The Outline of Science Part 4

GREEN HYDRA.

A little freshwater polyp, about half an inch long, with a crown of tentacles round the mouth. It is seen giving off a bud, a clear ill.u.s.tration of as.e.xual reproduction. When a tentacle touches some small organism the latter is paralysed and drawn into the mouth.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: J. J. Ward, F.E.S.

EARTHWORM.

Earthworms began the profitable habit of moving with one end of the body always in front, and from worms to man the great majority of animals have bilateral symmetry.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM ILl.u.s.tRATING THE BEGINNING OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE.

1. An immature sperm-cell, with 4 chromosomes (nuclear bodies) represented as rods.

2. A mature sperm-cell, with 2 chromosomes.

3. An immature egg-cell, with 4 chromosomes represented as curved bodies.

4. A mature egg-cell, with 2 chromosomes.

5. The spermatozoon fertilises the ovum, introducing 2 chromosomes.

6. The fertilised ovum, with 4 chromosomes, 2 of paternal origin and 2 of maternal origin.

7. The chromosomes lie at the equator, and each is split longitudinally. The centrosome introduced by the spermatozoon has divided into two centrosomes, one at each pole of the nucleus. These play an important part in the division or segmentation of the egg.

8. The fertilised egg has divided into two cells. Each cell has 2 paternal and 2 maternal chromosomes.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reproduced from the Smithsonian Report, 1917.

GLa.s.s MODEL OF A SEA-ANEMONE.

A long tubular sea-anemone, with a fine crown of tentacles around the mouth. The suggestion of a flower is very obvious. By means of stinging la.s.soes on the tentacles minute animals on which it feeds are paralysed and captured for food.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THIS DRAWING SHOWS THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN FROM FISH TO MAN The Cerebrum, the seat of intelligence, increases in proportion to the other parts. In mammals it becomes more and more convoluted. The brain, which lies in one plane in fishes, becomes gradually curved on itself. In birds it is more curved than the drawing shows.]

-- 6.

Great Acquisitions.

In animals like sea-anemones and jellyfishes the general symmetry of the body is radial; that is to say, there is no right or left, and the body might be halved along many planes. It is a kind of symmetry well suited for sedentary or for drifting life. But worms began the profitable habit of moving with one end of the body always in front, and from worms to man the great majority of animals have bilateral symmetry. They have a right and a left side, and there is only one cut that halves the body. This kind of symmetry is suited for a more strenuous life than radial animals show; it is suited for pursuing food, for avoiding enemies, for chasing mates. And with the establishment of bilateral symmetry must be a.s.sociated the establishment of head-brains, the beginning of which is to be found in some simple worm-types.

Among the other great acquisitions gradually evolved we may notice: a well-developed head with sense-organs, the establishment of large internal surfaces such as the digestive and absorptive wall of the food-ca.n.a.l, the origin of quickly contracting striped muscle and of muscular appendages, the formation of blood as a distributing medium throughout the body, from which all the parts take what they need and to which they also contribute.

Another very important acquisition, almost confined (so far as is known) to backboned animals, was the evolution of what are called glands of internal secretion, such as the thyroid and the supra-renal. These manufacture subtle chemical substances which are distributed by the blood throughout the body, and have a manifold influence in regulating and harmonising the vital processes. Some of these chemical messengers are called hormones, which stimulate organs and tissues to greater activity; others are called chalones, which put on a brake. Some regulate growth and others rapidly alter the pressure and composition of the blood. Some of them call into active development certain parts of the body which have been, as it were, waiting for an appropriate trigger-pulling. Thus, at the proper time, the milk-glands of a mammalian mother are awakened from their dormancy. This very interesting outcome of evolution will be dealt with in another portion of this work.

THE INCLINED PLANE OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR.

-- 1.

Before pa.s.sing to a connected story of the gradual emergence of higher and higher forms of life in the course of the successive ages--the procession of life, as it may be called--it will be useful to consider the evolution of animal behaviour.

Evolution of Mind.

A human being begins as a microscopic fertilised egg-cell, within which there is condensed the long result of time--Man's inheritance. The long period of nine months before birth, with its intimate partnership between mother and offspring, is pa.s.sed as it were in sleep, and no one can make any statement in regard to the mind of the unborn child. Even after birth the dawn of mind is as slow as it is wonderful. To begin with, there is in the ovum and early embryo no nervous system at all, and it develops very gradually from simple beginnings. Yet as mentality cannot come in from outside, we seem bound to conclude that the potentiality of it--whatever that means--resides in the individual from the very first. The particular kind of activity known to us as thinking, feeling, and willing is the most intimate part of our experience, known to us directly apart from our senses, and the possibility of that must be implicit in the germ-cell just as the genius of Newton was implicit in a very miserable specimen of an infant. Now what is true of the individual is true also of the race--there is a gradual evolution of that aspect of the living creature's activity which we call mind. We cannot put our finger on any point and say: Before this stage there was no mind. Indeed, many facts suggest the conclusion that wherever there is life there is some degree of mind--even in the plants. Or it might be more accurate to put the conclusion in another way, that the activity we call life has always in some degree an inner or mental aspect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OKAPI AND GIRAFFE.

The Okapi is one of the great zoological discoveries. It gives a good idea of what the Giraffe's ancestors were like. The Okapi was unknown until discovered in 1900 by Sir Harry Johnston in Central Africa, where these strange animals have probably lived in dense forests from time immemorial.]

In another part of this book there is an account of the dawn of mind in backboned animals; what we aim at here is an outline of what may be called the inclined plane of animal behaviour.

A very simple animal acc.u.mulates a little store of potential energy, and it proceeds to expend this, like an explosive, by acting on its environment. It does so in a very characteristic self-preservative fashion, so that it burns without being consumed and explodes without being blown to bits. It is characteristic of the organism that it remains a going concern for a longer or shorter period--its length of life. Living creatures that expended their energy ineffectively or self-destructively would be eliminated in the struggle for existence. When a simple one-celled organism explores a corner of the field seen under a microscope, behaving to all appearance very like a dog scouring a field seen through a telescope, it seems permissible to think of something corresponding to mental endeavour a.s.sociated with its activity. This impression is strengthened when an amoeba pursues another amoeba, overtakes it, engulfs it, loses it, pursues it again, recaptures it, and so on. What is quite certain is that the behaviour of the animalcule is not like that of a pota.s.sium pill fizzing about in a basin of water, nor like the lurching movements of a gun that has got loose and "taken charge" on board ship. Another feature is that the locomotor activity of an animalcule often shows a distinct individuality: it may swim, for instance, in a loose spiral.

But there is another side to vital activity besides acting upon the surrounding world; the living creature is acted on by influences from without. The organism acts on its environment; that is the one side of the shield: the environment acts upon the organism; that is the other side. If we are to see life whole we must recognise these two sides of what we call living, and it is missing an important part of the history of animal life if we fail to see that evolution implies becoming more advantageously sensitive to the environment, making more of its influences, shutting out profitless stimuli, and opening more gateways to knowledge. The bird's world is a larger and finer world than an earthworm's; the world means more to the bird than to the worm.

The Trial and Error Method.

Simple creatures act with a certain degree of spontaneity on their environment, and they likewise react effectively to surrounding stimuli. Animals come to have definite "answers back," sometimes several, sometimes only one, as in the case of the Slipper Animalcule, which reverses its cilia when it comes within the sphere of some disturbing influence, retreats, and, turning upon itself tentatively, sets off again in the same general direction as before, but at an angle to the previous line. If it misses the disturbing influence, well and good; if it strikes it again, the tactics are repeated until a satisfactory way out is discovered or the stimulation proves fatal.

It may be said that the Slipper Animalcule has but one answer to every question, but there are many Protozoa which have several enregistered reactions. When there are alternative reactions which are tried one after another, the animal is pursuing what is called the trial-and-error method, and a higher note is struck.

There is an endeavour after satisfaction, and a trial of answers. When the creature profits by experience to the extent of giving the right answer first, there is the beginning of learning.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DIAGRAM OF A SIMPLE REFLEX ARC IN A BACKBONELESS ANIMAL LIKE AN EARTHWORM.

1. A sensory nerve-cell (S.C.) on the surface receives a stimulus.

2. The stimulus travels along the sensatory nerve-fibre (S.F.).

3. The sensory nerve-fibre branches in the nerve-cord.

4. Its branches come into close contact (SY^{1}) with those of an a.s.sociative or communicating nerve-cell (A.C.).

5. Other branches of the a.s.sociative cell come into close contact (SY^{2}) with the branches or dendrites of a motor nerve-cell (M.C.).

6. An impulse or command travels along the motor nerve-fibre or axis cylinder of the motor nerve-cell.

7. The motor nerve-fibre ends on a muscle-fibre (M.F.) near the surface. This moves and the reflex action is complete.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: British Museum (Natural History).

THE YUCCA MOTH.

The Yucca Moth, emerging from her coc.o.o.n, flies at night to a Yucca flower and collects pollen from the stamens, holding a little ball of it in her mouth-parts. She then visits another flower and lays an egg in the seed-box. After this she applies the pollen to the tip of the pistil, thus securing the fertilisation of the flower and the growth of the ovules in the pod. Yucca flowers in Britain do not produce seeds because there are no Yucca Moths.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INCLINED PLANE OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR.

Diagram ill.u.s.trating animal behaviour. The main line represents the general life of the creature. On the upper side are activities implying initiative; on the lower side actions which are almost automatic.

Upper Side.--I. Energetic actions. II. Simple tentatives. III. Trial-and-error methods. IV. Non-intelligent experiments. V. Experiential "learning." VI. a.s.sociative "learning." VII. Intelligent behaviour. VIII. Rational conduct (man).

Lower Side.--1. Reactions to environment. 2. Enregistered reactions. 3. Simple reflex actions. 4. Compound reflex actions. 5. Tropisms. 6. Enregistered rhythms. 7. Simple instincts. 8. Chain instincts. 9. Instinctive activities influenced by intelligence. 10. Subconscious cerebration at a high level (man).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: J. J. Ward, F.E.S.

VENUS' FLY-TRAP.

One of the most remarkable plants in the world, which captures its prey by means of a trap formed from part of its leaf. It has been induced to snap at and hold a bristle. If an insect lighting on the leaf touches one of six very sensitive hairs, which pull the trigger of the movement, the two halves of the leaf close rapidly and the fringing teeth on the margin interlock, preventing the insect's escape. Then follows an exudation of digestive juice.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reproduced by permission from "The Wonders of Instinct" by J. H. Fabre.

A SPIDER SUNNING HER EGGS.

A kind of spider, called Lycosa, lying head downwards at the edge of her nest, and holding her silken coc.o.o.n--the bag containing the eggs--up towards the sun in her hindmost pair of legs. This extraordinary proceeding is believed to a.s.sist in the hatching.]

Reflex Actions.

Among simple multicellular animals, such as sea-anemones, we find the beginnings of reflex actions, and a considerable part of the behaviour of the lower animals is reflex. That is to say, there are laid down in the animal in the course of its development certain pre-arrangements of nerve-cells and muscle-cells which secure that a fit and proper answer is given to a frequently recurrent stimulus. An earthworm half out of its burrow becomes aware of the light tread of a thrush's foot, and jerks itself back into its hole before anyone can say "reflex action." What is it that happens?

Certain sensory nerve-cells in the earthworm's skin are stimulated by vibrations in the earth; the message travels down a sensory nerve-fibre from each of the stimulated cells and enters the nerve-cord. The sensory fibres come into vital connection with branches of intermediary, a.s.sociative, or communicating cells, which are likewise connected with motor nerve-cells. To these the message is thus shunted. From the motor nerve-cells an impulse or command travels by motor nerve-fibres, one from each cell, to the muscles, which contract. If this took as long to happen as it takes to describe, even in outline, it would not be of much use to the earthworm. But the motor answer follows the sensory stimulus almost instantaneously. The great advantage of establishing or enregistering these reflex chains is that the answers are practically ready-made or inborn, not requiring to be learned. It is not necessary that the brain should be stimulated if there is a brain; nor does the animal will to act, though in certain cases it may by means of higher controlling nerve-centres keep the natural reflex response from being given, as happens, for instance, when we control a cough or a sneeze on some solemn occasion. The evolutionary method, if we may use the expression, has been to enregister ready-made responses; and as we ascend the animal kingdom, we find reflex actions becoming complicated and often linked together, so that the occurrence of one pulls the trigger of another, and so on in a chain. The behaviour of the insectivorous plant called Venus's fly-trap when it shuts on an insect is like a reflex action in an animal, but plants have no definite nervous system.

What are Called Tropisms.

A somewhat higher level on the inclined plane is ill.u.s.trated by what are called "tropisms," obligatory movements which the animal makes, adjusting its whole body so that physiological equilibrium results in relation to gravity, pressure, currents, moisture, heat, light, electricity, and surfaces of contact. A moth is flying past a candle; the eye next the light is more illumined than the other; a physiological inequilibrium results, affecting nerve-cells and muscle-cells; the outcome is that the moth automatically adjusts its flight so that both eyes become equally illumined; in doing this it often flies into the candle.

It may seem bad business that the moth should fly into the candle, but the flame is an utterly artificial item in its environment to which no one can expect it to be adapted. These tropisms play an important role in animal behaviour.

-- 2.

Instinctive Behaviour.

On a higher level is instinctive behaviour, which reaches such remarkable perfection in ants, bees, and wasps. In its typical expression instinctive behaviour depends on inborn capacities; it does not require to be learned; it is independent of practice or experience, though it may be improved by both; it is shared equally by all members of the species of the same s.e.x (for the female's instincts are often different from the male's); it refers to particular conditions of life that are of vital importance, though they may occur only once in a lifetime. The female Yucca Moth emerges from the coc.o.o.n when the Yucca flower puts forth its bell-like blossoms. She flies to a flower, collects some pollen from the stamens, kneads it into a pill-like ball, and stows this away under her chin. She flies to an older Yucca flower and lays her eggs in some of the ovules within the seed-box, but before she does so she has to deposit on the stigma the ball of pollen. From this the pollen-tubes grow down and the pollen-nucleus of a tube fertilises the egg-cell in an ovule, so that the possible seeds become real seeds, for it is only a fraction of them that the Yucca Moth has destroyed by using them as cradles for her eggs. Now it is plain that the Yucca Moth has no individual experience of Yucca flowers, yet she secures the continuance of her race by a concatenation of actions which form part of her instinctive repertory.

From a physiological point of view instinctive behaviour is like a chain of compound reflex actions, but in some cases, at least, there is reason to believe that the behaviour is suffused with awareness and backed by endeavour. This is suggested in exceptional cases where the stereotyped routine is departed from to meet exceptional conditions. It should also be noted that just as ants, hive bees, and wasps exhibit in most cases purely instinctive behaviour, but move on occasion on the main line of trial and error or of experimental initiative, so among birds and mammals the intelligent behaviour is sometimes replaced by instinctive routine. Perhaps there is no instinctive behaviour without a spice of intelligence, and no intelligent behaviour without an instinctive element. The old view that instinctive behaviour was originally intelligent, and that instinct is "lapsed intelligence," is a tempting one, and is suggested by the way in which habitual intelligent actions cease in the individual to require intelligent control, but it rests on the unproved hypothesis that the acquisitions of the individual can be entailed on the race. It is almost certain that instinct is on a line of evolution quite different from intelligence, and that it is nearer to the inborn inspirations of the calculating boy or the musical genius than to the plodding methods of intelligent learning.

Animal Intelligence.

The higher reaches of the inclined plane of behaviour show intelligence in the strict sense. They include those kinds of behaviour which cannot be described without the suggestion that the animal makes some sort of perceptual inference, not only profiting by experience but learning by ideas. Such intelligent actions show great individual variability; they are plastic and adjustable in a manner rarely hinted at in connection with instincts where routine cannot be departed from without the creature being nonplussed; they are not bound up with particular circ.u.mstances as instinctive actions are, but imply an appreciative awareness of relations.

When there is an experimenting with general ideas, when there is conceptual as contrasted with perceptual inference, we speak of Reason, but there is no evidence of this below the level of man. It is not, indeed, always that we can credit man with rational conduct, but he has the possibility of it ever within his reach.

Animal instinct and intelligence will be ill.u.s.trated in another part of this work. We are here concerned simply with the general question of the evolution of behaviour. There is a main line of tentative experimental behaviour both below and above the level of intelligence, and it has been part of the tactics of evolution to bring about the hereditary enregistration of capacities of effective response, the advantages being that the answers come more rapidly and that the creature is left free, if it chooses, for higher adventures.

There is no doubt as to the big fact that in the course of evolution animals have shown an increasing complexity and masterfulness of behaviour, that they have become at once more controlled and more definitely free agents, and that the inner aspect of the behaviour--experimenting, learning, thinking, feeling, and willing--has come to count for more and more.

-- 3.

Evolution of Parental Care.

Mammals furnish a crowning instance of a trend of evolution which expresses itself at many levels--the tendency to bring forth the young at a well-advanced stage and to an increase of parental care a.s.sociated with a decrease in the number of offspring. There is a British starfish called Luidia which has two hundred millions of eggs in a year, and there are said to be several millions of eggs in conger-eels and some other fishes. These ill.u.s.trate the sp.a.w.ning method of solving the problem of survival. Some animals are naturally prolific, and the number of eggs which they sow broadcast in the waters allows for enormous infantile mortality and obviates any necessity for parental care.

But some other creatures, by nature less prolific, have found an entirely different solution of the problem. They practise parental care and they secure survival with greatly economised reproduction. This is a trend of evolution particularly characteristic of the higher animals. So much so that Herbert Spencer formulated the generalisation that the size and frequency of the animal family is inverse ratio to the degree of evolution to which the animal has attained.

Now there are many different methods of parental care which secure the safety of the young, and one of these is called viviparity. The young ones are not liberated from the parent until they are relatively well advanced and more or less able to look after themselves. This gives the young a good send-off in life, and their chances of death are greatly reduced. In other words, the animals that have varied in the direction of economised reproduction may keep their foothold in the struggle for existence if they have varied at the same time in the direction of parental care. In other cases it may have worked the other way round.

In the interesting archaic animal called Peripatus, which has to face a modern world too severe for it, one of the methods of meeting the environing difficulties is the retention of the offspring for many months within the mother, so that it is born a fully-formed creature. There are only a few offspring at a time, and, although there are exceptional cases like the summer green-flies, which are very prolific though viviparous, the general rule is that viviparity is a.s.sociated with a very small family. The case of flowering plants stands by itself, for although they ill.u.s.trate a kind of viviparity, the seed being embryos, an individual plant may have a large number of flowers and therefore a huge family.

Viviparity naturally finds its best ill.u.s.trations among terrestrial animals, where the risks to the young life are many, and it finds its climax among mammals.

Now it is an interesting fact that the three lowest mammals, the Duckmole and two Spiny Ant-eaters, lay eggs, i.e. are oviparous; that the Marsupials, on the next grade, bring forth their young, as it were, prematurely, and in most cases stow them away in an external pouch; while all the others--the Placentals--show a more prolonged ante-natal life and an intimate partnership between the mother and the unborn young.

-- 4.

There is another way of looking at the sublime process of evolution. It has implied a mastery of all the possible haunts of life; it has been a progressive conquest of the environment.

1. It is highly probable that living organisms found their foothold in the stimulating conditions of the sh.o.r.e of the sea--the shallow water, brightly illumined, seaweed-growing shelf fringing the Continents. This littoral zone was a propitious environment where sea and fresh water, earth and air all meet, where there is stimulating change, abundant oxygenation and a copious supply of nutritive material in what the streams bring down and in the rich seaweed vegetation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOATZIN INHABITS BRITISH GUIANA.

The newly hatched bird has claws on its thumb and first finger and so is enabled to climb on the branches of trees with great dexterity until such time as the wings are strong enough to sustain it in flight.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photograph, from the British Museum (Natural History), of a drawing by Mr. E. Wilson.

PERIPATUS.

A widely distributed old-fashioned type of animal, somewhat like a permanent caterpillar. It has affinities both with worms and with insects. It has a velvety skin, minute diamond-like eyes, and short stump-like legs. A defenceless, weaponless animal, it comes out at night, and is said to capture small insects by squirting jets of slime from its mouth.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Photo: W. S. Berridge, F.Z.S.

ROCK KANGAROO CARRYING ITS YOUNG IN A POUCH.

The young are born so helpless that they cannot even suck. The mother places them in the external pouch, and fitting their mouths on the teats injects the milk. After a time the young ones go out and in as they please.]

It is not an easy haunt of life, but none the worse for that, and it is tenanted to-day by representatives of practically every cla.s.s of animals from infusorians to seash.o.r.e birds and mammals.

The Cradle of the Open Sea.

2. The open-sea or pelagic haunt includes all the brightly illumined surface waters beyond the shallow water of the sh.o.r.e area.

It is perhaps the easiest of all the haunts of life, for there is no crowding, there is considerable uniformity, and an abundance of food for animals is afforded by the inexhaustible floating "sea-meadows" of microscopic Alg-. These are reincarnated in minute animals like the open-sea crustaceans, which again are utilised by fishes, these in turn making life possible for higher forms like carnivorous turtles and toothed whales. It is quite possible that the open sea was the original cradle of life and perhaps Professor Church is right in picturing a long period of pelagic life before there was any sufficiently shallow water to allow the floating plants to anchor. It is rather in favour of this view that many sh.o.r.e animals such as crabs and starfishes, spend their youthful stages in the relatively safe cradle of the open sea, and only return to the more strenuous conditions of their birthplace after they have gained considerable strength of body. It is probably safe to say that the honour of being the original cradle of life lies between the sh.o.r.e of the sea and the open sea.

The Great Deeps.

3. A third haunt of life is the floor of the Deep Sea, the abyssal area, which occupies more than a half of the surface of the globe. It is a region of extreme cold--an eternal winter; of utter darkness--an eternal night--relieved only by the fitful gleams of "phosph.o.r.escent" animals; of enormous pressure--2-1/2 tons on the square inch at a depth of 2,500 fathoms; of profound calm, unbroken silence, immense monotony. And as there are no plants in the great abysses, the animals must live on one another, and, in the long run, on the rain of moribund animalcules which sink from the surface through the miles of water. It seems a very unpromising haunt of life, but it is abundantly tenanted, and it gives us a glimpse of the insurgent nature of the living creature that the difficulties of the Deep Sea should have been so effectively conquered. It is probable that the colonising of the great abysses took place in relatively recent times, for the fauna does not include many very antique types. It is practically certain that the colonisation was due to littoral animals which followed the food-debris, millennium after millennium, further and further down the long slope from the sh.o.r.e.

The Freshwaters.

4. A fourth haunt of life is that of the freshwaters, including river and lake, pond and pool, swamp and marsh. It may have been colonised by gradual migration up estuaries and rivers, or by more direct pa.s.sage from the seash.o.r.e into the brackish swamp. Or it may have been in some cases that partially landlocked corners of ancient seas became gradually turned into freshwater basins. The animal population of the freshwaters is very representative, and is diversely adapted to meet the characteristic contingencies--the risk of being dried up, the risk of being frozen hard in winter, and the risk of being left high and dry after floods or of being swept down to the sea.