 The idea of behavioral flexibility is central to discussions of animal mind and consciousness. Descartes' conception of animals as automata seems to make phenomenal consciousness superfluous at best — a connection whose philosophical development was traced by T.H. Huxley (1874).  Huxley reported a series of experiments on a frog, showing very similar reflexive behavior even when its spinal cord had been severed, or large portions of its brain removed. He argued that without a brain, the frog could not be conscious, but since it could still do the same sort of things that it could do before, there is no need to assume consciousness even in the presence of the entire brain, going on to argue that consciousness is superfluous. (The argument is somewhat curious since it seems to show too much by making the brain itself superfluous to the frog's behavior!)