Experiments with Dogs
The boxes used were as follows:
AA was similar to A (O at front), except that the loop was of stiff cord ⅜ inch in diameter and was larger (3½ inches diameter); also it was hung a foot from the floor and 8 inches to the right of the door. The box itself was 41 × 20 × 23.
BB was similar to B, the loop being the same as in AA, and being hung a foot from the floor. The box was of the same size and shape as AA.
BB1 was like BB, but the loop was hung 18 inches from the floor.
CC was similar to C (button), but the button was 6 inches long, and the box was 36½ × 22 × 23.
II was similar to I, but the box was 30 × 20 × 25 inches; the door (11 inches wide, 6 high) was in the left front corner, and the lever was 6 inches long and entered the box at a point 2 inches to the right of the door and 4 inches above the floor.
Fig. 12.
In M the same box as in II was used, but instead of a lever projecting inside the box, a lever running outside parallel to the plane of the front of the box and 18 inches long was used. This lay close against the bars composing the front of the box, and could be pawed down by sticking the paw out an inch or so between two bars, at a point about 15 inches high and 6 inches in from the right edge of the front. We may call M ‘Lever outside.’
Fig. 13.
N was a pen 5 × 3 feet made of wire netting 46 inches high. The door, 31 × 20, was in the right half of the front. A string from the bolt passed up over a pulley and back to the back center, where it was fastened 33 inches above the floor. Biting or pawing this string opened the door.
O was like K, except that there was only one bar, that the string ran inside the box, so that it was easily accessible, and that the bolt raised in K by depression of the platform could be raised in O (and was by the dog experimented on) by sticking the muzzle out between two bars just above the bolt and by biting the string, at the same time jerking it upward. O was 30 × 20 × 25 in size.
The box G was used for both dogs and cats, without any variation save that for dogs the resistance of the door to pressure outwards was doubled.
In these boxes were put in the course of the experiments dog 1 (about 8 months old), and dogs 2 and 3, adults, all of small size.
A dog who, when hungry, is shut up in one of these boxes is not nearly so vigorous in his struggles to get out as is the young cat. And even after he has experienced the pleasure of eating on escape many times he does not try to get out so hard as a cat, young or old. He does try to a certain extent. He paws or bites the bars or screening, and tries to squeeze out in a tame sort of way. He gives up his attempts sooner than the cat, if they prove unsuccessful. Furthermore his attention is taken by the food, not the confinement. He wants to get to the food, not out of the box. So, unlike the cat, he confines his efforts to the front of the box. It was also a practical necessity that the dogs should be kept from howling in the evening, and for this reason I could not use as motive the utter hunger which the cats were made to suffer. In the morning, when the experiments were made, the dogs were surely hungry, and no experiment is recorded in which the dog was not in a state to be willing to make a great effort for a bit of meat, but the motive may not have been even and equal throughout, as it was with the cats.
Fig. 14.
The curves on [page 60] are to be interpreted in the same way as those for the cats, and are on the same scale. The order in which No. 1 took up the various associations was AA, BB, BB1, G, N, CC, II, O.
The percentage of dogs succeeding in the various boxes is given below, but is of no consequence, because so few were tried, and because the motive, hunger, was not perhaps strong enough, or equal in all cases.
In AA 3 out of 3.
In BB 0 out of 2 (that is, without previous experience of AA).
In CC 1 out of 2.
In II 3 out of 3.
In M 1 out of 2.
In N 1 out of 3.
In G 1 out of 3.