Animal Intelligence

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1879

Animal Intelligence.

I HAD a setter dog which was greatly afraid of thunder. One day a number of apples were being shot upon the wooden floor of an apple room, and as each bag of apples was shot it produced through the rest of the house a noise resembling that of distant thunder. My dog became terror-stricken at the sound, but as soon as I brought him to the apple room and showed him the true cause of the noise, he became again buoyant and cheerful as usual.

Another dog I had used to play at tossing dry bones to give them the appearance of life. As an experiment, I one day attached a fine thread to a dry bone before giving him the latter to play with, and after he had tossed the bone about for a while, as usual, I stood a long way off and slowly began to draw it away from him. So soon as he perceived that the bone was really moving on its own account, his whole demeanor changed, and rushing under a sofa, he waited horror-stricken to watch the uncanny spectacle of a dry bone coming to life. I have also greatly frightened this dog by blowing soap-bubbles along the floor. One of these he summoned courage enough to touch with his paw, but as soon as it vanished he ran out of the room, terrified at so mysterious a disappearance. Lastly, I have put this dog into a paroxysm of fear by taking him into a room alone and silently making a series of horrible grimaces. Although I had never in my life hurt this dog, he became greatly frightened at my unusual behavior, which so seriously conflicted with his general idea of uniformity in matters psychological. But I have tried this with less intelligent dogs without any other result than that of causing them to bark at me.—Nineteenth Century.