Modifiability in behavior. I. Behavior of sea anemones

Abstract

A thorough study of the modifiability of reactions to external stimuli in lower organisms seems at present one of the great desiderata in the study of animal behavior.Recent work has been devoted largely to the study of sharply defined forms of reaction and to the discovery of conditions under which these forms appear in the typical way.As a result there is a widespread impression that the behavior of lower organisms is composed of invariable reflexes, occurring always in the same way under the same external circumstances.This is far from the truth and leads, as it seems to the writer, to a fundamentally false conception of the nature of animal behavior.Inner states and changes are fully as important in determining behavior as are external stimuli, modifying fundamentally the reactions which the latter produce.T h e present studies are devoted to an analysis of some of these modifying factors; in other words to some of the inner factors in behavior.T h e study of the behavior of sea anemones herewith presented was made possible by a stay at the Carnegie Research Laboratory at the Tortugas.I am