When this situation was first presented to Julius, he looked at the banana, reached for it, and failing, picked up a bag from the floor of the cage and tried to push it through the wire mesh toward the banana.  He also used a bit of wire in the same way, but was unable thus to get the food.  As soon as a stick was placed in his cage, he grasped it and used it in a very definite, although unskillful, way to pull the banana toward him.  He was extremely eager and impatient, but nevertheless persistent in his efforts, and within five minutes from the beginning of the first trial, he had succeeded in getting two pieces of banana, using always his left hand to manipulate the stick.  This test was repeated a number of times with similar results.  He had from the first the ability to use a stick in this way, and the only difficulty with the test as a means of obtaining evidence of ideational behavior is that the possibility of imitation of man cannot be certainly excluded.

Lock and Key Test

By my assistant it was reported on May 5 that the orang utan had been seen to place a splinter of wood in a padlock which was used on the cages and to work with it persistently.  It looked very much like imitation of the human act of using the key, and I therefore planned a test to ascertain whether Julius could readily and skillfully use a key or could learn quickly to do so by watching me.

The first test was made on May 15 with a heavy box whose hinged lid was held securely in position by means of a hasp and a padlock.  The key, which was not more than an inch in length, was fastened to a six inch piece of wire so that Julius could not readily lose it.  With the animal opposite me, I placed a piece of banana in the box, then closed the lid and snapped the padlock.  I next handed Julius the key.  He immediately laid it on the floor opposite him and began biting the box, rolling it around, and occasionally biting also at the lock and pulling at it.  During these activities he had pulled the box toward his cage.  Now he suddenly looked up to the position where the banana had been suspended in the box experiment.  Evidently the box had suggested to him the banana.  For thirty minutes he struggled with the box almost continuously, chewing persistently at the hinges, the hasp, or the lock.  Then he took the key in his teeth and tried to push it into one of the hinges, then into the crack beneath the lid of the box.

Subsequently I allowed him to see me use the key repeatedly, and as a result, he came to use it himself now and then on the edge of the box, but he never succeeded in placing it in the lock, and the outcome of the experiment was total failure on the part of the animal to unfasten the lock of his own initiative or to learn to use the key by watching me do so.  I did not make any special attempt to teach him to use the key, but merely gave him opportunity to imitate, and it is by no means impossible that he would have succeeded had the key been larger and had the situation required less accurately coordinated movements.  However, it is fair to say that the evidence of the idea of using the key in the lock was unconvincing.  My assistant’s observation was, perhaps, misleading in so far as it suggested that idea.  It may and probably was purely by accident that the animal used the splinter on the padlock.