io8 Animal Intelligence 



Another question was, "How would you teach a cat to 

 get out of a box, the door of which was closed with a thumb 

 latch ? " 



A answered, "I should use a puffball as a plaything for 

 the cat to claw at." This means, I suppose, that he would get 

 the cat to claw at the puffball and thus direct its clawings 

 to the vicinity of the thumb piece. 



B answered, "I would put the cat in and get it good and 

 hungry and then open the door by lifting the latch with my 

 finger. Then put some food that the cat likes outside, and 

 she will soon try to imitate you and so learn the trick." 



C answered, "I would first adjust all things in connection 

 with the surroundings of the cat so they would be applicable 

 to the laws of its nature, and then proceed to teach the 

 trick." 



I suppose this last means that he would fix the box so that 

 some of the cat's instinctive acts would lead it to perform 

 the trick. The answer given by B means apparently that 

 he would simply leave the thing to accident, for any such 

 imitation as he supposes is out of the question. At all 

 events, none of these would naturally start to teach the 

 trick by putting the animal through the motions, which, 

 were it a possible way, would probably be a traditional 

 one among trainers. On the whole, I see in these data no 

 reason for modifying our dogma that animals cannot learn 

 acts without the impulse. 



Presumably the reader has already seen budding out of 

 this dogma a new possibility, a further simplification of 

 our theories about animal consciousness. The possibility 

 is that animals may have no images or memories at all, no 

 ideas to associate. Perhaps the entire fact of association 

 in animals is the presence of sense-impressions with which 

 are associated, by resultant pleasure, certain impulses, 



