VOL. 1 BIRD FLOCKS AND THE BREEDING CYCLE: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF AVIAN SOCIALITY (1938)
Let us realize what a very small part
of the whole problem of social behaviour in the
higher animals has been the thesis of this essay.
A few observations have been given leading to a new
concept which must be tried in the fire of future
research and thought. We hope we know a little
more about the cause and effect of sociality in some
species of birds which court or nest in colonies. The
principle enunciated may be found to be applicable
to other animals than birds; I am inclined to think
it will and to consider it as a working hypothesis in
future investigations.
But we know little or nothing about the cause of
winter groups and migratory flocks in autumn and
the unifying element in them. And why do breeding
flocks of birds consist only of adults? The flocks of
herring gulls in winter are of young and old birds,
but only the mature ones go out to the gulleries on
the islands in the spring. Three years must pass
before the young ones return to the flocks at the
breeding grounds. Do these birds which breed for
the first time return to the gulleries where they were
hatched ? A good reason is provided for a consistent
policy of ringing to establish or refute our assumptions. If the strains remain pure, the effect of their
sociality on the establishment of races and subspecies must be considerable. This, indeed, is a
phenomenon which is becoming increasingly apparent as we compare minutely the morphological
characters of birds of the same species from different
places within one faunal area. In my work on the red
deer, I have pointed to the system of sociality as a
biological factor effecting isolation and the modification of type. In birds it may be still more potent
though its visible effects will depend on the stability
of the genetic complex of each species.
I believe there is much that can be elucidated in
social behaviour before we are forced to take refuge
in some such vague generalization as "inherent in the
complex of the organism "; though admittedly there
may come a point when we must cease from asking
" Why ? " Shall we ever be able to retrace the path
of evolution of sociality, and then returning, to see
our own problems of society with eyes more understanding? I do believe that a fundamental tendency
among living things is to forgather and co- operate,
however unconsciously, rather than not to do so.
If my conclusions are correct, they form but one
link of a ring of chain, neither more nor less important than the many other links we have yet to
find. It is so much easier to treat of social behaviour
in terms of results than of causation, because those
results are so obvious before our eyes; but in the
quest for beginnings we find ourselves unable at
first to weigh each fact and principle as they are
unearthed. And the wiser we grow, the more evident
it becomes that we cannot isolate our findings and
say, . "This is the root cause". The problem of
sociality is indeed a whole of many parts which I
symbolize as a ring of chain girding the very loins
of Life.
VOL. 2 A HERD OF RED DEER: A STUDY IN ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR (1937)
The great bulk of papers on animal behaviour lift the
organism from its normal environment and place it in a
set of artificial conditions, and this often results in findings
which are not valid for interpretation of representative
behaviour. [I would mention as notable exceptions the
work of Howard (1907 -15, 192o, 1929) on birds, and
Huxley's paper (1913) on the great crested grebe.] The
preliminary studies of animals in their natural surroundings, which appear to me as the initial steps to any
experimental approach, are, unfortunately, of rare occurrence. It happens that such studies take much time and
patience and frequently isolate the observer from intellectual contact with his fellows. They are not tasks for the
laboratory and daily common-room discussion.
We may take it as axiomatic that an animal strives to
keep itself within an ecological norm. The behaviour
which results is characterized by the following qualities
which have been set out and discussed fully by McDougall
in his Outline of Psychology. The marks of behaviour are :
1. A certain spontaneity of movement. 2. Persistence of activity independently of the continuance of the impression which may have initiated it.
3. Variation of direction of persistent movement.
q.. Termination of the animal's movements as soon as
they have brought about a particular kind of change
in its situation.
5. Preparation for the new situation toward the production of which the action contributes.
6. Some degree of improvement in the effectiveness of
behaviour, when it is repeated by the animal under
similar circumstances.
7. Purposive action is a total action of the organism (as
opposed to reflex action, which is always partial).
Within the ecological norm, the environment exerts
pressures of one kind and another and behaviour is influenced. The animal adapts itself to preserve the safety
of the organism and, as Lundholm (1934) has pointed out,
there are two general kinds of adaptive processes- adaptation by deference to the environment, and by defiance or
control of it. Deer, in their behaviour, usually defer to
the changing environment by movement, but the lemming
of the tundra, in its small way, defies it by creating its own
world of a higher temperature under the snow.
But environment is a very wide term, embracing the
animal's fellows and the social system in which it lives.
Our study becomes socio- ecological and we find a social
system which, in some measure, is a control of the environment. There is this large and interesting field between
zoology and psychology which few workers seem willing
to explore. If we are to watch one of the higher animals
and measure, as accurately as we know how, the environmental influences on behaviour, the subject for study
preferably should exhibit marked reactions ; and if, as
they should, our observations are to extend over a long
period, it is better for us that the animal should live above
ground. When the list of British mammals is considered,
very few species meet this latter desirable requirement of
our studies. I have remarked that animals which live
above ground adapt themselves to the environment by
movement ; they do not evade it by subterranean habits
which we cannot observe adequately. Where a species is
of social habit, I would emphasize the necessity of taking
sociality fully into account in observing and interpreting
behaviour. The life -history of the red deer would be an
empty and meaningless thing divorced from the sociality
which is the very foundation of their existence.
This book tries to give the plain tale of an animal's life,
of the things it does and is trying to do, of its relations
with its fellows and with men, and of the things to which,
as long observation leads me to believe, it responds. The
study can be considered in no way complete, for now, after
two years, I am left with more problems to solve than I
knew of at the outset.
My estimate of animal mind from long contact with it
is high, and these two years of intensive observation in
critical vein have not lowered it. Lloyd Morgan's maxim
(quoted, page 9o) in studying animal behaviour is a good
one, but there is no need to set up artificial standards of
simplicity or for one school of thought to impose its own
criteria as being the ineluctable measure of simplicity. I
am not entirely content to accept the evidence of anatomical science as being final when it is called in to show that
the animal's brain, where present, and its sense organs
are of such a nature to preclude certain kinds of experience. Quality of work is not to be inferred from the
up- to- dateness of the workmen's tools. May I take an
analogy from the genetics of Drosophila? One race of
mutants, `white eye', is indistinguishable anatomically
from the normal wild type. They can be discovered only
by breeding tests. Although they are homozygous, or
pure- breeding, for the `white eye' factor, the organism
has in course of time become outwardly adjusted to the
deficiency and the eye appears normal. Something has
been achieved for which the materials might seem not to
be present. The organism in the dimension of time has
remarkable elasticity. And so with animal structure and
behaviour. The behaviour of one species can show surprising latitude under stress of circumstance, and amongst the higher animals we find response to sets of conditions
and a spontaneity in action which we, as so- called rational
beings, could not better. In some instances I feel that the
most simple explanation of an act of behaviour is to follow
the bare outline of our own mental processes in such a
situation. I believe the teleological approach to animal
behaviour to be dangerous, but the current objection to
anthropomorphism can be overdone. Who are the people
with whom the higher animals are most serene, and who
achieve most success in their management and training ? Not those who look upon them as automata, but those
who treat them as likeable children of our own kind.
