238 The Animal Mind 



experience (426), and from one point of view it is. But 

 imitation may be, as various authors have pointed out, of 

 at least two different types. The first may be called in- 

 stinctive imitation, and is widespread throughout the animal 

 kingdom. It occurs when the sight or sound of one animal's 

 performing a certain act operates as a direct stimulus, ap- 

 parently through an inborn nervous connection, to the per- 

 formance of a similar act by another animal. "If," says 

 Lloyd Morgan, "one of a group of chicks learns by casual 

 experience to drink from a tin of water, others will run up 

 and peck at the water and will themselves drink. A hen 

 teaches her little ones to pick up grain or other food by peck- 

 ing on the ground and dropping suitable materials before 

 them, the chicks seeming to imitate her actions. . . . In- 

 stinctive actions, such as scratching the ground, are performed 

 earlier if imitation be not excluded " (281, pp. 166-167). 

 Imitation in this sense is hardly so much a method of learn- 

 ing by experience as a method of supplying experience. 

 An animal may perform an act the first time because, through 

 inherited nervous connections, the sight of another animal's 

 performing it acts as a stimulus. But it will continue to 

 perform the act, in the absence of any copy to imitate, only 

 if the act is itself an instinctive one, like drinking in birds, 

 or becomes permanent by reason of its consequences, just as 

 would be the case if its first performance had been accidental 

 rather than imitative. As a matter of fact, instinctive imita- 

 tion seems usually to be concerned with actions themselves 

 instinctive. 



Inferential imitation, or what Morgan calls reflective 

 imitation, is a different affair. It is the case where an animal, 

 watching another one go through an action and observing 

 the consequences, is led to perform a similar act from a 

 desire to bring about the same result. The most natural 



