INTELLIGENT ANIMALS

Waipa Post, Volume 45, Issue 3253, 10 November 1932, Page 6

INTELLIGENT ANIMALS

! A young scientist from Aberdeen, Mr Rex Knight, lecturing at the British Association, shocked an audience largely made up of women when in l toJd them that their pet animals had no intelligence. "Most people believe in animal minds," said Mr Knight. " Every one tends to think thttt his horse, or his hound, his cat or his canary, his Pekingese or his parrot, has some degree of character and intelligence. But is this belief one which we can justify? When the plain man. is challenged, he usually points to the differentiation which the behaviour of animals often exhibits. Ha tells of the cat that will sleep only on one particular cushion, of the dog that looks only to its mistress for sweets, and of the hunter that neighs when it sees a red hunting suit. But this line or argument does not lead to animal minds. If you put acid on a frog whose brain has been completely removed, it will scratch the spot where you touch it. A brainless frog in a jar will catch more flies than one with a brain. Some people refer us to the dog that jumps over its master when he comes home after a holiday and to the vindictive elephant that soused a man who, twenty years before, had stuck a pin into its trunk. The dog that jumps over its master may not consciously recognise him at all. Training can be quite well explained on the hypothesis that animals are nothiny more than reflex machines."