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
In this connection it may be worth while to mention that a beautiful
theory of space perception which Cyon (9) had constructed, largely on the
basis of the demonstration by Rawitz that the dancers have only one normal
canal, is totally destroyed by Panse, Baginsky, Alexander and Kreidl, and
Kishi, for all of these observers found in the dancer three canals of
normal shape. Cyon had noted that the most abnormal of the voluntary as
well as of the forced movements of the dancer occur in the plane of the
canal which Rawitz found to be most strikingly defective. This fact he
connected with his observation that the fish Petromyzon, which possesses
only two canals, moves in only two spatial dimensions. The dancer with
only one functional canal in each ear moves in only one plane, and neither
it nor Petromyzon is able to move far in a straight line (11 p. 444). From
these and similar surmises, which his eagerness to construct an ingenious
theory led him to accept as facts quite uncritically, Cyon concluded that
the perception of space depends upon the number and arrangement of the
semicircular canals, and that the dancer behaves as it does because it
possesses canals of unusual shape and relations to one another. The
absurdity of Cyon's position becomes obvious when it is shown that the
structural conditions of which he was making use do not exist in the
dancer.
The results obtained by Kishi in his study of the ear of the dancer differ
in many important respects from those of all other investigators, but
especially from those of Rawitz and Alexander and Kreidl.
Kishi's work was evidently done with admirable carefulness. His methods in
the preparation of his materials, so far as can be judged from his report,
were safe and satisfactory, and his descriptions of results are minute and
give evidence of accuracy and conscientious thoughtfulness. The material
for his histological work he obtained from three different animal dealers.
It consisted of fifteen adult and nineteen young dancers, and, as material
for comparison, ten common gray mice. The animals were studied first
biologically, that their habits and behavior might be described accurately
and so far as possible accounted for in the light of whatever histological
results might be obtained subsequently; then they were studied
physiologically, that the functional importance of various organs which
would naturally be supposed to have to do with the peculiarities of the
mouse might be understood; and, finally, they were killed and their ears
and portions of their brains were studied microscopically, that structural
conditions for the biological and physiological facts might be discovered.
The ear, which was studied by the use of several series of sections, as
well as in gross dissections, is described by Kishi under three
headings:--
(1) The sound-receiving apparatus (auditory organs).
(2) The static apparatus (equilibrational organs).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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