Haney's Art of Training Animals: A Practical Guide For Amateur or Professional Trainers Giving Full Instructions For Breaking, Taming and Teaching All Kinds of Animals

Dr. Kemp thus concisely and clearly stages the difference between instinct and reason: “In the former there is an irresistible impulse to go through a certain series of motions after a certain fashion, without knowing why they are performed, or what their result will be. In the latter the actions depend upon previous mental judgments, are performed or not at will, and the end of them is early anticipated and defined.”

We believe the evidence is too strong to be doubted that many animals do perceive the relation between cause and effect, and that many of their actions, especially when the animals are surrounded by the unnatural circumstances of a state of domestication, must be ascribed to the reasoning power. There was a dog who lived in a strict monastery where the monks dined alone, and who, instead of asking for their meals, obtained them by knocking at the buttery door, the cook answering by opening the door and pushing the allowance through. The dog observed this proceeding and accordingly knocked at the door and laid in wait until the meal was placed outside, and the door shut, when he ran off with it. This he repeated a number of times.

The contrast between instinct and reason is displayed in the coursing of hares. If an old and a young grayhound be employed we have examples of both instinct and reason. The young one instinctively pursues his game, following every turn and winding, while the old dog, reasoning from past experience, knows that the hare will double, and accordingly does not exactly follow her, but goes across. A similar example is afforded by the dogs employed in hunting the deer in South America. The newly imported dog, in approaching the deer, flies at it in front and is often injured by the concussion. The native dogs have learned to avoid this danger and they invariably keep from the front, and attack from the side or rear.

Instances might be multiplied indefinitely, but our object is only to show the distinction made between reason and instinct; those who desire to investigate the subject more thoroughly can do so through works specially devoted to natural history. No doubt any observing person can recall instances in his own experience with animals, where their actions showed evidence of a greater or less degree of reasoning power.

An action may be partly instinctive and partly the result of reasoning, but a purely instinctive action never changes except under the influence of reason. A hen sits on her eggs from an instinctive impulse to do so. If chalk ones be substituted for the real eggs she tends them with equal care and will not desert them any sooner than she would the others. And yet in other matters perhaps hens have reasoning powers.

Without the possession of these powers we believe no education of animals would be possible; and we farther believe that the capacity for learning is in exact proportion to the ability to reason. A horse or dog can be readily taught things which a hog can never learn, and in the lower scales of animal life all attempts at education become failures. Under the tuition of man the reasoning powers are undoubtedly developed to an extent to which they would never attain in a state of nature, and by judicious and persistent teaching numerous animals have been educated to an almost startling degree. How this has been done we shall show as we proceed.

Not only does the amount of reason vary with different species but with different individuals of the same species, and much of the trainer’s success will depend on the judicious selection of his pupil. Professional trainers take the utmost pains in this selection, and they usually consider that the descendants of an educated animal have, by inheritance, a greater aptitude for learning than others.

The young trainer must not fall into the mistaken notion that mere quickness in picking up a trick is the best quality in an animal. There may be such a thing as learning a lesson too rapidly, and what is learned with but slight effort is sometimes forgotten with equal readiness. Another thing, too much should not be expected of one pupil. Public exhibitors are able to show a large array of tricks because of the number of animals they have, each, as a rule, knowing a comparatively few of these tricks, or, in the case of some of the “sensation” tricks, perhaps only one. Still any animal of ordinary capacity ought, with proper tuition, to be able to learn a sufficient variety to satisfy a reasonable trainer. Judicious management on the part of the exhibitor will often make a variety of tricks out of a single one which the animal has been taught; an example of this is afforded by the “educated hog.”