Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/25

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Very early the female Sparrow was seen to take her position on the front edge of the box and hop on the strings although the door was already wide open. -Most often, of course, she did not do this. The occasion for this needless repetition lay in the fact that both Cowbirds early in the series came to be, with respect to food, what they are in the wild in the rearing of their young, a kind of parasite. They waited until the door was opened and then went in to eat. They were nearly always the first to enter. There were often pitched battles in which the little female Sparrow was often victor. But the male Cowbird was on the whole too large for her. If he entered first, and soon left she approached the box and, this first link in the chain of reactions having been performed, the others followed; she pulled the string with the door already open. She did this on the i ith, 12th, 15th, and 6oth trials. In earlier work I found the Pigeons and Cowbird doing the same thing. As will be seen later, it has been observed with nearly all of my birds. Taken in themselves such errors are perhaps of little value. As indications of the degree to which the bird analyzes the apparatus it is working with, as an index therefore of the extent to which the animal is conscious, they are most significant and important.

It should be noticed that the male Sparrow on the 28th and 32nd tests opened the door. He actually did it by hopping up