Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

by Frans de Waal

The science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov reportedly once said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.’”

Cognitive evolution is marked by many peaks of specialization. The ecology of each species is key.

The credo of experimental science remains that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

“what we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

I prefer not to make any firm statements about something as poorly defined as consciousness. No one seems to know what it is. But for the same reason, I hasten to add, I’d never deny it to any species. For all I know, a frog may be conscious.

Unjustified linguistic barriers fragment the unity with which nature presents us.

We go so far as to invent causes if we can’t find any, leading to weird superstitions and supernatural beliefs, such as sports fans wearing the same T-shirt over and over for luck, and disasters being blamed on the hand of God. We are so logic-driven that we can’t stand the absence of it.

Cognition relates to the kind of information an organism gathers and how it processes and applies this information.

It was a happy sound, because capuchins seem to be in their best mood when they are doing things.

We have the power to analyze and explore the world around us, yet panic as soon as the evidence threatens to violate our expectations.

Did you know, for example, that one quarter of dog owners believe their pets to be smarter than most people?

Count me in!

Although he was nonreligious, Wallace attributed humanity’s surplus brain power to the “unseen universe of Spirit.” Nothing less could account for the human soul. Unsurprisingly, Darwin was deeply disturbed to see his respected colleague invoke the hand of God, in however camouflaged a way. There was absolutely no need for supernatural explanations, he felt. Nevertheless, Wallace’s Problem still looms large in academic circles eager to keep the human mind out of the clutches of biology.

Really, I cannot believe this. With Ayumu, as you saw, we discovered that chimpanzees are better than humans at one type of memory test. It is something a chimpanzee can do immediately, and it is one thing—one thing—that they are better at than humans. I know this has upset people. And now there are researchers who have practiced to become as good as a chimpanzee. I really don’t understand this need for us to always be superior in all domains.11

Dog owners who stare into their pet’s eyes experience a rapid increase in oxytocin—a neuropeptide involved in attachment and bonding. Exchanging gazes full of empathy and trust, we enjoy a special relationship with the dog.42

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.

Technical understanding is not the key.

Political leaders have a habit of concealing their power motives behind nobler desires such as a readiness to serve the nation and improve the economy. When the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes postulated the existence of an insuppressible power drive, he was right on target for both humans and apes.

There is no single form of cognition, and there is no point in ranking cognitions from simple to complex.

The philosopher Harry Frankfurt defines a “person” as someone who does not just follow his desires but is aware of them and capable of wishing them to be different. As soon as an individual considers the “desirability of his desires,” he becomes a person with freedom of will.

“Anyone who thinks they have solved the problem of consciousness hasn’t been thinking about it carefully enough.”

Young elephants grow so used to people that they learn how to fool them by stuffing a trunkful of grass into the wooden bells around their necks so as to muffle their sound. This way they can move about unnoticed.

❤️❤️❤️

Reality is a mental construct. This is what makes the elephant, the bat, the dolphin, the octopus, and the star-nosed mole so intriguing. They have senses that we either don’t have, or that we have in a much less developed form, making the way they relate to their environment impossible for us to fathom. They construct their own realities. We may attach less significance to these, simply because they are so alien, but they are obviously all-important to these animals. Even when they process information familiar to us, they may do so quite differently, such as when elephants tell human languages apart.

True empathy is not self-focused but other-oriented. Instead of making humanity the measure of all things, we need to evaluate other species by what they are.