Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

by Frans de Waal

goes to show how far we have come since the days when technology was thought to be the defining characteristic of our species.

object permanence: the understanding that an object continues to exist even after it has disappeared from view.

Even with respect to my fellow humans, I am dubious that language tells us what is going on in their heads.

It is far too easy to invent post hoc reasons for one’s behavior, to be silent about one’s sexual habits, to downplay excessive eating or drinking, or to present oneself as more admirable than one really is.

We don’t actually need language in order to think.

It remained a puzzle how a bird was able to draw such parallels between the human body and its own.9

there is more knocking around in a bird’s skull than anyone had suspected.

At times, Alex’s talking made perfect linguistic sense. For example, once when Irene was fuming about a meeting in her department and walked to the lab with angry steps, Alex told her “Calm down!” No doubt the same expression had in the past been aimed at Alex’s own excitable self. Other famous cases include Koko, the sign-language gorilla spontaneously combining the signs for “white” and “tiger” upon seeing a zebra, and Washoe, the chimpanzee pioneer of this entire field, labeling a swan a “water bird.”

reminiscent of nineteenth-century anti-Darwinists for whom language was the one barrier between brute and man, including the Linguistic Society of Paris, which in 1866 forbade the study of language origins.26 Such measures reflect intellectual fear rather than curiosity.

de novo.

Every new trait taps into existing structures and processes. Thus, Wernicke’s area, a part of the brain central to human speech, is recognizable in the great apes, in which it is enlarged on the left side, as it is in us.27 This obviously raises the question of what this particular brain region was doing in our ancestors before it was recruited for language.

No one serious about language evolution will ever be able to get around animal comparisons.

It reminds me of a story by Oliver Sacks about a group of patients in an aphasia ward who were convulsed with laughter during a televised speech by President Ronald Reagan.32 Incapable of understanding words as such, aphasia patients follow what is being said through facial expressions and body language. They are so attentive to nonverbal cues that they cannot be lied to. Sacks concluded that the president, whose speech seemed perfectly normal to others around, so cunningly combined deceptive words and tone of voice that only the brain-damaged were able to see through it.

Like Galileo’s colleagues, who refused to peek through his telescope, humans are a strange lot. We have the power to analyze and explore the world around us, yet panic as soon as the evidence threatens to violate our expectations.

Taking on a British memory champion known for his ability to memorize an entire stack of cards, Ayumu emerged the “chimpion.”

The good thing about DNA is that it is immune to prejudice, making it a more objective measure.

Neo-Creationism is subtler in that it accepts evolution but only half of it. Its central tenet is that we descend from the apes in body but not in mind.

I scratched my head—a sign of internal conflict in primates—

The emphasis on neural connections, however, made me wonder what to do with animals with brains larger than our 1.35-kilogram brain. What about the dolphin’s 1.5-kilogram brain, the elephant’s 4-kilogram brain, and the sperm whale’s 8-kilogram brain? Are these animals perhaps more conscious than we are? Or does it depend on the number of neurons? In this regard, the picture is less clear. It was long thought that our brain contained more neurons than any other on the planet, regardless of its size, but we now know that the elephant brain has three times as many neurons—257 billion, to be exact.

special—in some ways we evidently are—but if this becomes the a priori assumption for every cognitive capacity under the sun, we are leaving the realm of science and entering that of belief.

Even more egregious than human chest beating—another primate pattern—is the tendency to disparage other species.

Ethnic triumphalism is extended outside our species when we make fun of Neanderthals as brutes devoid of sophistication. We now know, however, that Neanderthal brains were slightly larger than ours, that some of their genes were absorbed into our own genome, and that they knew fire, burials, hand-axes, musical instruments, and so on. Perhaps our brothers will finally get some respect.

It is out of insecurity that we love the contrast with other Hominoids, as is also reflected in angry book titles such as Not a Chimp or Just Another Ape?10

I really don’t understand this need for us to always be superior in all domains.11

we kept staring at the data until we discovered that it was always on a particular day of the week that the monkeys fared so poorly. It turned out that one of our student volunteers, who carefully followed the script during testing, had a distracting presence. This student was fidgety and nervous, always changing her body postures or adjusting her hair, which apparently made the monkeys nervous, too.

Imagine that aliens from a distant galaxy landed on earth wondering if there was one species unlike the rest. I am not convinced they would settle on us,

😭😭😭

The zeal to find out what sets us apart overrides all reasonable caution.

As such, human experimenters are about the last to be used to find out if apes understand the connection between seeing and knowing. All we are testing is the ape’s theory of the human mind.

Afghans are perhaps more like cats, which are not beholden to anyone. This is no doubt why some people rate cats as less intelligent than dogs. We know, however, that a cat’s lack of response to humans is not due to ignorance. A recent study showed that felines have no trouble recognizing their owner’s voice. The deeper problem is that they don’t care, prompting the study’s authors to add: “the behavioral aspects of cats that cause their owners to become attached to them are still undetermined.”40

Using us as models, these apes spontaneously learn to brush their teeth, ride bicycles, light fires, drive golf carts, eat with a knife and fork, peel potatoes, and mop the floor.

What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all?”

There are so many ways to account for negative outcomes that it is safer to doubt one’s methods before doubting one’s subjects.

In the same way that humans have a “handy” intelligence, which we share with other primates, elephants may have a “trunky” one.

hippocampus, which has long been known to be vital both for memory and for future orientation. The devastating effects of Alzheimer’s typically begin with degeneration of this part of the brain.

We are moving ever closer to Darwin’s continuity stance, according to which the human-animal difference is one of degree, not kind.21

Desmond Morris once told me an amusing story to drive this point home. At the time Desmond was working at the London Zoo, which still held tea parties in the ape house with the public looking on. Gathered on chairs around a table, the apes had been trained to use bowls, spoons, cups, and a teapot. Naturally, this equipment posed no problem for these tool-using animals. Unfortunately, over time the apes became too polished and their performance too perfect for the English public, for whom high tea constitutes the peak of civilization. When the public tea parties began to threaten the human ego, something had to be done. The apes were retrained to spill the tea, throw food around, drink from the teapot’s spout, and pop the cups into the bowl as soon as the keeper turned his back. The public loved it! The apes were wild and naughty, as they were supposed to be.24

Members of our own species are the ultimate conformists, going so far as abandoning their personal beliefs if they collide with the majority view.

science never takes anything at face value. We want proof,

philosophically motivated objections

Brains are the most “expensive” organs around. They are true energy hogs, using twenty times more calories per unit than muscle tissue.

If this is true, wouldn’t it be wrong to assert that office work is less tedious than field work?

Ironically, the study of animal cognition not only raises the esteem in which we hold other species, but also teaches us not to overestimate our own mental complexity.

A more practical knowledge became necessary when our ancestors took up agriculture and began to domesticate animals for food and muscle power. Animals became dependent on us and subservient to our will. Instead of anticipating their moves, we began to dictate them, while our holy books spoke of our dominion over nature.

Instead of making humanity the measure of all things, we need to evaluate other species by what they are.