194 Animal Intelligence 



mediately applied his teeth, though he had before always 

 pulled it out with his hand. So again with a plug. It may 

 be that there is a special inborn tendency to bite at objects 

 pulled unsuccessfully. If not, the act would seem to show 

 the presence of the idea 'get thing out' or 'thing come out' 

 and associated with it the impulse to use the teeth. We 

 shall see later, however, that in certain other circumstances 

 where we should expect ideas to be present and result in 

 acts they do not. 



The fact is that those features in the behavior of the 

 monkeys in forming associations between the sight of a box 

 and the act needed to open it which remind us of learning 

 by ideas may also be possibly explained by general activity 

 and curiosity, the free use of the hand, and superior quick- 

 ness in forming associations of the animal sort. We must 

 have recourse to more crucial tests or at least seek evidence 

 from a number of different kinds of mental performances. 

 The first of these will naturally be their behavior toward 

 these same mechanisms after a long time-interval. 



THE PERMANENCE OF ASSOCIATIONS IN THE CASE 



or MECHANISMS 



My records are too few and in all but one case after too 

 short an interval to be decisive on the point of abrupt 

 transition from failure to success such as would characterize 

 an animal in whose mind arose the idea of a certain part of 

 the mechanism as the thing to be attacked or of a certain 

 movement as the fit one. The animals are all under ob- 

 servation in the Columbia Laboratory, however, and I 

 trust that later satisfactory tests may be made. No. 2 

 was not included in the tests because he was either unwell 

 or had become very shy of the boxes, entering them even 



