THE LAWS OF ORIENTATION AMONG ANIMALS.[1]
By Capt. G. Reynaud.
It would seem that wild animals are devoted to a wandering life, and yet a careful observation of their habits shows that the fields, the woods, the plains, and the air are quite equitably divided among them, as separate districts. Each one of them lives within a domain whose resources he uses to the best advantage, and where, fearing the competition of his kind, he permits only a limited number of them to range. Thus among animals property is communal.
The extent of the domain varies, moreover, with the resources which it presents, the protection which it offers against every kind of danger, and especially according to the animal's power of locomotion.
This division of domain is in some measure a necessity of existence. Every animal that, by reason of defective instinct or for any other reason, attempts to escape from it is quickly exterminated by natural selection; driven off by his comrades with whom he strives for daily food, wandering haphazard in a unknown territory full of snares, he becomes an easy prey for the enemies of his species.
The instinct of orientation, which guides an animal back to his home, and consequently his habits, his food, his protection against danger, plays a prominent part in his life. To it he owes his individuality, the memory which attaches him to the past, and, up to a certain point, the satisfaction of his needs in the present.
We propose to study the mechanism of this orientation among animals. As the principal object of our study, we have chosen the carrier pigeon. A great number of facts observed by us for the first time have been grouped and classified. We have deduced, if not the law that controls, at least a theory that accounts for them. This theory we will now explain. All of its propositions are founded upon facts rigorously and scrupulously established or on experiments easy to reproduce.
I.
Just as occurrences seemingly casual, such as the distribution of bullets in a target, are subject to laws of which science has given us the
- ↑ Translated from the Revue des Deux Modnes, Vol. CXLVI, pp. 380-402.
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