Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

by Frans de Waal

Internet videos of soldiers being saluted by pets upon return from abroad suggest a connection between the length of separation and the intensity of the greeting.

Karl von Frisch, who had discovered that honeybees use a waggle dance to communicate distant food locations.

Yaaaasss

Their earlier poor performance had had more to do with the way they were tested than with their mental powers.

The challenge is to find tests that fit an animal’s temperament, interests, anatomy, and sensory capacities.

One cannot expect a great performance on a task that fails to arouse interest.

Stress is, in fact, a major testing tool. Many labs keep their animals at 85 percent of typical body weight to ensure food motivation.

I want to cry

No one has ever proposed permanent food deprivation for university students.

My Algebra teacher in high school liked to keep the heat off in the winter because he said we would retain lessons better.

Hans’s talent at arithmetic may have been flawed, but his understanding of human body language was outstanding.

I'm terrible at both, so this horse had one up on me!

From the absence of sound, they guessed where the grapes must be. Perhaps we are not impressed by this either, as we take such inferences for granted, but it is not all that obvious. Dogs, for example, flunk this task. Apes are special in that they seek logical connections based on how they believe the world works.37

This became known as biologically prepared learning: each organism is driven to learn those things it needs to know in order to survive.

It is my personal feeling that if we are going to keep highly social animals in captivity, the very least we can do for them is permit them a group life. This is the best and most ethical way to enrich their lives and make them thrive.

The crows easily remembered the mask of the capturer, far from fondly. Funny enough, the neutral mask was Vice President Dick Cheney’s face, which elicited more negative reactions from the students on campus than from the crows.

Priceless

we are also learning more about human perceptions of animals. Did you know, for example, that one quarter of dog owners believe their pets to be smarter than most people?

I am willing to believe a recent study that found cat lovers to be more intelligent than dog lovers,

Me too!!

In other words, chimpanzees are generally good at conflict management for the sake of cooperation.

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.

Animals should be given a chance to express their natural behavior. We are developing a greater interest in their variable lifestyles. Our challenge is to think more like them, so that we open our minds to their specific circumstances and goals and observe and understand them on their own terms.

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