The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

To Hans's inquisitors this discovery imparted a terrible shock. It did not look like "thinking" after all! The mental process was different from the process of the German mind! The wonderful fact that Hans could remember and recognize and reproduce the ten digits was entirely lost to view. At once a shout went up all over Germany,--in the scientific circle, that Hans was an "impostor," that he could not "think," and that his mind was nothing much after all. Poor Hans! The glory that should have been his, and imperishable, is gone. He was the victim of scientists of one idea, who had no sense of proportion. He truly WAS a thinking horse; and we are sure that there are millions of men whose minds could not be developed to the point that the mind of that "dumb" animal attained,--no, not even with the aid of hypnotism and telepathy. The bare fact that a horse can be influenced by occult mental powers proves the close parallelism that exists between the brains of men and beasts. The Trap-Door Spider. Let no one suppose for one moment that animal mind and intelligence is limited to the brain-bearing vertebrates. The scope and activity of the notochord in some of the invertebrates present phenomena far more wonderful per capita than many a brain produces. Interesting books have been written, and more will be written hereafter, on the minds and doings of ants, bees, wasps, spiders and other insects. Consider the ways and means of the ant-lion of the East, and the trap-door spider of the western desert regions. As one object lesson from the insect world, I will flash upon the screen, for a moment only, the trap-door spider. This wonderful insect personage has been exhaustively studied by Mr. Raymond L. Ditmars, in the development of a series of moving pictures, and at my request he has contributed the following graphic description of this spider's wonderful work.