I then replaced the bait, raising it to a height of five feet ten inches
from the floor of the cage. When I had retired, Sobke placed himself in
the proper position beneath, looked up at it, but went away without
jumping for it. During the remaining ten minutes of observation, he paid
no further attention to the bait, having satisfied himself evidently
that it was beyond his reach.
My use of this test was concluded on June 16 when once more I suspended
a piece of bread six feet from the floor and placed a few feet to one
side the eighteen inch box, number 3, from which had the monkey pushed
it to a point directly under the bread, he could have obtained the food
easily. Sobke noticed the food promptly, and from time to time as he
wandered about, he glanced at it out of the corner of his eye, but not
once did he sit down and look at it steadily and directly as Julius and
Skirrl might have done.
In the first twenty minutes of observation the monkey made no attempt
either to use the box or to reach the food by jumping. I then placed the
box directly under the bait, and scarcely had I withdrawn from the cage
before Sobke climbed up on it and looked toward the food. He could not
reach it without jumping, and he made no effort to get it. I had left a
second box in the cage,--one which I had been using as a seat. Sobke now
went to this box, placed his hands on it, looked toward the bait, and
then went to a distant part of the cage. No further indications were
obtained during the remainder of the period of observation of interest
in the boxes as possible means of obtaining the desired food.
It is of course obvious that this experiment was not long enough
continued to justify the conclusion that either Sobke or Skirrl could
not use the boxes or even learn to place one box upon another in order
to obtain the bait. The experiment, like several others which are being
described briefly, was used to supplement the multiple-choice
experiment, and the experimenter's chief interest was to discover the
number and variety of methods which would be used by the animal in
the first few presentations of a situation. It is practically certain
that both of these monkeys would have succeeded ultimately in solving
the problem of obtaining the food had they been left in the cage with a
number of boxes, for Skirrl very early indicated interest in moving the
boxes about, and Sobke showed a tendency in that direction which perhaps
was inhibited partially by his distrust of the experimenter.
_Draw-in Experiment_
For Sobke, as for Julius and Skirrl, the draw-in test was made by
putting food on a shelf outside the cage, beyond the reach of the
animal, and placing in the cage with the animal one or two sticks long
enough to be used for drawing in the bait.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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