Cole, Intelligence of Raccoons. 217 



another near the door of the cage. As they grew older this was of 

 no use. 



Under ordinary experimental conditions the motives from which 

 a raccoon learns are, therefore, hunger, an apparent desire to 

 be occupied, called by several writers curiosity, and in the young, 

 loneliness.^ 



One may ask, were not the play trials actuated by a desire to 

 escape from the narrow confines of the box ? I cannot say so 

 with certainty, for all four raccoons would go into a box willingly 

 enough unless it took prolonged work to escape. In that case it 

 was difficult even to put them in, and they developed a tendency 

 to snap at the experimenter's hand before he could withdraw it 

 from the box. Evidently the memory of previous hard work to 

 escape was the cause of this resistance, for with easy fastenings 

 the animal would re-enter the box time after time and then delib- 

 erately work the latches as a part ol an aimless activity which 

 included toying with loose objects, reaching out with the forepaws 

 through the slats or trying to pull dust or straws into the cage. 

 A change of food from meat to sugar at this moment would often 

 stimulate the animal to escape instantly. Without some such 

 stimulus as this the animal might not come out of the box when 

 the door swung open or it might come out very slowly. Reluctance 

 to re-enter a box being in direct proportion to the difficulty of its 

 fastenings, I can but believe that the raccoons felt no sense of 

 confinement in a box which they knew how to open very quickly. 

 At any rate their behavior toward re-entering easy boxes was the 

 exact reverse of that tmvard re-entering difficult ones. 



The conditions which prevented quick working of the mechan- 

 isms and consequently delayed the forming of an association were 

 too great eagerness due to hunger, approaching satiety and dis- 

 traction of attention. 



(i) Eagerness. — In most cases the first attempt each day, or 

 each half-day, required more time than succeeding attempts even 

 though the animal had operated the mechanism quickly many 

 times before. The eagerness seemed in most cases to amount to 

 great excitement. In the first trial the animal seemed to fall back 

 on primitive impulses. It made many ineffective movements. 

 In the second trial each day it seemed to depend on memory, and 

 often made but one movement for each latch. 



3 I do not mention the motives of pain, danger, etc., as they were not employed in this study. 



