The Dancing Mouse

Dancing Mouse, The

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Title: The Dancing Mouse A Study in Animal Behavior
Author: Robert M. Yerkes
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[Illustration: DANCING MICE--SNIFFING AND EATING.]

THE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR SERIES. VOLUME I
THE DANCING MOUSE
A Study in Animal Behavior
BY
ROBERT M. YERKES, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN COMPARATIVE
PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
The Cartwright Prize of the Alumni Association of the College of
Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, was awarded, in 1907,
for an Essay which comprised the first twelve chapters of this volume.
1907

IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY
MOTHER

PREFACE

This book is the direct result of what, at the time of its occurrence,
seemed to be an unimportant incident in the course of my scientific
work-- the presentation of a pair of dancing mice to the Harvard
Psychological Laboratory. My interest in the peculiarities of behavior
which the creatures exhibited, as I watched them casually from day to
day, soon became experiment-impelling, and almost before I realized it,
I was in the midst of an investigation of their senses and intelligence.
The longer I observed and experimented with them, the more numerous
became the problems which the dancers presented to me for solution.
From a study of the senses of hearing and sight I was led to investigate,
in turn, the various forms of activity of which the mice are capable; the
ways in which they learn to react adaptively to new or novel situations;
the facility with which they acquire habits; the duration of habits; the
roles of the various senses in the acquisition and performance of certain
habitual acts; the efficiency of different methods of training; and the
inheritance of racial and individually acquired forms of behavior.
In the course of my experimental work I discovered, much to my
surprise, that no accurate and detailed account of this curiously
interesting animal existed in the English language, and that in no other
language were all the facts concerning it available in a single book.
This fact, in connection with my appreciation of the exceptional value
of the dancer as a pet and as material for the scientific study of animal
behavior, has led me to supplement the results of my own observation
by presenting in this little book a brief and not too highly technical
description of the general characteristics and history of the dancer.
The purposes which I have had in mind as I planned and wrote the
book are three: first, to present directly, clearly, and briefly the results
of my investigation; second, to give as complete an account of the
dancing mouse as a thorough study of the literature on the animal and
long-continued observation on my own part should make possible;
third, to provide a supplementary text-book on mammalian behavior
and on methods of studying animal behavior for use in connection with
courses in Comparative Psychology, Comparative Physiology, and
Animal Behavior.

It is my conviction that the scientific study of animal behavior and of
animal mind can be furthered more just at present by intensive special
investigations than by extensive general books. Methods of research in
this field are few and surprisingly crude, for the majority of
investigators have been more deeply interested in getting results than in
perfecting methods. In writing this account of the dancing mouse I have
attempted to lay as much stress upon the development of my methods
of work as upon the results which the methods yielded. In fact, I have
used the dancer as a means of exhibiting a variety