Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The details of these experiments I will not take the time to describe.
Suffice it to say that cats and dogs were given a chance to see one of
their fellows free himself from confinement and gain food by
performing some simple act. In each case they were where they could
see him do this from fifty to one hundred and fifty times, and did
actually watch his actions closely from ten to forty times. After
every ten chances to learn from seeing him, they were put into the
same inclosure and observed carefully, in order to see whether they
would, from having so often seen the act done, know enough to do it
themselves, or at least to try to do it. In this they signally failed.
Those who had failed previously to hit upon the thing accidentally
never learned it later from seeing it done. Those who were given a
chance to imitate acts which accident would sooner or later have
taught them learned the acts no more quickly than if they had never
seen the other animal do it the score or more of times. The animals,
that is, could not master the simple inference that if, in a certain
situation, that fellow-cat of mine performs a certain act and gets
fish, I, in the same situation, may get fish by performing that act.
They did not think enough to profit by the observation of their
fellows, no matter how many chances for such observation were given
them.
Equally corroborative of our first position are the results of still
another set of experiments. Here the dogs and cats were put through
the proper movement from twenty-five to one hundred times, being left
in the box after every five or ten trials and watched to see if they
would not be able at least to realize that the act which they had just
been made to do and which had resulted in liberation and food was the
proper act to be done. For instance, a dog would be put in a box the
door of which would fall open when a loop of string hanging outside
the box was clawed down an inch or so. Animals were taken who had,
when left to themselves, failed to be led to this particular act by
their general instinctive activities. After two minutes I would put in
my arm, take the dog's paw, hold it out between the bars, and,
inserting it in the loop, pull the loop down. The dog would of course
then go out and eat the bit of meat. After repeating this ten times
(in some cases five) I would put the dog in and leave him to his own
devices. If, as was always the case, he failed in ten or twenty
minutes to profit by my teaching I would take him out, but would not
feed him. After a half hour or so I would recommence my attempts to
show the dog what needed to be done. This would be kept up for two or
three days, until he had shown his utter inability to get the notion
of doing for himself what he had been made to do a hundred or more
times. The mental process required here need not be so high a one as
inference or reasoning, but surely any animal possessing those would,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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