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
The first of the facts mentioned above, that brightness discrimination is
more important in the life of the mouse than color discrimination, is
attested by almost all of the experiments whose results have been
reported. The second fact, namely, that the dancer possesses something
which for the present we may call red-green vision, also has been proved
in a fairly satisfactory manner by both the reflected and the transmitted
light experiments. I wish now to present, in Table 26, results which
strikingly prove the truth of the statement that red appears darker to the
dancer than to us.
The brightness conditions which appeared to make the discrimination
between green and red most difficult were, so far as my experiments permit
the measurement thereof, green from 1 to 4 candle meters with red from
1200 to 1600. Under these conditions the red appeared extremely bright,
the green very dark, to the human subject.
According to the description of conditions in Table 26, Nos. 2 and 5 were
required to distinguish green from red with the former about 3 candle
meters in brightness and the latter about 1800 candle meters. In the
eighth series of 20 tests, each of these animals made a perfect record. As
it seemed possible that they had learned to go to the darker of the two
boxes instead of to the green box, I arranged the following check test.
The filters were removed, the illumination of one electric-box was made 74
candle meters, that of the other 3, and the changes of the lighter box
from left to right were made at irregular intervals. In February, No. 2
had been trained to go to the black in black-white tests, and at the same
time No. 5 had been trained to go to the white in white-black tests. The
results of these brightness check tests, as they appear in the table,
series 8 _a_, are indeed striking. Number 2 chose the darker box each
time; No. 5 chose it eight times out of ten. Were it not for the fact that
memory tests four weeks after his black-white training had proved that No.
2 had entirely lost the influence of his previous experience (he chose
white nine times out of ten in the memory series), it might reasonably be
urged that this individual chose the darker box because of his experience
in the black-white experiment. And what can be said in explanation of the
choices of No. 5? I can think of no more reasonable way of accounting for
this most unexpected result of the brightness tests than the assumption
that both of these animals had learned to discriminate by brightness
difference instead of by color.
TABLE 26
GREEN-RED TESTS
Brightnesses Different for Human Eye
No. 2 No. 5
SERIES DATE BRIGHTNESS RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG
VALUES (GREEN) (RED) (GREEN) (RED)
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