The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-07-02
A TRIUMPHA
From the New York Sun.

From the NeW 1OTh ouii.
 A REFERENDUM on the matter of
 A which is the wisest beast
 \ among those most familiar to man would probably show the dog in the lead, with the monkey making close race, and the horse third. Yet
 there are persons who maintain that the monkey gets credit for thinking like a man a great deal oftener than he really does.
 Now, there practically two ways
 of thinking. Human beings tackline
 some new matter commonly try any likely looking method, keep on if it works drop it if 1t doesn't. But they may, on the other hand, size up the whole affair from the beginning and do it exactly fight the first time. One is the method of analysis. One rests on experience. The other on logic.
 Most laboratory tests on animals have been on their ability to handle the method of trial and error. Watson's famous coons, for example, were set
 the following problem: Their. food was placed in a box closed by a simple, old ldSlliOneu ldtcil. IHey Ildu Only to un-
 latch the door. eat and be merry. Now, a man would have licked up the latch and opened the box i'm mediately at the first try. He would
 have analysed the situation and picked out the essential element in it. But the coons attacked it by the other method They tried any random scheme that en- 1 tered their wise little heads until they hit the right one. Then they practiced
 that till they could do it, first slowly, I then quickly, then instantly, as man would do it the first time.
 One coon, for example. spent half hour paving about, until by accident, | tumbling head first from the top, his hind foot happened to lift the latch and
 let him in. Next time he immeditely climbed to the top of the box, tum bled eff. stood on his head and paved open the door with his hind foot In the course of days he discovered that his front paw answered as well, and that
 there was no occasion to stand on his head.
 Now comes Prof. w T. Shepherd,
 Ph. D., to test cat, dog and monkey on the other kind of thinking, the kind that proceeds by analysis and goes fright the first time. His method was to set simple problem and see if the | creature could think it out in the logical. not the experimental way. l He put his monkeys one at time in a cage, II in all, and all hungry. Out side the cage and just beyond the crea-
 tures' reach he hung a banana. Throue h
 the banana he thrust light stick that reached near enough to the cage to be
 seized from within
 Most of the monkeys took one glance
 at the situation, jumped straight for the
 near end of the stick, and within six
 seconds were settling accounts with the
 banana. They saw exactly what was to
 be done and did it straight off the first
 time, as well as they ever could. | Three of the II monkeys found the
 method of analysis little too hard for
 them. One of them took whole minute.
 another more than a minute and a half
 to get grip on the problem. Even at
 the third trial 1t took one of them i've
 times as long to get his meal as it
 took some of the others.
 l The remaining animal was completely beaten. He fussed around. ignored the stick. tried to reach the banana, and in
 sensraa acted likeNa ! iow-srade man