294 K. S. LASHLEY 



given an old piece of fur as a bed and spent much of her time 

 nuzzling about vainly among its hairs. Four months later, 

 when I saw her for the second time, she had developed a very 

 pronounced habit of sucking at small objects. She would lie 

 for half an hour at a time and suck at the tassels of a heavy 

 woolen curtain, making loud smacking and gurgling noises and 

 refusing to be distracted by food or even by mild punishment. 

 The taste of the object was seemingly not the source of attrac- 

 tion for a bit of undyed thread, one's finger-tip, or even the 

 cap of a fountain pen served as a ready substitute for the more 

 favored tassels. Even threads moistened with weak sugar, 

 salt, and acid solutions were accepted, although such solutions 

 usually produce violent avoiding reactions in normal cats. 

 Hunger was not instrumental in producing the activity, which 

 frequently appeared just after the kitten had eaten a full meal. 

 I have not been able to secure this animal for further observa- 

 tion but am informed that her peculiar behavior is still un- 

 changed. (She is now nearly a year old.) 



This behavior is, at least on the surface, strikingly like the 

 "pleasure sucking" described by students of human behavior. 

 The existence of complex perversions in animals, as suggested 

 by these cases and by Pearl's recent note upon the behavior 

 of the Poitou jacks, 1 offers a possibility of the application of 

 animal behavior studies to man, particularly with respect to 

 the experimental study of the roles of heredity and environment 

 in the development of character, which it will be well to bear 

 in mind in the more general studies of habit formation. 



1 Pearl, Raymond. Note on the sex behavior of the Poitu Jacks. Jour. Animal 

 Behavior., vol. 3, 297-299. 



