| Summary: | 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.
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