Reason in Animals

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1873

Reason in Animals.

So much attention is at present directed to this and similar subjects that we may be pardoned for adding another instance of the power in question. Nellie is a Pomeranian dog, about thirteen months old. She was given to her present mistress six months ago, and the attempts that had been made to educate her had all resulted in failure. She had not even been properly instructed in the ordinary amenities of life, as found in dogs who are inmates of our city houses. Under these circumstances, her mistress took her education in hand, and by a judicious system of rewards, and rarely of punishments, soon taught her the ordinary accomplishments of sitting up, and walking on her hind-legs about the room. By degrees, her attainments increased in number and perfection, and now, during dinner, she stays under her mistress's chair, and when the order is given to get her tablecloth, she brings a newspaper which is kept in the corner of the room, spreads it out, and sits up while her mistress prepares her food in a saucer, which is then placed on the newspaper—but Nellie does not touch it until her mistress gives the signal by counting one, two, three.

From the account we have given, it will be seen that Nellie is a dog of considerable intelligence, and even possesses a mathematical mind. It is possibly this latter gift that has enabled her to show the evidences of reasoning power we propose to relate. Four or five times each day, for about a week, Nellie had carried messages to her master that were written on old envelopes, and generally received something to take back in return. She had therefore learned that if she delivered an envelope she received something. Lunch being served on one occasion in the library, Nellie sat up and begged for sugar that happened to be on the table; that failing, she stood up; then she tried sitting up again, but without success. She then seemed to think for a moment, and, as the result of her cogitations, went straight to the waste-paper basket, picked out an old envelope, and presented it to her mistress, evidently in the hope that she would receive what she desired, and so earned her piece of sugar.

It may be said that in this instance appetite gave the stimulus, and otherwise she would not have exerted what certainly appears to be a reasoning faculty. To meet this objection, we give another instance. Nellie always comes down the hall stairway to meet her master on his return home, and after greeting him races off to the front room for his slippers, and brings them to the head of the stairway. A recent attack of illness having confined her master to the house for a couple of weeks, Nellie was in high glee until he went out for the first time after convalescing, when she was greatly distressed, and watched him from the open window as long as he was in sight; when he finally disappeared, she gave a despairing yelp, and, racing off to the place where the slippers were kept, snatched one in her mouth, and, leaping on a chair, held it out of the window as far as she could reach, and whined piteously, evidently hoping that if the master saw the slipper it would induce him to return. In this instance, there is certainly nothing satisfactory in resorting to instinct for an explanation; the act was evidently the result of a true reasoning process, prompted, not by greed, but by an almost human affection and attachment.—Nature and Science ; Scribner's for July.