Intellect in Brutes

Abstract

THE numbers of NATURE containing the interesting discussion on this subject have only lately reached us, and it is late to bring forward anything on the question, yet the readers of NATURE will be interested in two instances of “calculation” on the part of wild birds that I have noticed. Some years ago I was overlooking a penguin “rookery” as it is called, at the Falklands, and watching the goings on of the numerous colony below me. It was breeding season, and the birds were sitting on their eggs on the bare earth, crowded together with hardly walking room between them. Amongst the birds stepped a pretty Sheath-bill (Chionis alba) with a quiet jaunty stride, picking what he could, and apparently perfectly indifferent to the motions of the penguins, who drove at him with their beaks as he passed, but never struck him. I saw him pass and repass one bird always just out of reach, till the bird could stand it no longer, but reached off her nest about an inch to strike him; he was still just out of reach and busy with something, apparently not noticing the penguin; she reached further, he crossed her again, still just out of reach, and this went on till he had drawn her about two feet from the nest, then in one stride he was beside the egg, had punched a hole, and was sipping the contents before the slow penguin could turn and hop back to save it; he again led her away by the same manœuvre and increased the hole and got a greater part; a third time he led her off and was eating the egg when he was driven right away by another penguin, who was wandering at liberty, the mate, I suppose, being on turn on the egg. The proceeding on the part of the sheath-bill was a perfect trap for the poor foolish old penguin.