from The Monarchs

53

The broken-wing display of a plover
involves awkward flapping
that resembles actual injury.
Such behavior draws a predator's
attention away from a nest.
Some researchers, obeying
the Law of Parsimony, describe
the display as a hysterical response
made by a bird convulsed
between parental drives and
the tendency to flee or attack.
"I'm helpless" is their reading
of the plover's dance. Others
consider the display a haphazard reflex
switching on when the bird is
"in a hormonal condition" and
in the presence of a moving object.
Most researchers resist attributing
to the plover first order intentionality--
"the bird wants to lead the intruder
away from the young." Why do they
seem to want to disprove
the possibility that animals
can think? Perhaps (to take
the generous view) they don't want
to become one of history's
mistakes, another example of
human blindness, our celebrated
ability to see what we want,
rather than what's there.
Consider the fate of George Romanes,
Darwin's disciple, whose 1884 work,
Animal Intelligence, addressed
the continuity of mental faculties
among creatures, citing the example of
Icelandic mice said to have been observed
storing supplies of berries
inside dried mushrooms, loading the rations
onto dried cow-droppings, then
launching their supply ships and
sail them across rivers
using their tails as rudders.

Alison Hawthorne Deming