Some instincts of spiders

Abstract

Experiments were performed on 3 kinds of spiders waiting for games upon the spun webs. So far as the writer observed, all these animals could distinguish instinctively between eatables and uneatables, and show some different degrees of their inborn intellectualities in clearing the fields of the wastes and in managing the dead games or the living. The animals began to respond to them so variedly as one challenged directly against them with some blows by the fore-right-hand, while a second did with repeated vertical swings of its web, in contrast to the horizontal by a third. Even between two animals of one and the same class a remarkable individual difference could be perceived with regard to the precautions taken against the danger and their own procedures for the prizes, besides some traces of practice effects. All these facts tell us the true nature of several aspects of the animal's instinct. © 1937, The Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.