"Two days later the remnant was missing, and careful search failed to
discover it in the cage. It is probable that Gertie had carelessly left
it lying on the floor whence it was washed out when the cages were
cleaned. On this date Gertie seemed quieter than for weeks previously.
"Thus it appears that during a period of five weeks the instinct to
protect her offspring impelled this monkey to carry its gradually
vanishing remains about with her and to watch over them so assiduously
that it was utterly impossible to take them from her except by force.
"After reading this note in manuscript, Doctor Hamilton informed me that
Gertie had behaved toward her first still-birth as toward her second.
And, further, that Grace, a baboon, also carried a still-birth about for
weeks.
"I am now heartily glad that my early efforts to remove the corpse were
futile, for this record of the persistence of maternal behavior seems to
me of very unusual interest to the genetic psychologist."
_Fear_
In connection with the multiple-choice experiments Skirrl exhibited what
seemed to be instinctive fear as a result of his unfortunate experience
with nails in the floor of box 1. He seemingly referred his misadventure
to some unseen enemy under the floor, and this in spite of the fact that
he was given abundant opportunity to examine the floor of the box, but
not until after the dangerous nails had been clinched. His long
continued avoidance of the experiment boxes and his still more
persistent hesitancy in entering them, coupled with his almost ludicrous
efforts to see beneath the floor through the holes cut for the staples
on the doors, gave me the impression of superstitious fear of the
unseen. As I watched and recorded his behavior day after day during the
period of most pronounced fear, I could not avoid the thought that the
instinctive fear of snakes had something to do with his peculiar
actions, and although I have never studied either the natural or the
acquired responses of monkeys to snakes, I suspect that lacking such
instinctive equipment, Skirrl would have behaved differently as a result
of the pricks which he received from the nails. It is needless to
redescribe his acquired fear of whiteness as it manifested itself in the
freshly painted apparatus. Accompanying these instructive modes of
response and their emotions are suggestions of peculiarly interesting
problems as well as of modes of attacking them. As a matter of fact,
Skirrl's fear-reactions did much to alter my conception of the
constitution of his mind. I should not have been surprised by the
features of behavior exhibited, but I was by no means prepared for their
persistence, and for the highly emotional attitude toward the particular
situation. Only an organism of complexly constituted nervous system and
fairly highly developed affective life could be expected to respond as
did this monkey. As has been suggested above, I find the appeal to
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