The Dancing Mouse: A Study in Animal BehaviorYerkes, Robert Mearns
Science
The Dancing Mouse: A Study in Animal Behavior
Yerkes, Robert Mearns
Animal behavior; Dancing mice
These long-continued and varied tests with Nos. 151 and 152 revealed three
facts: that the mice depend chiefly upon brightness differences in visual
discrimination; that they probably have something which corresponds to our
red-green vision, although their color experience may be totally unlike
ours; and that the red end of the spectrum seems much darker to them than
to us, or, in other words, that the least refrangible rays are of lower
stimulating value for them than for us.
TABLE 25
GREEN-RED TESTS
June 1, 1906 No. 151
BRIGHTNESS VALUE IN CANDLE RIGHT WRONG
TEST POSITION METERS (GREEN) (RED)
1 Green on left Green 4, Red 448 Right --
2 Green on right Green 448, Red 4 Right --
3 Green on right Green 4, Red 448 Right --
4 Green on left Green 448, Red 4 Right --
5 Green on left Green 3, Red 1800 -- Wrong
6 Green on right Green 1800, Red 3 -- Wrong
7 Green on right Green 3, Red 1800 -- Wrong
8 Green on left Green 1800, Red 3 Right --
9 Green on right Green 5, Red 34 Right --
10 Green on left Green 34, Red 5 Right --
11 Green on right Green 6, Red 74 Right --
12 Green on left Green 74, Red 6 Right --
13 Green on left Green 4, Red 448 -- Wrong
14 Green on right Green 448, Red 4 Right --
15 Green on right Green 4, Red 448 -- Wrong
16 Green on left Green 448, Red 4 Right --
17 Green on right Green 3, Red 1800 -- Wrong
18 Green on left Green 1800, Red 3 -- Wrong
19 Green on right Green 1800, Red 3 -- Wrong
20 Green on left Green 3, Red 1800 Right --
Totals 12 8
So many of the results of my color experiments have indicated the all-
important role of brightness vision that I have hesitated to interpret any
of them as indicative of true color discrimination. But after I had made
all the variations in brightness by which it seemed reasonable to suppose
that the mouse would be influenced under ordinary conditions, and after I
had introduced all the check tests which seemed worth while, there still
remained so large a proportion of correct choices that I was forced to
admit the influence of the quality as well as of the intensity of the
visual stimulus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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