Animal Intelligence Part 44

[264] So many cases are on record of large dogs (especially of the Newfoundland breed) throwing troublesome curs into the water, and again rescuing them if they show danger of drowning, that we can scarcely fail to accept them as true. Such cases exhibit a wonderful play of human-like emotions.

[265] _Descent of Man_, p. 71.

[266] For many other instances of sheep-dog sagacity, see Watson, _Reasoning Power of Animals_, under 'Shepherd's Dog.'

[267] _Naturalist's Library_, vol. x., p. 154 (quoted by Watson).

[268] Since my MS. went to press I have myself met with a striking display of the recognition of a portrait by a dog. The portrait was one of myself, and the dog a half-bred setter and retriever of my own.

[269] _Missionary Travels_, chap. i.

[270] _Ill.u.s.trations of Instinct_, p. 179.

CHAPTER XVII.

MONKEYS, APES AND BABOONS.

WE now come to the last group of animals which we shall have occasion to consider, and these, from an evolutionary point of view, are the most interesting. Unfortunately, however, the intelligence of apes, monkeys, and baboons has not presented material for nearly so many observations as that of other intelligent mammals. Useless for all purposes of labour or art, mischievous as domestic pets, and in all cases troublesome to keep, these animals have never enjoyed the improving influences of hereditary domestication, while for the same reasons observation of the intelligence of captured individuals has been comparatively scant. Still more unfortunately, these remarks apply most of all to the most man-like of the group, and the nearest existing prototypes of the human race: our knowledge of the psychology of the anthropoid apes is less than our knowledge of the psychology of any other animal. But notwithstanding the scarcity of the material which I have to present, I think there is enough to show that the mental life of the _Simiadae_ is of a distinctly different type from any that we have hitherto considered, and that in their psychology, as in their anatomy, these animals approach most nearly to _h.o.m.o sapiens_.

_Emotions._

Affection and sympathy are strongly marked--the latter indeed more so than in any other animal, not even excepting the dog. A few instances from many that might be quoted will be sufficient to show this.

Mr. Darwin writes:--

Rengger observed an American monkey (a Cebus) carefully driving away the flies which plagued her infant; and Duvancel saw a Hylobates washing the faces of her young ones in a stream. So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds kept under confinement by Brehm in North Africa. Orphan monkeys were always adopted and carefully guarded by the other monkeys, both male and female.[271]

Again, Jobson says that whenever his party shot an orang-outang from their boat, the body was carried off by others before the men could reach the sh.o.r.e.

So, again, James Forbes, F.R.S., in his 'Oriental Memoirs,' narrates the following remarkable instance of the display of solicitude and care for a dead companion exhibited by a monkey:--

One of a shooting-party under a banian tree killed a female monkey, and carried it to his tent, which was soon surrounded by forty or fifty of the tribe, who made a great noise and seemed disposed to attack their aggressor. They retreated when he presented his fowling-piece, the dreadful effect of which they had witnessed and appeared perfectly to understand. The head of the troop, however, stood his ground, chattering furiously; the sportsman, who perhaps felt some little degree of compunction for having killed one of the family, did not like to fire at the creature, and nothing short of firing would suffice to drive him off. At length he came to the door of the tent, and, finding threats of no avail, began a lamentable moaning, and by the most expressive gesture seemed to beg for the dead body. It was given him; he took it sorrowfully in his arms and bore it away to his expecting companions. They who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race.

Of course it is not to be supposed from this instance that all, or even most monkeys display any care for their dead. A writer in 'Nature' (vol.

ix., p. 243), for instance, says expressly that such is not the case with Gibbons (_Hylobates agilis_), which he has observed to be highly sympathetic to injured companions, but 'take no notice whatever' of dead ones.

Regarding their sympathy for injured companions this writer says:--

I keep in my garden a number of Gibbon apes (_Hylobates agilis_); they live quite free from all restraint in the trees, merely coming when called to be fed. One of them, a young male, on one occasion fell from a tree and dislocated his wrist; it received the greatest attention from the others, especially from an old female, who, however, was no relation; she used before eating her own plantains to take up the first that were offered to her every day, and give them to the cripple, who was living in the eaves of a wooden house; and I have frequently noticed that a cry of fright, pain, or distress from one would bring all the others at once to the complainer, and they would then condole with him and fold him in their arms.

Captain Hugh Crow, in his 'Narrative of my Life,' relates an interesting tale of the conduct of some monkeys on board his ship. He says:--

We had several monkeys on board; they were of different species and sizes, and amongst them was a beautiful little creature, the body of which was about ten inches or a foot in length, and about the circ.u.mference of a common drinking gla.s.s. This interesting little animal, which, when I received it from the Governor of the Island of St. Thomas, diverted me by its innocent gambols, became afflicted by the malady which unfortunately prevailed in the ship. It had always been a favourite with the other monkeys, who seemed to regard it as the last born and the pet of the family; and they granted it many indulgences which they seldom conceded to one another.

It was very tractable and gentle in its temper, and never took advantage of the partiality shown to it.

From the moment it was taken ill their attention and care of it redoubled; and it was truly affecting and interesting to see with what anxiety and tenderness they tended and nursed the little creature. A struggle often ensued among them for priority in those offices of affection; and some would steal one thing and some another, which they would carry to it untasted, however tempting it might be to their own palates.

Then they would take it up gently in their fore-paws, hug it to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and cry over it as a fond mother would over her suffering child. The little creature seemed sensible of their a.s.siduities, but it was wofully overpowered by sickness. It would sometimes come to me and look me pitifully in the face, and moan and cry like an infant, as if it besought me to give it relief; and we did everything we could think of to restore it to health: but, in spite of the united attention of its kindred tribes and ourselves, the interesting little creature did not survive long.

Here is a case which I myself witnessed at the Zoological Gardens, and published in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science,' from which I now quote:--

A year or two ago there was an Arabian baboon and an Anubis baboon confined in one cage, adjoining that which contained a dog-headed baboon. The Anubis baboon pa.s.sed its hand through the wires of the part.i.tion, in order to purloin a nut which the large dog-headed baboon had left within reach--expressly, I believe, that it might act as a bait. The Anubis baboon very well knew the danger he ran, for he waited until his bulky neighbour had turned his back upon the nut with the appearance of having forgotten all about it. The dog-headed baboon, however, was all the time slyly looking round with the corner of his eye, and no sooner was the arm of his victim well within his cage than he sprang with astonishing rapidity and caught the retreating hand in his mouth. The cries of the Anubis baboon quickly brought the keeper to the rescue, when, by dint of a good deal of physical persuasion, the dog-headed baboon was induced to leave go his hold. The Anubis baboon then retired to the middle of his cage, moaning piteously, and holding the injured hand against his chest while he rubbed it with the other one. The Arabian baboon now approached him from the top part of the cage, and, while making a soothing sound very expressive of sympathy, folded the sufferer in its arms--exactly as a mother would her child under similar circ.u.mstances. It must be stated, also, that this expression of sympathy had a decidedly quieting effect upon the sufferer, his moans becoming less piteous so soon as he was enfolded in the arms of his comforter; and the manner in which he laid his cheek upon the bosom of his friend was as expressive as anything could be of sympathy appreciated. This really affecting spectacle lasted a considerable time, and while watching it I felt that, even had it stood alone, it would in itself have been sufficient to prove the essential ident.i.ty of some of the n.o.blest among human emotions with those of the lower animals.

As a beautiful instance of the display of sympathy, I may narrate an occurrence which was witnessed by my friend Sir James Malcolm--a gentleman on the accuracy of whose observation I can rely. He was on board a steamer where there were two common East India monkeys, one of which was older and larger than the other, though they were not mother and child. The smaller monkey one day fell overboard amidships. The larger one became frantically excited, and running over the bulwarks down to a part of the ship which is called 'the bend,' it held on to the side of the vessel with one hand, while with the other it extended to her drowning companion a cord with which she had been tied up, and one end of which was fastened round her waist. The incident astonished everyone on board, but unfortunately for the romance of the story the little monkey was not near enough to grasp the floating end of the cord.

The animal, however, was eventually saved by a sailor throwing out a longer rope to the little swimmer, who had sense enough to grasp it, and so to be hauled on board.

The following account of the behaviour of a wounded monkey seems to suggest the presence of a cla.s.s of emotions similar to those which we know as feelings of reproach. The observer was Capt. Johnson:--

I was one of a party of Jeekary in the Bahar district; our tents were pitched in a large mango garden, and our horses were picquetted in the same garden a little distance off. When we were at dinner a Syer came to us, complaining that some of the horses had broken loose in consequence of being frightened by monkeys (i.e. Macacus Orhesus) on the trees. As soon as dinner was over I went out with my gun to drive them off, and I fired with small shot at one of them, which instantly ran down to the lowest branch of the tree, as if he were going to fly at me, stopped suddenly, and coolly put his paw to the part wounded, covered with blood, and held it out for me to see. I was so much hurt at the time that it has left an impression never to be effaced, and I have never since fired a gun at any of the tribe. Almost immediately on my return to the party, before I had fully described what had pa.s.sed, a Syer came to inform us that the monkey was dead. We ordered the Syer to bring it to us, but by the time he returned the other monkeys had carried the dead one off, and none of them could anywhere be seen.

This case is strikingly corroborated by the following allusion to Sir W. Hoste's Memoirs, given by Jesse as follows:--

One of his officers, coming home after a long day's shooting, saw a female monkey running along the rocks, with her young one in her arms. He immediately fired, and the animal fell. On his coming up, she grasped her little one close to her breast, and with her other hand pointed to the wound which the ball had made, and which had entered above her breast. Dipping her finger in the blood, and then holding it up, she seemed to reproach him with being the cause of her death, and consequently that of the young one, to which she frequently pointed. 'I never,' says Sir William, 'felt so much as when I heard the story, and I determined never to shoot one of these animals as long as I lived.'[272]

Mr. Darwin says that most persons who have observed monkeys have seen them show a sense of the ludicrous. Here is an instance which I have myself observed, and now quote from my article in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science:'--

Several years ago I used to watch carefully the young orang-outang in the Zoological Gardens, and I am quite sure that she manifested a sense of the ludicrous. One example will suffice. Her feeding tin was of a somewhat peculiar shape, and when it was empty she used sometimes to invert it upon her head. The tin then presented a comical resemblance to a bonnet, and as its wearer would generally favour the spectators with a broad grin at the time of putting it on, she never failed to raise a laugh from them. Her success in this respect was evidently attended with no small gratification on her part.

But perhaps the strongest evidence of monkeys having an appreciation of the ludicrous is the same as that which we have seen to be presented in the case of certain dogs--namely, in the animals disliking ridicule.

Abundant evidence on this head in the case of monkeys will be given further on.

That monkeys enjoy play no one can question who spends an hour or two in the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. According to Savage, chimpanzees congregate together for the sole purpose of play, when they beat or drum with pieces of stick on sonorous pieces of wood.[273]

Curiosity is more strongly p.r.o.nounced in monkeys than in any other animals. We all know the interesting ill.u.s.tration on this head furnished by the experiment of Mr. Darwin, who, in order to test the statement of Brehm that monkeys have an instinctive dread of snakes, and yet cannot 'desist from occasionally satiating their curiosity in a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept,' took a stuffed snake to the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. Mr. Darwin says:--

The excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles I ever beheld... . I then placed a live snake in a paper bag, with the mouth loosely closed, in one of the larger compartments. One of the monkeys immediately approached, cautiously opened the bag, peeped in, and instantly dashed away. Then I witnessed what Brehm has described, for monkey after monkey, with head raised high and turned on one side, could not resist taking a momentary peep into the upright bag, at the dreadful object lying quietly at the bottom.[274]

Allied, perhaps, to curiosity, and so connected with the emotions, is what Mr. Darwin calls 'the principle of imitation.' It is proverbial that monkeys carry this principle to ludicrous lengths, and they are the only animals which imitate for the mere sake of imitating, as has been observed by Desor, though an exception ought to be made in favour of talking birds. The psychology of imitation is difficult of a.n.a.lysis, but it is remarkable as well as suggestive that it should be confined in its manifestations to monkeys and certain birds among animals, and to the lower mental levels among men. As Mr. Darwin says:--

The principle of imitation is strong in man, and especially, as I have myself observed, with savages.

In certain morbid states of the brain, this tendency is exaggerated to an extraordinary degree; some hemiplegic patients and others, at the commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain, unconsciously imitate every word that is uttered, whether in their own or in a foreign language, and every gesture or action which is performed near them.

The same sort of tendency is often observable in young children, so that it seems to be frequently distinctive of a certain stage or grade of mental evolution, and particularly in the branch _Primates_. Other animals, however, certainly imitate each other's actions to a certain extent, as I shall have occasion fully to notice in my next work.

As for the sterner emotions, rage may be so p.r.o.nounced as to make a monkey exhaust itself with beating about its cage, or a baboon bite its own limbs till the blood flows.[275] Jealousy occurs in a correspondingly high degree, while retaliation and revenge are shown by all the higher monkeys when injury has been done to them, as any one may find by offering an insult to a baboon. The following is a good case of this, as it shows what may be called brooding resentment deliberately preparing a satisfactory revenge. Mr. Darwin writes:--

Sir Andrew Smith, a zoologist whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me the following story of which he was himself an eye-witness. At the Cape of Good Hope, an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one Sunday for parade, poured water into a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the officer as he pa.s.sed by, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of many bystanders. For long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his victim.[276]

_General Intelligence._

Coming now to the higher powers, I shall give a few cases to show that monkeys certainly surpa.s.s all other animals in the scope of their rational faculty. Professor Croora Robertson writes me:--

I witnessed the following incident in the Jardin des Plantes, now many years ago; but it struck me greatly at the time, and I have narrated it repeatedly in the interval. A large ape--I believe anthropoid, but cannot tell the species--was in the great iron cage with a number of smaller monkeys, and was lording it over them with many wild gambols, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of a crowd of spectators. Many things--fruits and the like--had been thrown between the bars into the cage, which the ape was always forward to seize. At last some one threw in a small hand looking-gla.s.s, with a strongly made frame of wood. This the ape at once laid hold of, and began to brandish like a hammer. Suddenly he was arrested by the reflection of himself in the gla.s.s, and looked puzzled for a moment; then he darted his head behind the gla.s.s to find the other of his kind that he evidently supposed to be there.

Astonished to find nothing, he apparently bethought himself that he had not been quick enough with his movement. He now proceeded to raise and draw the gla.s.s nearer to him with great caution, and then with a swifter dart looked behind. Again finding nothing, he repeated the attempt once more. He now pa.s.sed from astonishment to anger, and began to beat with the frame violently on the floor of the cage. Soon the gla.s.s was shattered, and pieces fell out. Continuing to beat, he was in the course of one blow again arrested by his image in the piece of gla.s.s still remaining in the frame. Then, as it seemed, he determined to make one trial more. More circ.u.mspectly than ever the whole first part of the process was gone through with; more violently than ever the final dart made. His fury over this last failure knew no bounds.