Show INSTINCT IN ANIMALS Mistakes Which Seem to Deny Them the Power of Selection The opinion is still very generally entertained tertained that with animals especially those of the lower order instinct is the determining guide that incites to the proper performance of action or function and that as such it Is far less liable to err than the reasoning of intelligence Few scientific prejudices have been more diflicult to overcome than that which removes re-moves from animals the reasoning faculty facul-ty and probably many years will yet elapse before it will lie recognized that all animals which come under ordinary observation are endowed with the same kind of faculty although developed in various degrees of a descending scale which distinguishes man and the socalled I higher organisms The bee and ant have been frequently held up as the best ex nr r > In nl n TYHWn recently l v of the exceptional animals I which develop reasoning powers and it I was a rude shock not only to the layman lay-man but as well to the scientist when Sir John Lubbock as the result of an almost al-most endless series of experiments announced an-nounced a few years ago that these animals ani-mals were sadly wanting both in their instinctive and intellectual traits In other words there were many times when both instinct and intelligence erred for them Some most remarkable instances in-stances of the erring of instinct among insects have recently been noted by naturalists nat-uralists and they atid an interesting chapter to the physiology of sense One of these was the case of a butterfly which persisted in visiting the artificial flowers on a ladys bonnet mistaking them for the natural product Another I and perhaps more striking instance of Ml h + 1 + HLU Ii > lVU OJ French entomologist M Blanchard and concerns a species of sphinx moth which entered a hotel room in the half obscurity of early morning and was found to flit with direct intent to definite parts of the walls and ceiling These were decorated with paintings of leaves and flowers and to the latter the insect approached ap-proached in repeated attacks thrusting forward its proboscis as though intent upon intruding it into the opened cups of the beguiling flowers After repeated I failures and the resulting discouragement discourage-ment the effort was given up and the sphinx escaped by the window This case of selfdeception is interesting in another way inasmuch as it proves that it is not always the sense of smell but at times that of sight which directs insects to their flowers |