Imitation learning in budgerigars: Dawson and Foss (1965) revisited

Dawson and Foss (1985) have reported that each of five naive budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus ) after watching a demonstrator budgerigar use one of three different methods of opening a covered food dish, used the same method as its respective demonstrator to uncover its own food fish. Our first attempt to replicate Dawson and Foss' experiment was unsuccessful and revealed a number of sources of ambiguity in their methods. Modified …