Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 238, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1914 — “HOMING INSTINCT” IN CRABS [ARTICLE]

“HOMING INSTINCT” IN CRABS

Existence of It le Recognized, But Scientists Admit That It Puzzles Them. Noted naturalists of Great Britain have recently discovered the extraordinary and surprising faculty in certain crabs to find their way back almost unbelievable distances to their birthplace and original feeding grounds. Sir Isaac Newton once declared that with all his grand discoveries he was nothing but a child picking sea shells from the beach by the great ocean Of truth. The students of animal behavior, such as Professors Jenings, Mast, Watson and others, since this discovery of a "homing instinct”” In crabs, are more convinced than ever of Newton’s wisdom. The scientific accounts of the crabs “walk” describes many of them, and in particular a male and a female of these creatures, caught at Yorkshire, England, and transported to Skegness in Lincolnshire, which crawled all ths way back to exactly the place they had left. Traps had been set in the place where they were originally captured and the shellfish experts awaited with great skepticism the results of the unusual experiment. All investigations of how and why crabs migrate back to their home, as in the case of pigeons, have proved so far fruitless.