Man consists of body, mind and imagination. His body is faulty, his mind is untrustworthy, but his imagination has made his life on this planet an intense practice of all the loveliest energies. – John Mansfield Imagination is the unique gift that sets man above animals and launches him on his greatest adventures.
Imagination is a powerful gift given only to man. As a result, man has been enchanted, moved and perplexed by his own imagination. The mind of man has the capacity to imagine anything he wishes.
Imagination is not something possessed only by poets, painters and scientists. Sometimes we see how animals are trained to perform certain tasks. In the past, people thought that animals also have imagination.
Walter Hunter performed a classical experiment way back in 1910 to determine whether animals had imagination. At the time, Ivan Pavlov had succeeded in forming and changing the reflex actions of dogs. Hunter too taught some animals to select one tunnel leading out of their cage by using a light.
The animals that performed well in the experiment were rewarded with food. Walter Hunter added a new dimension by not allowing the animals to go to the tunnel at once. He put out the light and kept the animals waiting for a little longer.
He wanted to find out whether animals could remember where they had seen the light signal on their escape route. His experiment confirmed that dogs and rats forgot everything within seconds. They could not remember which tunnel had been ligh.