Raccoon

Both projects sought to situatethe raccoon on an evolutionary scale of intelligence ranging from the simplest organ-isms to humans. Importantly, both psychologists argued that this particular organismchallenged the disciplinary orthodoxy that denied that lower animals possessed minds.They argued that the raccoon was second only to the monkey in intelligence among thenonhuman animals so far tested, and that each of their experiments indicated that theorganism possessed ideas derived from complex forms of association, not simply fromtrial-and-error learning.Unlike Thorndike, who viewed his subjects as stimulus-response machines, Cole andDavis argued that the raccoon offered a different model for the animal mind. In terms of mental apparatus, it was the governing role of curiosity that distinguished the raccoonfrom other mammals. Davis, whose report gave greater attention to developmentalaspects, characterized the raccoon’s intelligence in terms of ‘the exhibition of livelycuriosity – in psychological terms, spontaneous attention and the instinct to investi-gate’.
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For him, curiosity was understood as the major prerequisite for the manifes-tation of true intelligence.

racoon my anus