Intellect in Brutes

Abstract

SEEING a letter in NATURE, vol. xxi. p. 276, with the heading of a “clever spider”, puts me in mind of a circumstance that came under my own observation near Tremadoc, in North Wales, many years ago. I sat down on a bank about four o'clock in the afternoon after a long day, when I presently saw I was close to one of the common garden spiders of rather large size, with its pretty spreading net-like web about a yard from the ground; so, for want of something to do, I alarmed the spider to discover where his den was, when off he trotted about the distance of a foot to a couple of leaves nicely tied together, where he stayed perhaps ten minutes; I then saw a beetle of rather large size walking at my feet—one of those slow moving dull black ones—I am not coleopterist enough to know its name; I picked it up and put it in the web at a place I thought sufficiently strong to hold it, when out rushed the spider in his boldest manner. But when he saw who his visitor was, what an alteration in his manner! He drew back, and rapidly separated the cords, when down dropped the beetle on a single line, rather quickly, to within about 4 inches of the ground, so that he was suspended on a line about 21/2 feet long. The spider then trotted back to his den. The beetle was now struggling in its slow, awkward-looldng fashion. I must have stayed and watched them for about twenty minutes, when out came the spider and descended the single line to the beetle, on which he boldly rushed; after a few seconds the beetle's struggles got weaker and weaker, when the spider returned to its den; in a few seconds more the struggles of the beetle ceased. Now, did the spider intend the beetle for its food when he cut away his web to save it from destruction from the beetle's struggles, or was that an after-thought, or why should he know it was a “creature comfort”? and was the fact of the line being so near the ground an accident, or was it premeditated? If you put a small pebble or small piece of wood in a web, a spider will let it drop altogether; if you put a grasshopper in it he rapidly turns it round till the creature looks like a mummy; but I suppose circumstances alter cases even with spiders.