ABSTRACT
The interpretation placed upon animal activities is liable to be influenced by what the reporter knows or believes concerning human activities. Since successful life at any level is conditioned on the fulfillment of the groups of needs, the degree of success of activities relative to these groups will be a true measure, so far, of the efficiency of all organic activity. These three groups of activities are, from the standpoints of the species and of the individual, life-sustaining activities. There is another large group of activities which may be designated as life-fulfilling. As responses to stimulatory agencies these are as inevitable, as normal, as natural as are responses to agencies which answer to the organism’s life-or-death needs, but they do not contribute anything to such needs. The maladaptivity of animals in what they do has received relatively little special attention by experimentalists.
