Problems of Instinct and Intelligence |
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abdomen antennæ ants army ball beetles behaviour bits blind bridge British Ants building burrow butterflies camphor Camponotus Camponotus compressus capture carry caterpillar cell circle close cockroach cocoon course creatures cricket drag dung earth Eciton edge egg-bag Entomologique de France entrance Eumenes conica example experiment Fabre Fabre's Ferton fixed goes grip ground habit happened Hence hole impulse inches India Indian insect instinct intelligence jaws kind larva larvæ leaf leaves legs memory Messor moth Myrmecocystus Naturalist in Himalaya nest observed Osmia ovipositor paralysed parasite particular pebbles Peckhams pellet perfect Polyergus Pompilus possess pull remarkable resin rhythm routine Sceliphron scent silk smearing smell Société Entomologique solifugid solitary sometimes species Sphex spider spiral spot stab stick sting stone tarantula termites thing thorax thread tree tunnel underneath variation victim wall wasp wonderful
Popular passages
Page 130 - As with other long-domesticated animals, the instincts of the silk-moth have suffered. The caterpillars, when placed on a mulberry-tree, often commit the strange mistake of devouring the base of the leaf on which they are feeding, and consequently fall down ; but they are capable, according to M.
Page 295 - Every animal, man included, possesses two sets of mental activity : the one instinctive, automatic, innate : the other intelligent, plastic and acquired. These two activities are always blended. They may differ immensely in degrees of development, but they never completely separate from each other. The insect mind and the human mind differ mainly in the development of these two factors. Instinct predominates in the insect mind : intelligence in the mind of man.
Page 276 - That instinct began in a reasoned act. That this act, through being continually repeated, tended to lose the reasoning element and to become more and more unconscious. As this process continued through generations, the mental machinery by which it worked got more indelibly engraven in the mind. And in the end it became automatic — in other words, it became instinctive.
Page 101 - ... into another, reserved until it came to us a little of that wonderful power which it has bestowed so lavishly upon the insects! The answer is that apparently, in this world, cellular evolution is not everything. "For these and many other reasons, I reject the modern theory of instinct. I see in it no more than an ingenious game in which the arm-chair naturalist, the man who shapes the world according to his whim, is able to take delight...
Page 257 - Termites can hear sounds that are beyond our range of hearing ; and ants are sensitive to ultra-violet light to which we are completely blind. But this is not all. There is reason to think that insects possess some faculty different not only in degree, but also perhaps different in quality from any faculty that exists in us. Certain acts of behaviour are beyond explanation. We call in the aid of an unknown sense.
Page 255 - Kingston who, at the conclusion of his seventeen years of persevering study, concludes his observations with the certainty that "we cannot explain psychic phenomena by reducing things to physical and chemical laws. Even insect psychology has something else!
Page 44 - She could not take advantage of what others had done for her. She had found a caterpillar, therefore she must sting it. That is the routine of her particular instinct. The paralysed must be again paralysed, the crushed head must be again crushed, before the next psychic step can follow, that is the dragging of the victim to the nest. I give another instance from my own experience. Sphex lobatus, an Indian huntress of crickets, has the following strict routine. She digs into a cricket's den, drives...
Page 118 - He removed the caterpillar to a white box. It remained motionless for several hours, then recommenced its cocoon-making business, but this time made a white cocoon.
Page 72 - Let us now turn to the other side of the picture and witness its amazing folly. Instinct, when it operates in the normal course, when it fulfils the particular purpose for which that particular instinct exists, acts with admirable wisdom and perfection. But divert that instinct from its normal course ; try to turn it in some other channel ; endeavour to make it do something which it was not originally intended to do, and the result is a course of action which astonishes us by its utter folly.
Page 137 - First she makes a wall of clay, then covers the wall over with pebbles, all more or less equal in size. Her favourite stones are bits of quartz. She must get suitable pieces. Nothing seems more clear from Fabre's description than that she acts with discrimination and choice. Here is what he writes with respect to the pebbles : " They are selected with minute care. The insect weighs them, so to say, measures them with the compass of its mandibles, and does not accept them until after recognizing in...