THE BRAINS OF MONKEYS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 427, 22 August 1908, Page 4

THE BRAINS OF MONKEYS.

Students Novel Experience

in a “Zoo.”

Nkw York, June 28.

“Care of Monkey House, Bronx Zoological Park,” will be the address for the next three months of Mr Melvin E. Haggarty, a Harvard post-graduate student of animal psychology. Under the direction of Dr. Robert M. Yerkes, instructor of comparative psychology, Harvard, who spent some weeks last year at the “Zoo” experimenting on toads and turtles, and teaching them, as it was explained, the benefits to be derived from selfcontrol and clean living,” Mr Haggarty will devote three months of his vacation to studying the imitative faculties of monkeys.

| He has fitted up a special cage ! with cunning devices, by the aid of which the animals may obtain food. Thirteen monkeys will each spend a quarter of an hour daily in the cage, so that the observer may gauge their intelligence in discovering its secrets. “My cage,” Mr Haggarty informed me to-day, ‘‘ is the result of a whole year’s experimenting. At Harvard I have already trained a number of monkeys to solve the tricks within it. There are seven tricks in all; the successful solution of six of them leads to reward in the shape of food, and the e ward for the seventh is liberty. One trick will be tried at a time. If the monkeys fail to discover it of their own volition, one of my trained simians will be placed in the cage. In this way we shall be able to observe how long it takes one monkey to learn the secrets of another. At Harvard I had a monkey who found out many tricks himself,” Mr Haggarty’s experiments will begin to-morrow.