An inexpensive feeder for rapid delivery of monkey pellets.

The authors built a cheap feeder that shoots monkey pellets fast.

They used scrap wood, a doorbell solenoid, and a tin can.

Total cost was under five dollars in 1973 money.

The feeder can drop one pellet every 0.4 seconds.

It kept working after 10 000 cycles.

Monkeys could hear it click, so it also works as a cue.

MARKOWITZ et al. (1964) showed how to build a silent shock scrambler for pennies. Both papers give low-cost ways to run monkey labs.

Terrace (1969) shaped avoidance in 24 monkeys. The new feeder could deliver the food pellets used in that study.

Byrd (1980) found bigger autonomic responses when monkeys were under operant suppression. The cheap feeder lets you run appetitive trials to compare.

If you run monkey studies, you now have a parts list for a feeder that costs less than a coffee. Build it in an afternoon and cut your gear budget. The click doubles as a conditioned stimulus, so you can run CS-UCS work without extra wiring.