Animal intelligence: Experimental studiesThorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Science
Animal intelligence: Experimental studies
Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee)
Animal intelligence; Psychology, Comparative
BB1 was like BB, but the loop was hung 18 inches from the floor.
CC was similar to C (button), but the button was 6 inches long, and the
box was 36½ × 22 × 23.
II was similar to I, but the box was 30 × 20 × 25 inches; the door (11
inches wide, 6 high) was in the left front corner, and the lever was 6
inches long and entered the box at a point 2 inches to the right of the
door and 4 inches above the floor.
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
In M the same box as in II was used, but instead of a lever projecting
inside the box, a lever running outside parallel to the plane of the
front of the box and 18 inches long was used. This lay close against the
bars composing the front of the box, and could be pawed down by sticking
the paw out an inch or so between two bars, at a point about 15 inches
high and 6 inches in from the right edge of the front. We may call M
‘_Lever outside_.’
[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
N was a pen 5 × 3 feet made of wire netting 46 inches high. The door, 31
× 20, was in the right half of the front. A string from the bolt passed
up over a pulley and back to the back center, where it was fastened 33
inches above the floor. Biting or pawing this string opened the door.
O was like K, except that there was only one bar, that the string ran
inside the box, so that it was easily accessible, and that the bolt
raised in K by depression of the platform could be raised in O (and was
by the dog experimented on) by sticking the muzzle out between two bars
just above the bolt and by biting the string, at the same time jerking it
upward. O was 30 × 20 × 25 in size.
The box G was used for both dogs and cats, without any variation save
that for dogs the resistance of the door to pressure outwards was doubled.
In these boxes were put in the course of the experiments dog 1 (about 8
months old), and dogs 2 and 3, adults, all of small size.
A dog who, when hungry, is shut up in one of these boxes is not nearly
so vigorous in his struggles to get out as is the young cat. And even
after he has experienced the pleasure of eating on escape many times he
does not try to get out so hard as a cat, young or old. He does try to
a certain extent. He paws or bites the bars or screening, and tries to
squeeze out in a tame sort of way. He gives up his attempts sooner than
the cat, if they prove unsuccessful. Furthermore his attention is taken
by the food, not the confinement. He wants to get _to_ the food, not _out
of_ the box. So, unlike the cat, he confines his efforts to the front
of the box. It was also a practical necessity that the dogs should be
kept from howling in the evening, and for this reason I could not use
as motive the utter hunger which the cats were made to suffer. In the
morning, when the experiments were made, the dogs were surely hungry,
and no experiment is recorded in which the dog was not in a state to be
willing to make a great effort for a bit of meat, but the motive may not
have been even and equal throughout, as it was with the cats.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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