240 The Animal Mind 



were aided in their learning processes if he "showed" them 

 how to do the thing (177). Whether this was inferential 

 imitation in the sense that they got the idea of the action 

 and of its result by watching him, or whether they were 

 merely aided in focussing their attention on the important 

 object, the string, hook, or lever, it is difficult to be sure. 



Berry found that the white rats he experimented on 

 manifested a type of imitative behavior which he is inclined 

 to regard as intermediate between instinctive and fully in- 

 ferential imitation. "When two rats were put into the box 

 together," he says, "one rat being trained to get out of the 

 box and the other untrained, at first they were indifferent 

 to each other's presence, but as the untrained rat observed 

 that the other one was able to get out while he was not, a 

 gradual change took place. The untrained rat began to 

 watch the other's movements closely; he followed him all 

 about the cage, standing up on his hind legs beside him at 

 the string and pulling it after he had pulled it, etc. We 

 also saw that when he was put back, the immediate vicinity 

 of the loop was the point of greatest interest for him, and 

 that he tried to get out by working at the spot where he had 

 seen the trained rat try " (26). 



Now, so far as the light cast by this evidence for and against 

 inferential imitation or the presence of ideas in the animal 



ind is concerned, the matter seems to stand as follows. 



e cannot be sure that Kinnaman's monkeys really had 

 an idea of the proper action suggested to them by seeing 

 their companions perform it ; the case might have been one 

 of instinctive imitation, taking here a form more elaborate 

 than was seen in cats and dogs because more complicated 

 movements are natural to the monkey than to the lower 

 mammals. If it is certain that Berry's uneducated rat 

 began to watch the actions of the educated one more closely 



