Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

by Frans de Waal

This is why ranking cognition on a single dimension is a pointless exercise. Cognitive evolution is marked by many peaks of specialization. The ecology of each species is key.

In other words, what is salient to us—such as our own facial features—may not be salient to other species. Animals often know only what they need to know.

we need to familiarize ourselves with all facets of the animal and its natural history before trying to figure out its mental level. And instead of testing animals on abilities that we are particularly good at—our own species’ magic wells, such as language—why not test them on their specialized skills?

intelligent life is not something we must seek at great expense only in the outer reaches of space. It is abundant here on earth, right underneath our nonprehensile noses.18

is that anthropomorphism is not always as problematic as people think. To rail against it for the sake of scientific objectivity often hides a pre-Darwinian mindset, one uncomfortable with the notion of humans as animals.

Evolutionarily speaking, it would be a true miracle if we had the fancy cognition that we believe we have while our fellow animals had none of it.

half a century ago, DNA studies revealed that humans barely differ enough from bonobos and chimpanzees to deserve their own genus. It is only for historical reasons that taxonomists have let us keep the Homo genus all to ourselves.

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.

In our own brain, we tend to emphasize the frontal lobes—hailed as the seat of rationality—but according to the latest anatomical reports, they are not truly exceptional. The human brain has been called a “linearly scaled-up primate brain,” meaning that no areas are disproportionally large.8 All in all, the neural differences seem insufficient for human uniqueness to be a foregone conclusion.

Or take the recent finding that male but not female experimenters induce so much stress in mice that it affects their responses. Placing a T-shirt worn by a man in the room has the same effect, suggesting that olfaction is key.12 This means, of course, that mouse studies conducted by men may have different outcomes than those conducted by women.