Two days later, on May 3, the box was once more placed in position, this
time with a half banana in the middle and a small piece of banana near
each open end. The two poles lay on the floor of the cage, each several
feet distant from the box. Julius was eager for food. When released he
went immediately to the box, reached in and obtained a piece of banana
from the end nearer the laboratory. He then looked in and saw the piece
near the middle of the box. His next move was to pick up the eight foot
pole and push it into the box, but before pushing it all the way
through, he stopped and began to pull at the box in various ways.
Shortly he returned to the pole and twice thrust it in as far as he
could reach. The first time, after thrusting it all the way through, he
pulled it out and examined the end as though expecting the banana to
come out with it. After a third attempt he looked into the box,
presumably seeing the banana, then turned a backward somersault, came to
the end of the cage, and looked at me. Had it been at all possible, he
would have taken me by the hand and led me to the box as a helper. After
a few seconds, he returned to the pole, pried the lid of the box with
it, then gnawed at the pole. For about five minutes he worked fairly
rapidly and steadily, using the poles, pulling, gnawing, and walking
about.
His next move was to go to the opposite end of the box, look in, take
the piece of banana which was near the opening, then pick up the second
pole, which had not previously been noticed, and after a number of
attempts, push it into and through the box, looking after it and then
pulling it out and looking into the box. Having done this he again came
to my end of the cage, and from there returned to try once more with the
pole which he had first used. He pushed this pole all the way through,
then walked to the other end of the box, looked in and reaching in,
obtained the banana which had been pushed far enough along to be within
his grasp. Figures 29, 30 and 31 of plate V show stages of this process.
Julius had worked twenty-four minutes with relatively little lost time
before succeeding. He had shown almost from the start the idea of using
the pole as an instrument, and his sole difficulty was in making the
pole serve the desired purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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