MIND IN ANIMALS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 4410, 27 October 1934, Page 4

MIND IN ANIMALS.

Dee and Dam, two remarkable little racoons, were the twin stars of a film which received round after round of applause at a joint meeting of the psychology and zoology sections of the British Association. International experts were discussing the fascinating question of the behaviour of animals, and there was one of the biggest audiences of the whole conference, dozens of people sitting on the floor and craning their necks from adjoining corridors. The main question that seemed to emerge was: Do animals think and have a goal before them, or are all their actions merely mechanical? Professor William McDougall, the American psychologist, showed the film of Dee and Dum. "When Dec, a black-eved little animal, looking something between a cat and a squirrel, was hungry, he was seen to go to a box and open an elaborate system of latches on the four sides and top in order to get into the box, where the food- lay. Altogether Dee opened 2"4 interlocking latches in a few seconds. Dum then came into the picture and did some very thoughtful-looking manoeuvring to reach pieces of meat dangling at the end of strings. Professor McDougall argued that the animal was “striving at a goal.” He suggested that animal behaviour was the key to human psychology. He admitted the enormous gap between the animal and the man, but emphasised the importance of recognising all animal behaviour as goalseeking. Mr Rex Knight, lecturer in. comparative psychology at Aberdeen University, said that they must be cautious in passing from observation of the actions of animals to conclusions about the behaviour of men. There were too many people who believed that from an anecdote of a single animal action, without scientific inquiry into its antecedents, they could determine what its cause must have been. He mentioned instances where “intelligence” was merely training in a seines of actions.