Cole, Intelligence of Raccoons. 235 



these animals in connection with the food-getting impulse. Almost 

 all experiments so far employed in laboratories have depended 

 on hunger as a stimulus. Perhaps a new motive should be 

 searched for to test the presence of imitation. Such an opinion 

 certainly seems warranted by the behavior of raccoons. I think 

 the same is true of dogs, cats, and chicks. In monkeys, however, 

 KiNNAMAN (p. 121) elicited two examples of undoubted imitation 

 of one rhesus by another, in connection with food-getting, and 

 apparent cases of "instinctive imitation" were numerous. May 

 this difference not be attributed to the fact that monkeys' live in 

 groups or droves and search for stores of food rather than for 

 single bits as the raccoon does ? 



LEARNING FROM BEING PUT THROUGH AN ACT. 



The evidence for Thorndike's most far-reaching conclusions 

 concerning the mental lite of cats and dogs seems to be based on 

 their behavior in experiments in which they were put through the 

 act to be learned. In view of his conclusions it would seem highly 

 important that this question be tested carefully for as many of the 

 higher animals as possible. 



On page 67 of "Animal Intelligence" Thorndike says: "A cat has been made to go into a box 

 through a door, which is then closed. She pulls a loop and comes out and gets fish. She is made to go 

 in by the door again, and again lets herself out. After this has been done enough times, the cat will of 

 her own accord go into the box after eating the fish. It will be hard to keep her out. The old expla- 

 nation of this would be that the cat associated the memory of being in the box with the subsequent pleasure, 

 and therefore performed the equivalent of saying to herself, "Go tol I will go in." The thought of 

 being in, they say, makes her go in. The thought of being in will not make her go in. For if, instead 

 of pushing the cat toward the doorway or holding it there, and thus allowing it to itself give the impulse, 

 to innervate the muscles, to walk in, you shut the door first and drop the cat in through a hole in the top 

 of the box, she will, after escaping as many times as in the previous case, not go into the box of her 

 own accord. She has had exactly the same opportunity of connecting the idea of being in the box 

 with the subsequent pleasure. Either a cat cannot connect ideas, representations, at all, or she has 

 not the power of progressing from the thought of being in to the act of going in. The only difference 

 between the first cat and the second cat is that the first cat, in the course of the experience, has the 

 impulse to crawl through that door, while the second has not the impulse to crawl through the door or to 

 drop through that hole. So though you put the second cat on the box beside the hole, she doesn't try 

 to get into the box through it. The impulse is the sine qua non of the association. The second cat has 

 everything else, but cannot supply that. These phenomena were observed in six cats, three of which 

 were tried by the first method, three by the second.'' 



On p. 73 he writes: "Presumably the reader has already seen budding out of this dogma a new pos- 

 sibility, 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 associa- 

 tion in animals is the presence of sense-impressions with which are associated, by resultant pleasure, 

 certain impulses, and that therefore, and therefore only, a certain situation brings forth a certain act." 



So definite and convincing is his evidence for this failure to 

 learn by being put through an act in the case of dogs and cats, that 



