Morgan's Canon, also known as Lloyd Morgan's Canon, Morgan's Canon of Interpretation or the principle or law of parsimony, is a fundamental precept of comparative animal psychology, coined by 19th-century British psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan. In its developed form it states that:

In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development.