Behavior of the Lower Organisms

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Columbia University Press, The Macmillan Company, agents, 1906 - 366 pages

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Page 338 - Paramecium in this behavior makes such an impression that one involuntarily recognizes it as a little subject acting in ways analogous to our own. Still stronger, perhaps, is this impression when observing an Amoeba obtaining food . . . The writer is thoroughly convinced, after long study of the behavior of this organism, that if...
Page 268 - The light operates, naturally, on the part of the animal which it reaches. The intensity of the light determines the sense of the response whether contractile or expansive, and the place of the response, the part of the body stimulated, determines the ultimate orientation of the animal.
Page 188 - We are neither of these, but simply investigators of earnest purpose and unbiassed mind, who study all things, prove all things, and hold fast to that which is good. We seek, inquire, reject nothing without cause, accept nothing without proof: we are students, not teachers.
Page 268 - This orientation is produced, according to this tropism theory, by the direct action of the stimulating agent on the motor organs of that side of the body on which it impinges. A stimulus striking one side of the body causes the motor organs of that side to contract or extend or to move more or less strongly. This, of course, turns the body till the stimulus affects both sides equally; then there is no occasion for further turning and the animal is oriented" (JENNINGS 19063, p. 266). This is also...
Page 181 - The same individual does not always behave in the same Universality way under the same external conditions, but the behavior of tbl3 depends upon the physiological condition of the animal. The reaction to any given stimulus is modified by the past experience of the animal, and the modifications are regulatory, not haphazard in character. The phenomena are thus similar to those shown in the learning...
Page 21 - We find that the simple naked mass of protoplasm reacts to all classes of stimuli to which higher animals react (if we consider auditory stimulation merely a special case of mechanical stimulation).
Page 293 - The law may be expressed briefly as follows : The resolution of one physiological state into another becomes easier and more rapid after it has taken place a number of times. Hence the behavior primarily characteristic for the second state comes to follow immediately upon the first state. The operations of this law are, of course, seen on a vast scale in higher organisms in the phenomena which we commonly call memory, association, habit formation and learning.
Page 271 - Thus the phenomena of positive and negative chemotaxis, thermotaxis, phototaxis and galvanotaxis, which are so highly interesting and important in all organic life, follow with mechanical necessity as the simple results of differences in biotonus, which are produced by the action of stimuli at two different poles of the free living cell.
Page 341 - ... that regulation in behavior is of a different character from that found elsewhere. But nowhere else is it possible to perceive so clearly how regulation occurs. In the behavior of the lowest organisms we can see not only what the animal does, but precisely how this happens to be regulatory. The method of regulation lies open before us. This method is of such a character as to suggest the possibility of its general applicability to life processes.
Page 340 - ... JENNINGS. The results set forth in the preceding paper, together with certain other relations found in the behavior of lower organisms, that have been detailed in previous papers by the present writer, suggest a certain point of view in regard to the general method of regulation or adjustment in organisms. Everywhere in the study of life processes we meet the puzzle of regulation. Organisms do those things which advance their welfare. There are some exceptions, but this is certainly true in a...

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