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
A brief description of the behavior of the dancer in the brightness
discrimination experiments which have been described may very
appropriately form the closing section of this chapter. For the
experimenter, the incessant activity and inexhaustible energy of the
animal are a never-failing source of interest and surprise. When a dancer
is inactive in the experiment box, it is a good indication either of
indisposition or of too low a temperature in the room. In no animal with
which I am familiar is activity so much an end in itself as in this odd
species of mouse. With striking facility most of the mice learn to open
the wire swing doors from either side. They push them open with their
noses in the direction in which they were intended by the experimenter to
work, and with almost equal ease they pull them open with their teeth in
the direction in which they were not intended to work. In the rapidity
with which this trick is learned, there are very noticeable individual
differences. The pulling of these doors furnished an excellent opportunity
for the study of the imitative tendency.
When confronted with the two entrances of the electric-boxes, the dancer
manifested at first only the hesitation caused by being in a strange
place. It did not seem much afraid, and usually did not hesitate long
before entering one of the boxes. The first choice often determined the
majority of the choices of the preference series. If the mouse happened to
enter the left box, it kept on doing so until, having become so accustomed
to its surroundings that it could take time from its strenuous running
from _A_ by way of the left box to the alley and thence to _A_, to examine
things in _B_ a little, it observed the other entrance and in a seemingly
half-curious, half-venturesome way entered it. In the case of other
individuals, the cardboards themselves seemed to determine the choices
from the first.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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