Comparing human and animal intelligence

[animartco]

I once had a scientist friend with a labrador that she really loved. But, very strangely, she believed that all its responses, to her and to the environment were pre-programmed and that it did not have self awareness. The love it returned to her was just part of its nature, and it had no choice in the matter.
So I said 'OK but isn't that equally true of us?' 'No, we obviously have self awareness. That's what makes us different to the animals'.
So what evidence I asked her do you have that animals do not have self awareness?
Of course there are also people who think that their dog understands every word they say. People tend to get more irritated with people who anthropomorphize than with people who deny that other life can think and reason. Me, I get more cross with the ... fear it must be, that compells people to deny animal life a mind, even while they love it.
So, I'd like to hear some strong anecdotal evidence for animal reasoning.
On a larger scale, could it be that their reasoning is as good as ours but has a different agenda? That they are more attuned to the needs of the planet than we are?

[artdemole]

Do It by learning ...Found on ...our civilization.com...Of the reason of animals ...An inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume...

[animartco]

Originally Posted by artdemole

Do It by learning ...Found on ...our civilization.com...Of the reason of animals ...An inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume...

Hi Artdemole. I have read the literature. My degree is mostly in psychology including animal behaviour. but I was curious to know how different, people on the site, think that animals are, or how similar. Hoping to discover peoples reactions and responses to animal intelligence.

[natasha38]

I find it strange that people can be so dismissive of aniimals feelings/emotions/whatever you want to call it. I do anthropomorphise somewhat but what other basis of trying to understand an animal do I have? I can read/research about the type of animal, understand how they communicate, etc as much as I can but still do it.
As for animals returning love ... can animals actually return love anyway or is that how we interpet this? If they are just programmed to do this to their owner then why do many cats choose to leave one home & take up residence in another fpor example, I don't believe it's just because they get a better type of food.I think we have underestimated animals & will soon realiuse the barbaric way we treat them simply becuase we don't believe they have the same or similar feeling to us..... but then again what do I know!!!

[Monkey Orchid]

Originally Posted by animartco

On a larger scale, could it be that their reasoning is as good as ours but has a different agenda? That they are more attuned to the needs of the planet than we are?

I always liked what Alice Walker once wrote: that even the tiniest ants in the rainforest know how to make plastic, they just choose not to cover the planet with it!

The whole anthropomorphism thing is interesting... The way in which humans ascribe human emotions and motives to non-human animal species. It is what feeds the popularity of such programmes as Meerkat Manor, I guess. We like to feel a connection to certain (usually cute) animals, so we put their territorial battles and survival behaviours into human terms that give us a sense of some kind of kinship. But I notice that happens a lot less with animals that are not furry or attractive, e.g. invertebrates, reptiles and amphibians. Also, when animal behaviours seem less attractive (e.g. chimpanzees hunting smaller primates for meat, male mallards gang-raping females) people either seem to get very judgemental or the anthropomorphism stops and it just becomes 'animal behaviour'.

I'm sure animals have self-awareness and reasoning, although these may not take the forms we are familiar with as humans. Domesticated animals such as dogs have adapted to living alongside humans and consequently act in ways that allow them to fit into their living situation. Conversely, where human children have occasionally grown up in wild situations in the absence of any human interaction, they have taken on mannerisms and behaviour appropriate to the animals with which they came into contact.

Interpreting animals' emotions and reasoning is a very difficult business. I know, for example, that my cat likes to sit on or next to me, enjoys being stroked, and doesn't like it when I go away for a period of days and leave him to be cared for by someone else. I don't know if that means my cat loves or likes me, or if it just means he's become habituated to my company and associates me with comfort, affection and food. But to be fair, the same could be said of some human relationships!

Having said all that, I personally believe that it is possible to form emotional bonds between humans and animals, and also that some form of communication does take place. I never underestimate animal intelligence. I personally think human intelligence is sometimes overrated, anyway: we are clever tool-makers with an ability to empathise and reason, but so often we seem to choose not to use that ability. It seems ironic that when humans act at their most barbaric or brutal they are described as 'behaving like animals'. We aren't 'like' animals, we are animals. We may think of ourselves as highly evolved, but the bottom line is there are quite a few animal species which have been surviving successfully on this planet for far longer than we have, and (I suspect) may survive beyond our duration here. We may think we're clever because we invented the Internet, but the disadvantage of our tool-making proficiency is that increasingly we are losing the ability to survive without all our tools and techno-toys. Not only that, but our growing addiction to amassing more and more technology is outstripping the carrying capacity of the environments in which we live... So who's the reasoning animal species now?

Umm, I digress. This is an interesting topic, and I look forward to seeing where it goes. I'm pretty sure that other animal species do have a different agenda to us, and I'm fairly sure that survival would be high on that agenda. That given, it's pretty amazing that exterminating humans isn't high on their list of priorities, given what we as a species have been doing over the last few centuries...

Just keep an eye on the dolphins. And the white mice.

[artdemole]

Is it because we all have 'Animal instinctive'? And the need to survive what ever the surrounding environment is.

[krista]

I have a personal belief that the problem with us as an animal is that we, as a species, have forgotton about the power of energy and the fact we are all connected to the earth, nature and everything else.
Some humans still have the ability to think along the lines of the animal because they havn't got the same connections going on in their brain wiring. The people i refer to are people with autistic traits and they have a problem generally with social communication, planning for tomorrow, using yesterdays experiences to learn and impulse control....does this sound familiar? They thrive on routine, familiar people and experiences and their own head space.
A dog has evolved to look appealing to us to get what it needs but all the above traits are familiar don't you think. There was a study not long ago where a group of people where given a pack of domestic puppies to bring up to see how they related to the person assigned to them in ways such as eye contact, wanting/giving affection etc and then they did exactly the same with a pack of wolf pups. They found with the wolf pups that they had absolutly no interest at all in interacting with humans, never gave eye contact and never wanted affection. This would seem to say that what your friend believed about her dog is true.
Cats don't need people apart from to get the things they need. You don't own a cat really, they want food and fuss when they want it and they know how to get it and if that means wrapping themselves around your legs they will and if that means moving to somewhere that suits them better they will.
I'm not saying these animals arn't intelligent but i do believe they are intelligent in a way that is on a different level to us.
If you use your energy instead of words with any animal then you will get a response.
An example of this is, when i was a teenager i used to work weekends at a stables as i've always loved horses and feel a connection to them. The girls who worked there full time wern't very nice and one day decided to trick me. I was asked to go into a stable with a new horse to groom it and tack it up and so i went in and got on with it, wondering why there was a crowd of girls at the door. When i had done all they asked i came out and they then told me that no one had got near that horse since they had got it because it went wild whenever anyone went in. My point with this is that i didn't go into the stable expecting it to go wild and so it didn't get an energy of fear from me and so it wasn't afraid.
If you learn to watch animals you will see this time and again. A dog or any animal with an owner who is afraid will think what is there to be scared of and will react accordingly, thinking it needs to escape the danger signals you are giving it. If you are scared a horse will run off with you it will, if you are scared the guinea pig will bite it will and so on.
Animals who run away from earthquakes and other natural disasters are tuning in to the energy which is all around us and we have forgotton how to feel and take note of the tiny cues nature gives. Although not all humans have forgotten....remember the tsunami? On one island no one was killed because they still take note of nature and knew they had to get to high ground when the tide went so far out.

The thing that makes us different to animals in my eyes is that we are the only species to destroy everything we touch and that we can remember yesterday and plan for tomorrow.

This is all just my opinion of course

[animartco]

Oh Monkey Orchid, shades of Hitchcock! Well for all we know an anopheles mosquito once went on a quest as difficult and dangerous as any in the tales of King Arthur, to find an elixir that would kill mankind.
Krista I don't really buy that experiment, sorry. At what age were the wolf cubs taken from their mother? But in any case it wouldn't prove anything. It is a well known fact that most higher predators take a few generations to domesticate. If you want an analogy think of the efforts made by well meaning Europeans to integrate the Australian Aborigines into their society.
But I agree with everything else you say, and this 'energy' could of course could be something simple like a lack of the smell of fear, but I prefer to think that animals understand our behaviour a lot better than we think they do. There are numerous tales and some realtime experiences that I have had that make me believe this. In fact people can be trained to understand non verbal behaviour in other people, and it opens up a whole new insight into our animal nature. Words are fetters.

[Susie]

We are animals therefore our emotions are animalistic. There is no real difference between us and other mammals, only degrees of scale.

[Monkey Orchid]

Originally Posted by animartco

Oh Monkey Orchid, shades of Hitchcock! Well for all we know an anopheles mosquito once went on a quest as difficult and dangerous as any in the tales of King Arthur, to find an elixir that would kill mankind.

And so it begins...