MENTAL LIFE OF MONKEYS AND APES 121 



I could not avoid the thought that the instinctive fear of snakes 

 had something to do with his pecuhar actions, and although 

 I have never studied either the natural or the acquired re- 

 sponses of monkeys to snakes, I suspect that lacking such in- 

 stinctive 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 constitu- 

 tion 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 affec- 

 tive life could be expected to respond as did this monkey. As 

 has been suggested above, I find the appeal to instinct, modi- 

 fied by experience, a natural mode of accounting for the unex- 

 pected features of Skirrl's behavior. 



Sympathy 



The instinctive playfulness of the young monkey Tiny con- 

 trasted most strikingly with the more serious, if not more sedate, 

 modes of behavior of the older individuals. 



During the greater part of my period of observation Tiny was 

 cage-mate of Scotty, the most calm and apparently lazy of all 

 the monkeys. Tin^^ delighted in teasing Scotty, and her varied 

 modes of mildly tormenting him and of stirring him to pursuit 

 or to retaliation were as interesting as they were amusing. Her 

 most common trick was to steal up behind him and pull the 

 hair of his back, or seize his tail with her hands or teeth. 

 Often when he was asleep she would suddenh^ run to him, give 

 a sudden jerk at a handful of hairs, and leap away. He was 

 surprisingly patient, and I never saw him treat her roughly 

 in retaliation. 



Another of Tiny's favorite forms of amusement was that of 

 trying to stir up the other monkeys to attacks on one another. 

 She very cleverly did this by pretending that she herself w^as 



