212 Animal Intelligence 



We find anecdotes to that effect in fairly reputable 

 authors. 



Of course, such anecdotes might be true and still not prove 

 that the animals learned to do things because they saw them 

 done. The animal may have been taught in other ways to 

 respond to the particular sights in question by the particular 

 acts. Or it may have been in each case a coincidence. 



If a monkey did actually form an association between a 

 given situation and act by seeing some one respond to that 

 situation by that act, it would be evidence of considerable 

 importance concerning his general mental status, for it 

 would go to show that he could and often did form asso- 

 ciations between sense-impressions and ideas and between 

 ideas and acts. Seeing some one turn a key in a lock might 

 thus give him the idea of turning or moving the key, and this 

 idea might arouse the act. However, the mere fact that a 

 monkey does something which you have just done in his 

 presence need not demonstrate or even render a bit more 

 probable such a general mental condition. For he perhaps 

 would have acted in just the same manner if you had offered 

 him no model. If you put two toothpicks on a dish, take 

 one and put it in your mouth, a monkey will do the same, not 

 because he profits by your example, but because he in- 

 stinctively puts nearly all small objects in his mouth. Be- 

 cause of their general activity, their instinctive impulses to 

 grab, drop, bite, rub, carry, move about, turn over, etc., any 

 novel object within their reach, their constant movement 

 and assumption of all sorts of postures, the monkeys per- 

 form many acts like our own and simulate imitation to a far 

 greater extent than other mammals. 



Even if a monkey which has failed of itself to do a certain 

 thing does it after you have shown him the act, there need 

 be no reason to suppose that he is learning by imitation, 



