76 Animal Intelligence 



ising problems, of which the first, and not the least im- 

 portant, concerns the facts and theories of imitation. 



IMITATION 



To the question, 'Do animals imitate?' science has 

 uniformly answered, 'Yes.' But so long as the question 

 is left in this general form, no correct answer to it is possible. 

 It will be seen, from the results of numerous experiments 

 soon to be described, that imitation of a certain sort is 

 not possible for animals, and before entering upon that 

 description it will be helpful to differentiate this matter of 

 imitation into several varieties or aspects. The presence 

 of some sorts of imitation does not imply that of other 

 sorts. 



There are, to begin with, the well-known phenomena 

 presented by the imitative birds. The power is extended 

 widely, ranging from the parrot who knows a hundred or 

 more articulate sounds to the sparrow whom a patient 

 shoemaker taught to get through a tune. Now, if a bird 

 really gets a sound in his mind from hearing it and sets out 

 forthwith to imitate it, as mocking birds are said at times to 

 do, it is a mystery and deserves closest study. If a bird, 

 out of a lot of random noises that it makes, chooses those 

 for repetition which are like sounds that he has heard, it 

 is again a mystery why, though not as in the previous case 

 a mystery how, he does it. The important fact for our pur- 

 pose is that, though the imitation of sounds is so habitual, 

 there does not appear to be any marked general imitative 

 tendency in these birds. There is no proof that parrots do 

 muscular acts from having seen other parrots do them. 

 But this should be studied. At any rate, until we know 

 what sort of sounds birds imitate, what circumstances 



