THE KEY TO ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



negative results. They prove what the animal does 

 not know and cannot do under artificial conditions, 

 but do they show what it does know and can do 

 under natural conditions? 



I grant that you can prove in your laboratories 

 that animals do not reason that they have noth- 

 ing like our mental processes. But the observer in 

 the field and woods, if he exercise any reason of his 

 own, knows this. We see that the caged bird or the 

 caged beast does not reason, because no strength 

 of bar or wall can convince it that it cannot es- 

 cape. It cannot be convinced, because it has no 

 faculties that are influenced by evidence. It con- 

 tinues to struggle and to dash itself against the 

 bars, not until it is convinced, but until it is ex- 

 hausted. Then, slowly, a new habit is formed 

 the cage habit, the habit of submission to bars or 

 tethers. Its inherited habits give place to acquired 

 habits. When we train an animal to do certain 

 "stunts," we do not teach it or enlighten it, in 

 any proper sense, but we compel it to form new 

 habits. We work with the animal until it goes 

 through its little trick in the same automatic man- 

 ner in which its natural instincts were wont to 

 work. 



I do not care to know how a laboratory coon gets 



his food out of a box that is locked; but I should like 



to know why he always goes through the motion of 



washing his food before eating it, rubbing it in the 



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