The Speech of Monkeys

The processes, motives, acts and results are the same with man and ape; the degree to which they reason differs, but the kind of reason in both cases is the same. I shall here relate some instances in my experience and leave the reader to judge whether reason or instinct guided the acts of the monkeys as I shall detail them in the next few paragraphs. It will be remembered that these were new conditions under which the monkeys acted. I taught Nellie to drink milk from a bottle with a rubber nipple. While I would hold the bottle, it was easy for her to secure the milk; but when she undertook it alone, she utterly failed. The thing which puzzled her was how to get the milk to come up to her end of the bottle. She turned it in every way, and held it in every position that she could think of, but the milk always kept at the other end of the bottle. She would throw the bottle down in despair, and when she saw the milk flow to the end having the nipple, she would go back and pick it up, and try it again. Poor Nellie worried her little head over this, and again abandoned it in despair. While trying to solve the mystery, she discovered a new trick. While the bottle was partly inverted she caught hold of the nipple, and squeezed it. By this means she accidentally spurted the milk into the faces of some ladies who were watching her. This afforded her so much fun that she could scarcely be restrained, and while she remained with me she remembered this funny trick, and never failed to perform it when she was allowed to do so. It was no trouble for her to connect the immediate effect to the immediate cause. But she could not for a long time understand that the position of the bottle or the location of the milk in it had anything to do with the trick. In the course of time, however, she learned to hold the bottle so that she could drink the milk, and she also discovered that it had to be held in a certain position in order to play her amusing trick.