the lines of the professor is not the best way. It should be
developed _along the natural lines of the wild-animal mind._ It should
be stimulated to do what it feels most inclined to do, and educated to
achieve real mental progress.
I think that the ideal way to study the minds of apes, baboons and
monkeys would be to choose a good location in a tropical or sub-
tropical climate that is neither too wet nor too dry, enclose an area of
five acres with an unclimbable fence, and divide it into as many corrals
as there are species to be experimented upon. Each corral would need a
shelter house and indoor playroom. The stage properties should be
varied and abundant, and designed to stimulate curiosity as well as
activity.
Somewhere in the program I would try to teach orang-utans and
chimpanzees the properties of fire, and how to make and tend fires. I
would try to teach them the seed-planting idea, and the meaning of

seedtime and harvest. I would teach sanitation and cleanliness of
habit,--a thing much more easily done than most persons suppose. I
would teach my apes to wash dishes and to cook, and I am sure that
some of them would do no worse than some human members of the
profession who now receive $50 per month, or more, for spoiling food.
In one corral I would mix up a chimpanzee, an orang-utan, a golden
baboon and a good-tempered rhesus monkey. My apes would begin at
two years old, because after seven or eight years of age all apes are
difficult, or even impossible, as subjects for peaceful experimentation.
I would try to teach a chimpanzee the difference between a noise and
music, between heat and cold, between good food and bad food. Any
trainer can teach an animal the difference between the blessings of
peace and the horrors of war, or in other words, obedience and good
temper versus cussedness and punishment.
Dr. Yerkes' laboratory in Montecito, California, and his experiments
there with an orang-utan and other primates, were in a good place, and
made a good beginning. It is very much to be hoped that means will be
provided by which his work can be prosecuted indefinitely, and under
the most perfect conditions that money can provide.
I hope that I will live long enough to see Dr. Yerkes develop the mind
of a young grizzly bear in a four-acre lot, to the utmost limits of that
keen and sagacious personality.

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