Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

by Frans de Waal

What we observe is not nature in itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning. —Werner Heisenberg (1958)

The Clark’s nutcracker, in the fall, stores more than twenty thousand pine nuts, in hundreds of different locations distributed over many square miles; then in winter and spring it manages to recover the majority of them.

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

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.

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

Greg is finding that the prospect of food activates the caudate nucleus in the canine brain in the same way that it does in the brain of businessmen anticipating a monetary bonus.

That all mammalian brains operate in essentially the same way has also been found in other domains. Behind these similarities is a much deeper message, of course. Instead of treating mental processes as a black box, as Skinner and his followers had done, we are now prying open the box to reveal a wealth of neural homologies. These show a shared evolutionary background to mental processes and offer a powerful argument against human-animal dualism.

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?”

Every single species has profound insights to offer, given that its cognition is the product of the same forces that shaped ours.

Since male chimps never cease to jockey for position and are always making and breaking pacts, innocent grooming sessions don’t really exist. Every single one carries political implications.

In approach, rather than technique, this is of course the same in humans.

It wasn’t the chimps who were odd, but the humans who seemed dishonest. 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.