Page - 1195 - in The Complete Aristotle

form. < div id=“section187” class=“section” title=“7”> 7 In a general way in the lives of animals many resemblances to human life may be observed. Pre-eminent intelligence will be seen more in small creatures than in large ones, as is exemplified in the case of birds by the nest building of the swallow. In the same way as men do, the bird mixes mud and chaff together; if it runs short of mud, it souses its body in water and rolls about in the dry dust with wet feathers; furthermore, just as man does, it makes a bed of straw, putting hard material below for a foundation, and adapting all to suit its own size. Both parents co-operate in the rearing of the young; each of the parents will detect, with practised eye, the young one that has had a helping, and will take care it is not helped twice over; at first the parents will rid the nest of excrement, but, when the young are grown, they will teach their young to shift their position and let their excrement fall over the side of the nest. Pigeons exhibit other phenomena with a similar likeness to the ways of humankind. In pairing the same male and the same female keep together; and the union is only broken by the death of one of the two parties. At the time of parturition in the female the sympathetic attentions of the male are extraordinary; if the female is afraid on account of the impending parturition to enter the nest, the male will beat her and force her to come in. When the young are born, he will take and masticate pieces of suitable food, will open the beaks of the fledglings, and inject these pieces, thus preparing them betimes to take food. (When the male bird is about to expel the the young ones from the nest he cohabits with them all.) As a general rule these birds show this conjugal fidelity, but occasionally a female will cohabit with other than her mate. These birds are combative, and quarrel with one another, and enter each other’s nests, though this occurs but seldom; at a distance from their nests this quarrelsomeness is less marked, but in the close neighbourhood of their nests they will fight desperately. A peculiarity common to the tame pigeon, the ring-dove and the turtle-dove is that they do not lean the head back when they are in the act of drinking, but only when they have fully quenched their thirst. The turtle-dove and the ring-dove both have but one mate, and let no other come nigh; both sexes co-operate in the process of incubation. It is difficult to distinguish between the sexes except by an examination of their interiors. Ring-doves are long-lived; cases have been 1195