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
Since there appears to be a slight preference on the part of most dancers'
for the black box in comparison with the white box, white-black training
tests were given to fifty mice, and black-white to only four. The tests
with each individual were continued until it had chosen correctly in all
of the tests of three successive series (thirty tests). As the
reproduction of all the record sheets of these experiments would fill
hundreds of pages and would provide most readers with little more
information than is obtainable from a simple statement of the number of
right and wrong choices, only the brightness discrimination records of
Tables 6 and 7 are given in full.
As a basis for the comparison of the results of the white-black tests with
those of the black-white tests, two representative sets of data for each
of these conditions of brightness discrimination are presented (Tables 9
and 10). In these tables only the number of right and wrong choices for
each series of ten tests appears.
Tables 9 and 10 indicate--if we grant that the precautionary tests to be
described later exclude the possibility of other forms of discrimination--
that the dancer is able to tell white from black; that it is somewhat
easier, as the preference tests might lead us to expect, for it to learn
to go to the black than to the white, and that the male forms the habit of
choosing on the basis of brightness discrimination more quickly than the
female.
TABLE 9
WHITE-BLACK TESTS
No. 210 No. 215
AGE, 28 DAYS AGE, 28 DAYS
SERIES DATE RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG
(WHITE) (BLACK) (WHITE) (BLACK)
A June 22 4 6 2 8
B 23 4 6 2 8
1 24 4 6 3 7
2 25 6 4 5 5
3 26 7 3 7 3
4 27 5 5 8 2
5 28 7 3 9 1
6 29 8 2 8 2
7 30 9 1 9 1
8 July 1 10 0 10 0
9 2 10 0 9 1
10 3 10 0 10 0
11 4 -- -- 10 0
12 5 -- -- 10 0
TABLE 10
WHITE-BLACK TESTS
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