Dr Rajiv Desai

Are We Animals?

September 17, 2020 by Dr Rajiv Desai

Are We Animals?    

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Man versus polar bear:   

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Keeper Julius Latoya shares a tender moment with Kinna, a young orphaned African elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Tsavo East National Park, Kenya.

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Section-1

Prologue:      

Many parents admonish their misbehaving children by saying “stop acting like animals” implying that children are acting in a primitive and thoughtless manner. When my students/patients misbehave, I occasionally tell them that they are behaving like animals. Of course, my critics in India would label my utterances as racist and dehumanizing akin to the Nazis’ persecution of Jews during the Holocaust and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Many patients hospitalized in some Covid-19 facilities in India complained that their condition was like “animals” at the facility.   

Most of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. Many of us bought our beloved “pets” at pet shops and kept beautiful birds in cages. We wore wool and silk, ate McDonald’s burgers, and fished. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved.

Charles Darwin is undoubtedly the most influential thinker in the history of biology. The constellation of ideas that composed his theory of evolution seem to lead inevitably to new discoveries in biology whenever they have been applied. Not only did Darwin document a compelling explanation of how the human species originated from earlier primates, he also offered an unequivocal opinion on the difference between humans and other animals. “The difference in mind between man and the higher animals,” he wrote, “great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”  Darwin quite reasonably assumed that, since humans were animals, behavior patterns observed in the higher mammals must have some presence in human behavior as well. This is comprehensively displayed in the limitless evidence of shared evolutionary histories – the fact that all living things are encoded by DNA. The keystone of the new social structure, the pivotal factor of advancing civilization, the guide of the new religion, is biology; for man is an animal, and his characteristics, his requirements, his utterances, his reactions, can be recorded and studied quite as carefully and precisely as those of any other animal. We are trimming our nails and hair along with wearing cloths to look like humans.   

Craig Stanford, while attending a seminar on primate societies, claimed that chimpanzee communities had cultures. The infuriated cultural anthropologists attending the seminar “fairly leaped across the seminar table” to verbally garrote Stanford. “Apes are mere animals,” they lectured, “people alone possess culture. And only culture— not biology! Not evolution! —can explain humanity.” However, the analysis of culture as a biological and evolutionary phenomenon, and the existence of socially transmitted behavioural variation between groups or subgroups of the same species in non-humans, reminiscent of human culture, is now well accepted. Reports of cultural transmission in Japanese macaques, great tits and chimpanzees have launched a strong debate on the nature of culture in animals and how it compares to humans.

There are different interpretations of the statement “Humans are animals.”  There are theories that regard humans as literally sophisticated animals in contrast to those theories that interpret the statement metaphorically. Sociobiological theories emphasize competitiveness and aggression as features shared by humans and nonhuman animals. Other theories emphasize symbiosis and cooperation. Some of these theories are prescriptive that reflect the strong tendency to regard animal behavior as something for humans to avoid. Conversely, sociobiologists suggest it is natural and right to behave like animals, the naturalistic fallacy. Other cultural theories suggest that the statement is only metaphorical; our differences from animals are what make us most human. For a very long time, there have been two main camps on animal behavior and animal cognition: exclusivists, who focus on the differences between animals and humans, and inclusivists, who concentrate on similarities between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom; and both sides are correct.   

Are we animals? Let me discuss.      

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Abbreviations and synonyms:

We = humans

Humans = homo sapiens

Animals = non-human animals

ToM = theory of mind

HAI = human-animal interaction

IATC = intentional animal torture and cruelty

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Section-2

Introduction:

For 2,000 years, there was an intuitive, elegant, compelling picture of how the world worked. It was called “the ladder of nature.” In the canonical version, God was at the top, followed by angels, who were followed by humans. Then came the animals, starting with noble wild beasts and descending to domestic animals and insects. Human animals followed the scheme, too. Women ranked lower than men, and children were beneath them. The ladder of nature was a scientific picture, but it was also a moral and political one. It was only natural that creatures higher up would have dominion over those lower down.

Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection delivered a serious blow to this conception. Natural selection is a blind historical process, stripped of moral hierarchy. A cockroach is just as well adapted to its environment as I am to mine. In fact, the bug may be better adapted—cockroaches have been around a lot longer than humans have, and may well survive after we are gone.

Modern biological science has in principle rejected the ladder of nature. But the intuitive picture is still powerful. In particular, the idea that children and nonhuman animals are lesser beings has been surprisingly persistent. Even scientists often act as if children and animals are defective adult humans, defined by the abilities we have and they don’t. Neuroscientists, for example, sometimes compare brain-damaged adults to children and animals.

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Humans (Homo sapiens) have always been interested in “what makes us human” and “what distinguishes us from other animal species.” In all traditional societies, myths have been proposed that provide scenarios as to how humans came to be and of a possible relationship with other animals. Religion and science have zealously taken up the challenge and have come up with their own propositions. Originally, most scientific propositions about human origin did not rely on observations from other species, simply because information on these species was not available. For example, culture was proposed in the early 1930s to be a uniquely human ability before any relevant data on different animal populations were available (Barnard, 2000; Kuper, 1999). Similarly, claims about uniquely human abilities to use and make tools were proposed in the late 1880s, well before observations on wild primate populations (Bowler, 1989; Darwin, 1859). Since the early 1960s, field observations on the natural behavior of many animals have been conducted, finally enabling scientists to consider the abilities of nonhuman species when contemplating “what makes us human.” In vast fields of science, this opportunity has been seized and has led to the upsurge of behavioral ecology as well as to the emergence of new fields, such as biological anthropology, and comparative and evolutionary psychology. The inclusion of animal models was decisive about reframing models of human evolution within modern evolutionary theory thinking of adaptation and fitness benefits (Jolly, 1999; Maynard Smith, 1982; Trivers, 1971; Wilson, 1975).

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Recent years have seen a rise in interest in the ways in which animals are conceptualized in Western societies. Against a backdrop of Cartesian legacies, which have not only shaped our intellectual attitudes toward animality but also justified a range of institutionalized exploitations, mainstream scholarly publications are pondering issues such as animal consciousness, animal societies, animal politics, comparative animal ontologies, and speciesism. The conceptual boundaries which segregate humanity and animality are being disturbed and the way cleared for us to unthink the cultural categories, both popular and scientific, which map our understanding of the animate environment of which human and nonhuman animals are a part.

A most persistent theme within Western thought has been the concern with what makes us human, an impulse that has seen elaborate efforts to specify how we are different from animals and also machines (Haraway, 1992). Whilst it is universally recognized that humans and animals do manifestly differ, not all cultures have worked with a simple or strict classification of human versus nonhuman (Ingold, 1994). The species divide is not solely a behavioural or biologically determined distinction, but a cultural and historically changing attribution (Noske, 1989; Ritvo, 1991). And yet in Judeo-Christian traditions – and despite Darwin’s influential claims for continuity between the human and animal worlds – humanity has persistently been seen not as a species of animality, but rather as a condition operating on a fundamentally different (and higher) plane of existence to that of mere animals.

The felt sense that human designates a different order of being is plainly evident in popular circles. Hardly a month goes by without a judge or journalist proclaiming that someone lives like an animal or, worse, has become one through their behaviour. Drinking alcohol, it is said, releases the animal in people, especially men. But so too have scholarly traditions (such as philosophical humanism) carried forward the idealizing tendency to conceive of humanity by way of essential contrast to animality (Glendinning, 1996; Ham, 1997). Whereas zoologists and biologists have been pursuing the specificity of the kind of animal that humans are, the point of departure for the humanities and social sciences has been that which makes humans categorically different from animals.

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Many researchers who study animal cognition agree that animals “think”—that is, they perceive and react to their environment, interact with one another, and experience different emotions, like stress or fear. Whether they are “conscious” in the same way that humans are, however, has been widely debated in both the fields of ethology (the study of animal behavior) and psychology.

Animals can communicate emotion to one another, but this does not qualify as language. Language is an exchange of information using non-fixed symbols (speech). Animals produce innate signals to warn or manipulate other animals (such as the screech of an eagle when it encounters predators). They cannot vary these sounds to create new signals that are arbitrary and content-rich, as do humans.

Charles Darwin with his theory of evolution was one of the first scientists to acknowledge animals’ mental and emotional capacities. Since then, there have been many discoveries of animals that can think: Chimpanzees can make tools and help each other, parrots can talk, newborn chicken can calculate, dolphins can recognize themselves in the mirror, and scrub jays can plan for the future.

Some animal species, such as chimpanzees and goats, are self-aware. They have clearly demonstrated a Theory of Mind—they understand that others have different perspectives, beliefs, and desires, and they can attribute mental states to others as well as themselves.

While scientists haven’t proven conclusively whether animals love, the evidence that they feel grief suggests they can form attachments. Mammals have the same brain areas required to feel emotions as humans do, and bird brains contain similar structures for thinking and feeling. Animals may also go out of their way to spend time with specific individuals when it’s not necessary for their survival—a possible indication of affection.

Many animals will make vocalizations that sound like laughter while playing or for the purpose of social bonding. For instance, domesticated foxes can laugh, a trick they learned by observing people. Additionally, some dog breeds appear to have a sense of humor and will exhibit playful behaviors to amuse humans.

Practically all living creatures shed tears to clear debris and other irritants from their eyes; however, there is some debate over whether non-human animals cry to express emotions, like sadness or grief. Some experts claim that wild animals who cry make themselves vulnerable, so they are more likely to mask their emotions.  

Animals demonstrate through their actions that they are impacted by the loss of a loved one, but it’s unclear whether they understand death or know they’re going to die. Anecdotally, there are examples of animals that hide themselves when it’s time to die, as well as individual animals that kill themselves shortly after a great loss (raising questions about animal suicide).

A wide range of animal species—including whales, dolphins, horses, cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, elephants, monkeys, and chimpanzees—exhibit grieving behavior after the death of a mate or other member of their family or social group. They might sit motionless, withdraw or seek seclusion, lose interest in food or sex, or remain with the carcass for days.

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Human uses of animals:

Human uses of animals include both practical uses, such as the production of food and clothing, and symbolic uses, such as in art, literature, mythology, and religion. All of these are elements of culture, broadly understood. Animals used in these ways include fish, crustaceans, insects, molluscs, mammals and birds. Economically, animals provide much of the meat eaten by the human population, whether farmed or hunted, and until the arrival of mechanized transport, terrestrial mammals provided a large part of the power used for work and transport. Animals serve as models in biological research, such as in genetics, and in drug testing.

Many species are kept as pets, the most popular being mammals, especially dogs and cats. These are often anthropomorphized. Animals such as horses and deer are among the earliest subjects of art, being found in the Upper Paleolithic cave paintings such as at Lascaux. Major artists such as Albrecht Dürer, George Stubbs and Edwin Landseer are known for their portraits of animals. Animals further play a wide variety of roles in literature, film, mythology, and religion.

Animals have played a significant role in the lives of humans, not only because they are practically useful but also because they are sources of inspiration in different cultural activities, such as belief systems, art, literature, etc. Worldwide, cultural attributes of animals vary across cultures and over time, and reflect a set of cultural practices that are associated with fauna and that influence how animals are viewed, used, and treated by humans. Understanding the cultural role of animals is essential to understanding the relationships people have with them.    

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Comparative Psychology:

Comparative psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with the study of animal behavior. Modern research on animal behavior began with the work of Charles Darwin and Georges Romanes, and the field has grown into a multidisciplinary subject. Today, biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, ecologists, geneticists, and many others contribute to the study of animal behavior. Comparative psychology often utilizes a comparative method to study animal behavior. The comparative method involves comparing the similarities and differences among species to gain an understanding of evolutionary relationships. The comparative method can also be used to compare modern species of animals to ancient species. Comparative psychology is sometimes assumed to emphasize cross-species comparisons, including those between humans and animals. However, some researchers feel that direct comparisons should not be the sole focus of comparative psychology and that intense focus on a single organism to understand its behavior is just as desirable; if not more so. Donald Dewsbury reviewed the works of several psychologists and their definitions and concluded that the object of comparative psychology is to establish principles of generality focusing on both proximate and ultimate causation.

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Using a comparative approach to behavior allows one to evaluate the target behavior from four different, complementary perspectives, developed by Niko Tinbergen. First, one may ask how pervasive the behavior is across species (i.e. how common is the behavior between animal species?). Second, one may ask how the behavior contributes to the lifetime reproductive success of the individuals demonstrating the behavior (i.e. does the behavior result in animals producing more offspring than animals not displaying the behavior)? Theories addressing the ultimate causes of behavior are based on the answers to these two questions. Third, what mechanisms are involved in the behavior (i.e. what physiological, behavioral, and environmental components are necessary and sufficient for the generation of the behavior)? Fourth, a researcher may ask about the development of the behavior within an individual (i.e. what maturational, learning, social experiences must an individual undergo in order to demonstrate a behavior)? Theories addressing the proximate causes of behavior are based on answers to these two questions.

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Comparative psychology also means study of animals in order to find out about humans. The underlying assumption is that to some degree the laws of behavior are the same for all species and that therefore knowledge gained by studying rats, dogs, cats and other animals can be generalized to humans. There is a long history of experimentation on animals and many new drugs and cosmetics were first tested on non-humans to see what their effects were. If there were no obvious harmful side effects then human trials would often follow. In psychology the method is often favoured by those who adopt a nomothetic approach (e.g. behaviorism and the biological approach).

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Why study Animal Behavior?  

Studying what animals do and comparing different species can offer useful information about human behaviors.

1. To gain insight into evolutionary processes.

The Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology, which is a division of the American Psychological Association, suggests that looking at the similarities and differences between human and animal behaviors can also be useful for gaining insights into developmental and evolutionary processes.

2. To generalize information to human beings.

Another purpose of studying animal behavior in the hope that some of these observations may be generalized to human populations. Historically, animal studies have been used to suggest whether certain medications might be safe and appropriate for humans, whether certain surgical procedures might work in humans, and whether certain learning approaches might be useful in classrooms.

3. Consider the work of learning and behaviorist theorists.

Ivan Pavlov’s conditioning studies with dogs demonstrated that animals could be trained to salivate at the sound of a bell. This work was then taken and applied to training situations with humans as well. B.F. Skinner’s research with rats and pigeons yielded valuable insights into the operant conditioning processes that could then be applied to situations with humans. The behaviorists argued that the laws of learning were the same for all species. Pavlov’s studies of classical conditioning in dogs and Skinner’s studies of operant conditioning in rats are therefore seen as providing insights into human psychology. Some would even go so far as to claim that the results of such studies provide a justification for reorganizing the way in which we teach children in schools.

4. To study developmental processes.

Comparative psychology has also famously been used to study developmental processes. In Konrad Lorenz’s well-known imprinting experiments, he discovered that geese and ducks have a critical period of development in which they must attach to a parental figure, a process known as imprinting. Lorenz even found that he could get the birds to imprint on himself. If the animals missed this vital opportunity, they would not develop attachment later in life.

During the 1950s, psychologist Harry Harlow conducted a series of disturbing experiments on maternal deprivation. Infant rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers. In some variations of the experiments, the young monkeys would be reared by wire “mothers.” One mother would be covered in cloth while the other provided nourishment. Harlow found that the monkeys would primarily seek the comfort of the cloth mother versus the nourishment of the wire mother. The results of Harlow’s experiments indicated that this early maternal deprivation led to serious and irreversible emotional damage. The deprived monkeys became unable to integrate socially, unable to form attachments, and were severely emotionally disturbed. Harlow’s work has been used to suggest that human children also have a critical window in which to form attachments. When these attachments are not formed during the early years of childhood, psychologists suggest, long-term emotional damage can result.

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Strengths of Comparative Psychology:

 -1. In some respect humans are similar to other species. For example we exhibit territoriality, courtship rituals, a “pecking order”. We defend our young, are aggressive when threatened, engage in play and so on. Many parallels can therefore be drawn between ourselves and especially other mammals with complex forms of social organisation.

-2. Studying other species often avoids some of the complex ethical problems involved in studying humans. For example, one could not look at the effects of maternal deprivation by removing infants from their mothers or conduct isolation experiment on humans in the way that has been done on other species.

Limitations of Comparative Psychology:

-1. Although in some respects we are like other species in others we are not. For example, humans have a much more sophisticated intelligence than other species and much more of our behavior is the outcome of a conscious decision than the product of an instinct or drive. Also humans are unlike all other species in that we are the only animal to have developed language. Whist other animals communicate using signs we use symbols and our language enables us to communicate about past and future events as well as about abstract ideas.

-2. Many people would argue that experimenting on animals is completely ethically reprehensible. At least human subjects can give or withhold their consent. The animals used in some pretty awful experiments didn’t have that choice. Also what have we gained from all the suffering we have inflicted on these other species. Critics argue that most of the results are not worth having and that the ends do not justify the means.   

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Section-3

Classification of living things:

Kingdom to Subphylum:

The highest category in the traditional Linnaean system of classification is the kingdom.  At this level, organisms are distinguished on the basis of cellular organization and methods of nutrition.  Whether they are single- or multiple-celled and whether they absorb, ingest, or produce food are critical factors.  Based on these types of distinctions, the biological sciences define at least five kingdoms of living things:

Kingdom	Types of organisms
Monera	bacteria, blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), and spirochetes
Protista	protozoans and algae of various types
Fungi	funguses, molds, mushrooms, yeasts, mildews, and smuts
Plantae (plants)	mosses, ferns, woody and non-woody flowering plants
Animalia (animals)	sponges, worms, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals

Most macroscopic creatures are either plants or animals. Of course, humans are animals. The distinction between the plant and animal kingdoms is based primarily on the sources of nutrition and the capability of locomotion or movement. Plants produce new cell matter out of inorganic material by photosynthesis. They do not have the ability to move around their environment except by growing or being transported by wind, water, or other external forces.    

In contrast, animals do not produce their own food but must eat other organisms to obtain it. Animals are generally more complex structurally. Unlike plants, they have nerves and muscles that aid in rapid, controlled movement around their environment. Animal cells usually do not have rigid walls like those of plants. This accounts for the fact that your skin and flesh are flexible and the trunk of a tree is not.

This simple dichotomy between plants and animals is not adequate to encompass all life forms.  Some organisms have characteristics which do not qualify them to fit neatly into either kingdom. For instance, funguses and most bacteria do not photosynthesize and most of them lack a means of controlled locomotion.  Some organisms have attributes of both plants and animals. For instance, there is a group of common single-cell species living in fresh water ponds called Euglena that photosynthesize and have their own means of locomotion (whip-like tail structures called flagella). Because of these and other exceptions, new kingdoms of living things had to be created.

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Research done over the last half century has shown us that there are even stranger single-celled organisms known as archaeobacteria that live in extremely harsh anaerobic environments such as hot springs, deep ocean volcanic vents, sewage treatment plants, and swamp sediments. Unlike other life forms, they usually get their energy from geological sources rather than from the sun. There are also microscopic things that are not quite alive by definition but have some characteristics that are similar to living things. These are the viruses and prions. It is easy to overlook the importance of these extremely small things because they cannot be seen with the naked eye. However, there are very likely around ten times as many viruses as all living things put together. There are about 50 million viruses in 1 cm³ of ocean water. It has been estimated that these viruses are responsible for the death of 20% of all oceanic bacteria every day, thereby keeping the phenomenal reproductive capability of bacteria under control. There are also complex interactions between bacteria, viruses, and other microbial life forms within our own bodies. Most of the time, there are about 10 times as many microbial cells within us as there are body cells.

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Phylum:

Immediately below kingdom is the phylum. At this level, animals are grouped together based on similarities in basic body plan or organization. For instance, species in the phylum Arthropoda have external skeletons as well as jointed bodies and limbs. Insects, spiders, centipedes, lobsters, and crabs are all arthropods. In contrast, members of the phylum Mollusca have soft, unsegmented bodies that are usually, but not always, enclosed in hard shells. They also usually have at least one strong foot that helps them move. Octopi, squids, cuttlefish, snails, slugs, clams, and other shellfish are mollusks.

There are at least 33 phyla (plural of phylum) of animals. Humans are members of the phylum Chordata. All of the chordates have elongated bilaterally symmetrical bodies. That is to say, the left and right sides are essentially mirror images of each other. If there are two functionally similar body parts, they are usually found roughly equidistant from the center line, parallel to each other. Note the location of the woman’s eyes, nostrils, and cheeks relative to the center line of her body. At some time in their life cycle, chordates have a pair of lateral gill slits or pouches used to obtain oxygen in a liquid environment. In the case of humans, other mammals, birds, and reptiles, lungs replace rudimentary gill slits after the embryonic stage of development.  Frogs replace them with lungs in the transition from tadpoles to adults.  Fish retain their gill slits all of their lives.

Chordates also have a notochord at some phase in their life cycle. This is a rudimentary internal skeleton made of stiff cartilage that runs lengthwise under the dorsal surface of the body.  Generally, there is a single hollow nerve chord on top of the notochord. Among humans and the other vertebrates, the notochord is replaced by a more complex skeleton following the embryonic stage of development.

Members of the phylum Chordata also often have a head, a tail, and a digestive system with an opening at both ends of the body.  In other words, the body organization is essentially that of a tube in which food enters one end and waste matter passes out of the other. The chordates include mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, as well as the primitive lancelets (or amphioxus) and tunicates (or sea squirts).

The chordates are divided into three subphyla. Humans are members of the subphylum Vertebrata.  Among the vertebrates, the simple hollow dorsal nerve tube is replaced by a more complex tubular bundle of nerves called a spinal cord.  A segmented vertebral (or spinal) column of cartilage and/or bone develops around the spinal cord of vertebrates to protect it from injury. At one end of the spinal cord is a head with a brain and paired sense organs that function together to coordinate movement and sensation.

Vertebrata is the most advanced and numerous subphylum of chordates. It includes all of the fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Collectively, there are about 43,000 living vertebrate species in comparison to just over 1500 species in the other two invertebrate subphyla of chordates.

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Further classification is done by naming the sub-groups at various levels as given in the following scheme:

Kingdom

Phylum (for animals) / Division (for plants)

               Class

                       Order

                               Family

                                        Genus

                                                 Species

Thus, by separating organisms on the basis of a hierarchy of characteristics into smaller and smaller groups, we arrive at the basic unit of classification, which is a species. So what organisms can be said to belong to the same species? Broadly, a species includes all organisms that are similar enough to breed and perpetuate. 

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Section-4

The Animal Kingdom and Characteristics of Animals:

Though there is great diversity in the animal kingdom, animals can be distinguished from the other kingdoms by a set of characteristics. Though other types of life may share some of these characteristics, the set of characteristics as a whole provide a distinction from the other kingdoms. The set of characteristics provided by Audesirk and Audesirk are:

-Animals are multicellular.

-Animals are heterotrophic, obtaining their energy by consuming energy-releasing food substances.

-Animals typically reproduce sexually.

-Animals are made up of cells that do not have cell walls.

-Animals are capable of motion in some stage of their lives.

-Animals are able to respond quickly to external stimuli as a result of nerve cells, muscle or contractile tissue, or both.

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Features of the Animal Kingdom:

Animal evolution began in the ocean over 600 million years ago with tiny creatures that probably do not resemble any living organism today. Since then, animals have evolved into a highly-diverse kingdom. Although over one million extant (currently living) species of animals have been identified, scientists are continually discovering more species as they explore ecosystems around the world. The number of extant species is estimated to be between 3 and 30 million.

But what is an animal?

While we can easily identify dogs, birds, fish, spiders, and worms as animals, other organisms, such as corals and sponges, are not as easy to classify. Animals vary in complexity, from sea sponges to crickets to chimpanzees, and scientists are faced with the difficult task of classifying them within a unified system. They must identify traits that are common to all animals as well as traits that can be used to distinguish among related groups of animals. The animal classification system characterizes animals based on their anatomy, morphology, evolutionary history, features of embryological development, and genetic makeup. This classification scheme is constantly developing as new information about species arises. Understanding and classifying the great variety of living species help us better understand how to conserve the diversity of life on earth.

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Even though members of the animal kingdom are incredibly diverse, most animals share certain features that distinguish them from organisms in other kingdoms. All animals are eukaryotic, multicellular organisms, and almost all animals have a complex tissue structure with differentiated and specialized tissues. Most animals are motile, at least during certain life stages. All animals require a source of food and are, therefore, heterotrophic: ingesting other living or dead organisms. This feature distinguishes them from autotrophic organisms, such as most plants, which synthesize their own nutrients through photosynthesis. As heterotrophs, animals may be carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, or parasites. Most animals reproduce sexually with the offspring passing through a series of developmental stages that establish a fixed body plan. The body plan refers to the morphology of an animal, determined by developmental cues.

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Heterotrophs:

All animals are heterotrophs that derive energy from food. The (a) black bear is an omnivore, eating both plants and animals. The (b) heartworm Dirofilaria immitis is a parasite that derives energy from its hosts. It spends its larval stage in mosquitoes and its adult stage infesting the heart of dogs and other mammals.

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Complex Tissue Structure:

As multicellular organisms, animals differ from plants and fungi because their cells don’t have cell walls; their cells may be embedded in an extracellular matrix (such as bone, skin, or connective tissue); and their cells have unique structures for intercellular communication (such as gap junctions). In addition, animals possess unique tissues, absent in fungi and plants, which allow coordination (nerve tissue) and motility (muscle tissue). Animals are also characterized by specialized connective tissues that provide structural support for cells and organs. This connective tissue constitutes the extracellular surroundings of cells and is made up of organic and inorganic materials. In vertebrates, bone tissue is a type of connective tissue that supports the entire body structure. The complex bodies and activities of vertebrates demand such supportive tissues. Epithelial tissues cover, line, protect, and secrete; these tissues include the epidermis of the integument: the lining of the digestive tract and trachea. They also make up the ducts of the liver and glands of advanced animals.

The animal kingdom is divided into Parazoa (sponges) and Eumetazoa (all other animals). As very simple animals, the organisms in group Parazoa (“beside animal”) do not contain true specialized tissues. Although they do possess specialized cells that perform different functions, those cells are not organized into tissues. These organisms are considered animals since they lack the ability to make their own food. Animals with true tissues are in the group Eumetazoa (“true animals”). When we think of animals, we usually think of Eumetazoans, since most animals fall into this category.

The different types of tissues in true animals are responsible for carrying out specific functions for the organism. This differentiation and specialization of tissues is part of what allows for such incredible animal diversity. For example, the evolution of nerve tissues and muscle tissues has resulted in animals’ unique ability to rapidly sense and respond to changes in their environment. This allows animals to survive in environments where they must compete with other species to meet their nutritional demands.

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Animal Reproduction and Development:

Most animals are diploid organisms (their body, or somatic, cells are diploid) with haploid reproductive (gamete) cells produced through meiosis. The majority of animals undergo sexual reproduction. This fact distinguishes animals from fungi, protists, and bacteria where asexual reproduction is common or exclusive. However, a few groups, such as cnidarians, flatworms, and roundworms, undergo asexual reproduction, although nearly all of those animals also have a sexual phase to their life cycle.

Processes of Animal Reproduction and Embryonic Development:

During sexual reproduction, the haploid gametes of the male and female individuals of a species combine in a process called fertilization. Typically, the small, motile male sperm fertilizes the much larger, sessile female egg. This process produces a diploid fertilized egg called a zygote.

Some animal species (including sea stars and sea anemones, as well as some insects, reptiles, and fish) are capable of asexual reproduction. The most common forms of asexual reproduction for stationary aquatic animals include budding and fragmentation where part of a parent individual can separate and grow into a new individual. In contrast, a form of asexual reproduction found in certain insects and vertebrates is called parthenogenesis where unfertilized eggs can develop into new offspring. This type of parthenogenesis in insects is called haplodiploidy and results in male offspring. These types of asexual reproduction produce genetically identical offspring, which is disadvantageous from the perspective of evolutionary adaptability because of the potential buildup of deleterious mutations. However, for animals that are limited in their capacity to attract mates, asexual reproduction can ensure genetic propagation.

After fertilization, a series of developmental stages occur during which primary germ layers are established and reorganize to form an embryo. During this process, animal tissues begin to specialize and organize into organs and organ systems, determining their future morphology and physiology. Some animals, such as grasshoppers, undergo incomplete metamorphosis, in which the young resemble the adult. Other animals, such as some insects, undergo complete metamorphosis where individuals enter one or more larval stages that may differ in structure and function from the adult. In complete metamorphosis, the young and the adult may have different diets, limiting competition for food between them. Regardless of whether a species undergoes complete or incomplete metamorphosis, the series of developmental stages of the embryo remains largely the same for most members of the animal kingdom.

The process of animal development begins with the cleavage, or series of mitotic cell divisions, of the zygote. Three cell divisions transform the single-celled zygote into an eight-celled structure. After further cell division and rearrangement of existing cells, a 6–32-celled hollow structure called a blastula is formed. Next, the blastula undergoes further cell division and cellular rearrangement during a process called gastrulation. This leads to the formation of the next developmental stage, the gastrula, in which the future digestive cavity is formed. Different cell layers (called germ layers) are formed during gastrulation. These germ layers are programed to develop into certain tissue types, organs, and organ systems during a process called organogenesis.

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The Role of Homeobox (Hox) Genes in Animal Development:

Since the early 19th century, scientists have observed that many animals, from the very simple to the complex, shared similar embryonic morphology and development. Surprisingly, a human embryo and a frog embryo, at a certain stage of embryonic development, appear remarkably similar. For a long time, scientists did not understand why so many animal species looked similar during embryonic development, but were very different as adults. Near the end of the 20th century, a particular class of genes that dictate developmental direction was discovered. These genes that determine animal structure are called “homeotic genes.” They contain DNA sequences called homeoboxes, with specific sequences referred to as Hox genes. This family of genes is responsible for determining the general body plan: the number of body segments of an animal, the number and placement of appendages, and animal head-tail directionality. The first Hox genes to be sequenced were those from the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). A single Hox mutation in the fruit fly can result in an extra pair of wings or even appendages growing from the “wrong” body part.

There are many genes that play roles in the morphological development of an animal, but Hox genes are so powerful because they can turn on or off large numbers of other genes. Hox genes do this by coding transcription factors that control the expression of numerous other genes. Hox genes are homologous in the animal kingdom: the genetic sequences and their positions on chromosomes are remarkably similar across most animals (e.g., worms, flies, mice, humans) because of their presence in a common ancestor. Hox genes have undergone at least two duplication events during animal evolution: the additional genes allowed more complex body types to evolve.

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Hox genes:

Hox genes are highly-conserved genes encoding transcription factors that determine the course of embryonic development in animals. In vertebrates, the genes have been duplicated into four clusters: Hox-A, Hox-B, Hox-C, and Hox-D. Genes within these clusters are expressed in certain body segments at certain stages of development. Shown above is the homology between Hox genes in mice and humans. Note how Hox gene expression, as indicated with orange, pink, blue, and green shading, occurs in the same body segments in both the mouse and the human.

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Section-5

Animal behaviour:

Animal behaviour, the concept, broadly considered, referring to everything animals do, including movement and other activities and underlying mental processes. Human fascination with animal behaviour probably extends back millions of years, perhaps even to times before the ancestors of the species became human in the modern sense. Initially, animals were probably observed for practical reasons because early human survival depended on knowledge of animal behaviour. Whether hunting wild game, keeping domesticated animals, or escaping an attacking predator, success required intimate knowledge of an animal’s habits. Even today, information about animal behaviour is of considerable importance. For example, in Britain, studies on the social organization and the ranging patterns of badgers (Meles meles) have helped reduce the spread of tuberculosis among cattle, and studies of sociality in foxes (Vulpes vulpes) assist in the development of models that predict how quickly rabies would spread should it ever cross the English Channel. Likewise in Sweden, where collisions involving moose (Alces alces) are among the most common traffic accidents in rural areas, research on moose behaviour has yielded ways of keeping them off roads and verges. In addition, investigations of the foraging of insect pollinators, such as honeybees, have led to impressive increases in agricultural crop yields throughout the world.   

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The origins of the scientific study of animal behaviour lie in the works of various European thinkers of the 17th to 19th centuries, such as British naturalists John Ray and Charles Darwin and French naturalist Charles LeRoy. These individuals appreciated the complexity and apparent purposefulness of the actions of animals, and they knew that understanding behaviour demands long-term observations of animals in their natural settings. At first, the principal attraction of natural history studies was to confirm the ingenuity of God. The publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 changed this attitude. In his chapter on instinct, Darwin was concerned with whether behavioral traits, like anatomical ones, can evolve as a result of natural selection. Since then, biologists have recognized that the behaviours of animals, like their anatomical structures, are adaptations that exist because they have, over evolutionary time (that is, throughout the formation of new species and the evolution of their special characteristics), helped their bearers to survive and reproduce.

Furthermore, humans have long appreciated how beautifully and intricately the behaviours of animals are adapted to their surroundings. For example, young birds that possess camouflaged colour patterns for protection against predators will freeze when the parent spots a predator and calls the alarm. Darwin’s achievement was to explain how such wondrously adapted creatures could arise from a process other than special creation. He showed that adaptation is an inexorable result of four basic characteristics of living organisms:

1. There is variation among individuals of the same species. Even closely related individuals, such as parent and offspring or sibling and sibling, differ considerably. Familiar human examples include differences in facial features, hair and eye colour, height, and weight.
2. Many of these variations are inheritable—that is, offspring resemble their parents in many traits as a result of the genes they share.
3. There are differences in numbers of surviving offspring among parents in every species. For example, one female snapping turtle (family Chelydridae) may lay 24 eggs; however, only 5 may survive to adulthood. In contrast, another female may lay only 18 eggs, with 1 of her offspring surviving to adulthood.
4. The individuals that are best equipped to survive and reproduce perpetuate the highest frequency of genes to descendant populations. This is the principle known colloquially as “survival of the fittest,” where fitness denotes an individual’s overall ability to pass copies of his genes on to successive generations. For example, a woman who rears six healthy offspring has greater fitness than one who rears just two.

An inevitable consequence of variation, inheritance, and differential reproduction is that, over time, the frequency of traits that render individuals better able to survive and reproduce in their present environment increases. As a result, descendant generations in a population resemble most closely the members of ancestral populations that were able to reproduce most effectively. This is the process of natural selection.

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The natural history approach of Darwin and his predecessors gradually evolved into the twin sciences of animal ecology, the study of the interactions between an animal and its environment, and ethology, the biological study of animal behaviour. The roots of ethology can be traced to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when scientists from several countries began exploring the behaviours of selected vertebrate species: dogs by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov; rodents by American psychologists John B. Watson, Edward Tolman, and Karl Lashley; birds by American psychologist B.F. Skinner; and primates by German American psychologist Wolfgang Köhler and American psychologist Robert Yerkes. The studies were carried out in laboratories, in the case of dogs, rodents and pigeons, or in artificial colonies and laboratories, in the case of primates. These studies were oriented toward psychological and physiological questions rather than ecological or evolutionary ones.

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Even if there were no practical benefits to be gained from learning about animal behaviour, the subject would still merit exploration. Humans (Homo sapiens) are animals themselves, and most humans are deeply interested in the lives and minds of their fellow humans, their pets, and other creatures. British ethologist Jane Goodall and American field biologist George Schaller, as well as British broadcaster David Attenborough and Australian wildlife conservationist Steve Irwin, have brought the wonders of animal behaviour to the attention and appreciation of the general public. Books, television programs, and movies on the subject of animal behaviour abound.

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Animal behavior includes all the ways animals interact with other organisms and the physical environment. Behavior can also be defined as a change in the activity of an organism in response to a stimulus, an external or internal cue or combo of cues. Behavior is anything an animal does involving action and/or a response to a stimulus. Blinking, eating, walking, flying, vocalizing and huddling are all examples of behaviors. To fully understand a behavior, we want to know what causes it, how it develops in an individual, how it benefits an organism, and how it evolved. Some behaviors are innate, or genetically hardwired, while others are learned, or developed through experience. In many cases, behaviors have both an innate component and a learned component. Behavior is shaped by natural selection. Many behaviors directly increase an organism’s fitness, that is, they help it survive and reproduce. Animal responses are driven by the primal urges to survive and reproduce. While animal behavior can vary widely based on the individual, certain behavioral traits, like attention seeking and chasing prey, are genetically inherited, as with dog behavior.

Animals behave in certain ways for four basic reasons:

1. to find food and water
2. to interact in social groups
3. to avoid predators
4. to reproduce

Behaviors help Animals Survive:

Animal behaviors usually are adaptations for survival. Some behaviors, such as eating, or escaping predators are obvious survival strategies. But other behaviors, which also are important for survival, may not be as easily understood. For example why does a flamingo stand on one leg? By tucking the other leg close to its body, the bird conserves heat that would otherwise escape.

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The study of animal behavior, called ethology, is a broad field, encompassing both instinctual and learned behaviors as well as abnormal behaviors. Within any particular species of animal, certain behaviors may be present in all members while others are more specific to certain individuals, locations or situations. Even the most simple of life forms exhibit behavioral activity, and whether the behavior is normal or abnormal can provide insight into their mental state. Animals can learn to anticipate that an action will have a predictable outcome through trial and error, such as dog learning to sit for a treat. This is called operant conditioning. They can also learn that one event precedes another, such as the sound of a metal food bowl being moved signaling food being served, which is known as associative learning. Animals also learn a lot through watching others and mimicry. All of these behaviors allow an animal to adapt to new situations and problems.

Instinctual behavior:

One type of instinctual behavior is fixed action patterns, which are behaviors the animal is compelled to engage in. For instance, some birds will raise the chicks of other birds if the eggs are put in their nests during nesting season, because caring for an egg is a fixed action pattern. Another instinctual behavior is imprinting, wherein a baby animal accepts a person, or even an item, as a surrogate mother. Sexual behavior is also instinctual, bolstered by play, which helps animals learn courtship and mating skills. Many of these behaviors are dictated by specific body systems, like the nervous system, which responds to stimuli in the environment.

Learned Behavior:

While some animal behaviors are inborn, many are learned from experience. Learned behavior is important both for wild animals, who must learn specific and new ways to survive, and for domestic animals that we seek to train. Scientists define learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior as the result of experience. For the most part, learning occurs gradually and in steps. An animal’s genetic makeup and body structure determine what kinds of behavior are possible for it to learn. An animal can learn to do only what it is physically capable of doing. A dolphin cannot learn to ride a bicycle, because it has no legs to work the pedals, and no fingers to grasp the handle bars.

An animal learns and is able to respond and adapt to a changing environment. If an environment changes, an animal’s behaviors may no longer achieve results. The animal is forced to change its behavior. It learns which responses get desired results, and changes its behavior accordingly. For purposes of training, an animal trainer manipulates the animal’s environment to achieve the desired results.

Observational Learning:

Animals often learn through observation, that is, by watching other animals. Observational learning can occur with no outside reinforcement. The animal simply learns by observing and mimicking. Animals are able to learn individual behaviors as well as entire behavioral repertoires through observation.

At SeaWorld, killer whale calves continually follow their mothers and try to imitate everything they do. This includes show behaviors. By a calf’s first birthday, it may have learned more than a dozen show behaviors just by mimicking its mother. At Busch Gardens, a young chimpanzee learns foraging and social behavior from watching its mother and other members of the group. Baby black rhinos (Diceros bicornis) are especially close to their mothers. A calf relies on its mother’s protection until it is completely weaned. This close tie allows young rhinos to learn defense and foraging behavior. Adult animals trained alongside experienced animals may learn a faster rate than if they were trained without them.

Classical Conditioning:

One of the simplest types of learning is called classical conditioning. Classical conditioning is based on a stimulus (a change in the environment) producing a response from the animal. Over time, a response to a stimulus may be conditioned. (Conditioning is another word for learning.) By pairing a new stimulus with a familiar one, an animal can be conditioned to respond to the new stimulus. The conditioned response is typically a reflex – a behavior that requires no thought. One of the best known examples of classical conditioning may be Pavlov’s experiments on domestic dogs. Russian behaviorist Ivan Pavlov noticed that the smell of meat made his dogs drool. He began to ring a bell just before introducing the meat. After repeating this several times, Pavlov rang the bell without introducing the meat. The dogs drooled when they heard the bell. Over time, they came to associate the sound of the bell with the smell of food. The bell became the stimulus that caused the drooling response.

Operant Conditioning:

Like classical conditioning, operant conditioning involves a stimulus and a response. But unlike classical conditioning, in operant conditioning the response is a behavior that requires thought and an action. The response is also followed by a consequence known as a reinforcer. In operant conditioning, an animal’s behavior is conditioned by the consequences that follow. That is, a behavior will happen either more or less often, depending on its results. When an animal performs a particular behavior that produces a favorable result, the animal is likely to repeat the behavior. So, in operant conditioning, an animal is conditioned as it operates on the environment.

Animals learn by the principles of operant conditioning every day. For example, woodpeckers find insects to eat by pecking holes in trees with their beaks. One day, a woodpecker finds a particular tree that offers an especially abundant supply of the bird’s favorite bugs. The woodpecker is likely to return to that tree again and again.

Humans learn by the same principles. We learn that when we push the power button on the remote control, the television comes on. When we put coins into a vending machine, a snack comes out.

Animal trainers apply the principles of operant conditioning. When an animal performs a behavior that the trainer wants, the trainer administers a favorable consequence.

Positive Reinforcement:

When an animal performs a behavior that produces a positive result, the animal is likely to repeat that behavior in the near future. The positive result is termed a positive reinforcer because it reinforces, or strengthens the behavior. When a positive reinforcer immediately follows a behavior, it increases the likelihood that the behavior will be repeated. It must immediately follow the behavior in order to be effective.

Stimulus Discrimination:

As an animal learns behaviors, it also learns the various situations to which they apply. The more behaviors an animal learns, the more it must learn to make distinctions – that is to discriminate – among the situations. Discrimination is the tendency for learned behavior to occur in one situation, but not in others. Animals learn which behavior to use for each different stimulus.

Shaping of Behavior:

Most behaviors cannot be learned all at once, but develop in steps. This step-by-step learning process is called shaping.

Many human behaviors are learned through shaping. For example, most begin by riding a tricycle. The child graduates to a two-wheeler bicycle with training wheels, and eventually masters a much larger bicycle, perhaps one with multiple speeds. Each step towards the final goal of riding a bicycle is reinforcing.

Animals learn complex behaviors through shaping. Each step in the learning process is called an approximation. An animal may be reinforced for each successive approximation toward the final goal of the desired trained behavior.

Abnormal behavior:

Identifying behavior patterns enables people to determine when animals are behaving abnormally. These abnormal behaviors might simply be annoying to animal owners; however, in other instances they may also be dangerous for the animal and others or even threaten their very survival. For example, inappropriately aggressive dogs, which might be suffering from disease or trauma, are potentially dangerous to themselves and others. The behavior may be addressed if it is identified as abnormal and normal behavior is reestablished. More important to species survival are mating and raising offspring, and in these cases abnormal behavior that leads to failure to mate or care for offspring can present a threat to the animal’s long-term survival.

Extinction of Behavior:

If a behavior is not reinforced, it decreases. Eventually it is extinguished altogether. This is called extinction. Animal trainers use the technique of extinction to eliminate undesired behaviors. (In animal training, when a trainer requests a particular behavior and the animal gives no response, this is also considered an undesired behavior.) To eliminate the behavior, they simply do not reinforce it. Over time, the animal learns that a particular behavior is not producing a desired effect. The animal discontinues the behavior. When using the extinction technique, it is important to identify what stimuli are reinforcing for an animal. The trainer must be careful not to present a positive reinforcer after an undesirable behavior. The best way to avoid reinforcing an undesired behavior is to try to give no stimulus at all.

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How intelligent are animals?

Animals are as intelligent as they need to be to survive in their environment. They often are thought of as intelligent if they can be trained to do certain behaviors. But animals do amazing things in their own habitats. For example, certain octopuses demonstrate complex problem–solving skills. Compared to other invertebrates, octopuses may be quite intelligent. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are considered to be the most intelligent of the apes because of their ability to identify and construct tools for foraging. Accurately rating the intelligence of animals is challenging because it is not standardized. As a result it is difficult to compare intelligences between species. Trying to measure animal intelligence using human guidelines would be inappropriate.  Chimpanzees are one of the few species that learn to use tools. They learn that when they insert a stick into an ant or termite mound, a favorable result occurs: they can more easily reach the tiny morsels. Among the most intelligent non-human species are chimpanzees, great apes, elephants, New Caledonian Crows, and dolphins.

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Collective behavior of animals and how animals work together:

Herd is good:

Herds are beneficial for prey animals for many reasons. Understanding our animal’s behavior and why they act in certain ways helps minimize stress in moving, handling and housing. Cattle, sheep, goats, poultry, and horses are all prey species that have been domesticated by humans. Some of these animals provide us with food (meat, milk, or eggs), others fiber (wool, hair, feathers/down) and some serve as companions, transportation or aid with work. No matter what purpose these species have, they share one very important social characteristic – they are herd animals! The herds may take on species-specific names, such as a “flock” for sheep or “clutch” for chicks. No matter what their herd is called, they are still a group of the same animals existing together as a cohesive unit. These groups may not be permanent because there is always transition into or out of the group. Animals die, new animals are born and other may be kicked-out, depending on the social structure, age and sex of the particular species.

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One of the most important features of a herd is that individual members benefit from group living for many reasons.

1. Safety in numbers.

Catching one animal is much harder when there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of similar animals nearby. There are always eyes watching for individual safety, which translates to safety for everyone. If one member of the herd notices trouble, they will share with the rest through vocalizations, behavioral changes and perhaps even scent cues to alert danger.

2. Camouflage.

A large group of white, brown, black, red or a combination of colors makes it difficult to distinguish one animal from the next and is visually confusing to a predator. The normal coat color and markings of livestock helps them blend seamlessly from one animal into the next so predators have difficulty identifying a single target to prey upon. Perhaps eyes or a nose are visible, but not seeing exactly where one animal starts and another begins makes catching just one animal much harder.

3. More time to look for food.

With a large group looking for trouble, individuals do not have to be constantly vigilant. This provides individuals the opportunity to spend time and energy on other tasks such as looking for food. When thinking about safety in numbers, multiple eyes mean one set of eyes can be “off duty” and relax for bit while another animal takes over the watch.

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In Frank Schätzing’s 2004 sci-fi novel The Swarm, marine life develops a collective mind of its own. Whales band together to attack ships, while herds of jellyfish overwhelm the shores. It’s as if ocean creatures decided to jointly fight humanity, to try to reclaim their degraded environment. Scientists say this scenario isn’t made up out of whole cloth. Animals do move in groups governed by the collective. Think of a flock of birds, a parade of ants, a school of fish — all are swarms like those envisioned by Schätzing, if not quite as murderous. Animals regulate these vast collective structures without any leadership, without any individual animal knowing the whole state of the system and yet it works fantastically well. 

Researchers are now learning about how these swarms pull off such unusual feats. In the English countryside, birds have two distinct sets of rules for flocking, depending on the purpose of their flight. In Mexican forests, groups of ants have evolved computing-like search strategies to find their way around a disturbed environment. And in a lab in Germany, fish develop personalities that ultimately determine how they influence the rest of the school they are swimming with.

These aren’t just interesting observations about nature. Lessons from the natural world about animal group behavior could help humans better engineer our own future, collectively. Such knowledge could help scientists build drones that coordinate their flight like flocking birds, for instance, design packets of information to flow efficiently like foraging ants, or even develop ways to adapt to climate change like some fish do.

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Deborah Gordon, a biologist at Stanford and author of an article on collective behavior in ants in the 2019 Annual Review of Entomology studies several species of ants and how they make collective decisions, such as when and where to forage for food. All of the roughly 14,000 known ant species live in colonies, and so must share information in their search for food and other resources. Gordon studies how ants develop networks of interactions that allow them to pull this off.

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Figure below show representatives of two ant species.

Red harvester ants (left) and arboreal turtle ants (right) are among the roughly 14,000 species of ants that live in colonies and make decisions collectively.

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One of Gordon’s favorite species is the red harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex barbatus), which searches for seeds that are scattered across the landscape. A red harvester colony typically has some foragers waiting in the nest while others venture out for food. Studying these ants in New Mexico, Gordon showed that ants leave the nest at a rate determined by how often foragers return with food. The more food available, the more often foragers return to the nest; this, in turn, kicks off more ants leaving the nest. But if there is little food available, the rate of forager return slows and the whole process throttles down.

In 2012, working with her student Katherine Dektar and Balaji Prabhakar, a computer scientist at Stanford, Gordon calculated how information was flowing among the ants. The researchers found it was similar to the way Internet protocols regulate the rate at which data is transferred depending on how much bandwidth is available for transferring it. The scientists dubbed this naturally produced set of problem-solving rules the “Anternet.” The Anternet information seems to help the colony to forage efficiently.

Since then, Gordon has continued to explore the step-by-step problem-solving rules, or algorithms, that regulate how ants collectively search for food and make their way around the environment. She is now studying a tree-dwelling species from western Mexico known as the turtle ant (Cephalotes goniodontus). These ants travel entirely along tree branches and vines, laying down a pheromone trail behind them so that others can follow. The trails connect the ants’ nests and sources of food, forming a sort of communication network in which junctions in the vegetation serve as nodes.

But that network can be easily broken if, say, a windstorm breaks one of the vines. The ants then have to reestablish the trail connectivity. They do so by exploring and choosing new paths to get them around the break. It’s sort of like the way Google Maps suggests alternate routes to get around a traffic accident.

By mapping many paths and examples of how turtle ants found their way around a break, Gordon and her colleagues identified an algorithm that describes the ants’ behavior. The algorithm may not be the most efficient in any one situation, but it works well to find a new route in many different situations. This suggests that evolution has found ways for ant colonies to adapt to their ever-changing environment. “Evolution has already done a lot of experiments for us, by shaping the way that the ants work collectively to respond to different kinds of conditions,” she says.

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Graphic above shows a map of turtle ants’ pathways through trees. One panel shows a map in which one pathway is blocked; the next shows how ant traffic patterns changed to a number of alternate routes; the final shows that most ant traffic is now following one main new route.

When faced with an obstacle blocking their usual routes, tree-dwelling turtle ants explore multiple alternative routes before settling on one. Here, researchers disrupted the ants’ usual network of paths (left), but within hours the ants were exploring several new workarounds (center). By the following day (right) the ants had eliminated most of those possibilities and had settled on one main new trail.

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In experiments involving 80 fish over a 10-week period, Jolles and his colleagues found that bold fish tended to remain bold, as shown by the time spent away from the deep, sheltered end of a tank to venture into bright, shallow areas and look for food. In contrast, shy fish ventured out more and more as the experiments went on, the team reported in Animal Behaviour. That suggests that shy fish are less predictable in their behavior over the long term.

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Cultural change in animals as a behavioural adaptation to human disturbance:

The analysis of culture as a biological and evolutionary phenomenon (Boyd and Richerson, 1985), and the existence of socially transmitted behavioural variation between groups or subgroups of the same species in non-humans, reminiscent of human culture (Laland and Galef, 2009), is now well accepted. Reports of cultural transmission in non-humans, including in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata, Imanishi, 1952), great tits (Parus major, Fisher and Hinde, 1949) and chimpanzees (Goodall, 1973), have launched a strong debate on the nature of culture in animals and how it compares to humans (Tomasello 1990, Galef, 1992, Laland and Galef, 2009). A cultural species displays patterns of behaviour (or ‘traditions’) acquired in part through socially aided learning processes (Fragaszy and Perry, 2003).

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There has been a recent surge of interest in studying the impact of human activities on wild animal populations. Many species and/or populations cannot avoid humans and must therefore display behavioural strategies to cope with the ever-growing human disturbance in their environment (Candolin and Wong, 2012, McLennan et al., 2017, Barrett et al. 2019). In recent decades, researchers have increasingly documented the impact of anthropogenic activities on wild animals, particularly in relation to changes in behaviour. Human landmark behavioural innovations have often correlated with significant ecological changes (e.g., Potts, 2013, Vrba, 1985, Potts, 1996, de Menocal, 2011, Trauth et al., 2005), suggesting that the latter may drive cultural evolution. Similarly, current day human-induced rapid environmental changes can, despite their usually devastating effects on wild animals, also foster behavioural variation, and thus potentially also cultural change.

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Possible non-human primate cultural variants impacted by human influence:  

Human influence	Species	Specific disturbance	Response
Human presence in the environment	Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)	Increased hunting pressure	Decrease in ground nesting
			Deactivation of snares
	Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis)	Presence of local farm dogs at foraging sites at the shore	Decrease of stone tool use
Introduced and novel food items	Orang-Utans (Pongo pygmaeus)	Oil palm mono cultures	Dispersal into mature plantations, use oil palm trees for nesting, and feeding on mature fruits
	Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)	Newly human-introduced trees or crops for animals living in the vicinity of human settlements	Crop-feeding
			Emergence of leaf tools used for the consumption of Raphia palm wine
			Crop-feeding during the night
	Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)	Proliferation of natural fig species due to controlled forest poisoning and introduction of non-native species in the core area	Loss of stick tool use
	Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)	Newly human-introduced plant species	Nest manufacture
	Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)	Introduction of potatoes and corn (though direct provisioning)	Food washing
	Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)	Visitor (e.g., fishermen) leaving raw fish to dry or providing on Koshima island	Consumption of raw fish
	Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)	The influence of the occurrence and frequency of food provisioning on object-directed play behaviour in Japanese macaques	Stone handling
	Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis)	Co-occurrence of provisioning and co-habitation with humans at a temple	Innovation and diffusion of token-mediated exchange between humans and long-tailed macaques
	Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis)	Introduction of oil palm trees	Development of oil palm nut-cracking
Habitat alterations and/or decrease in natural foods	Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes)	Disappearance of naturally occurring decaying Raphia that provided specific nutrients	Emergence of moss sponging
	Gibbons	Forest fire smoke	Decrease in song and call pattern

There are also many examples of non-primate cultures that are impacted by humans and are possibly subject to cultural evolution (Brakes et al., 2019).

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Q & A on animal behavior:  

-Q. Most animal defense techniques do not involve hand-to-hand (or paw-to-paw) combat. Why is this?

-A. Most animals avoid fighting if at all possible. They might have stand-offs, or growl, and try to intimidate other animals into running away. But usually the risk of drawing blood is too high. Animals other than humans can’t just run to the doctor to get stitched up if they get injured. An injury means it will be harder to move around and find food and also easier to be injured again or eaten by a predator.

-Q. Why do males fight over access to females and not the other way around?

-A. Females are the choosy sex because of the differences in male and female reproductive anatomy. Eggs are energetically expensive to produce, and females can only produce a limited quantity of eggs. Sperm on the other hand are energetically cheap and males can make unlimited quantities of sperm. So males try to maximize their reproductive success by mating as much as possible, while females try to pick the best genes for their offspring to maximize the chances of the offspring’s survival. The males fight over access to females because the females are the limiting factor—the males want to get their genes into the pool, and to do that they need females.

-Q. Why don’t species with internal fertilization have male parental care?

-A. Internal fertilization is where the egg is fertilized inside the female’s body. The male has no way of knowing if the egg has been fertilized before he got there—for all he knows, the female is already pregnant with someone else’s offspring. It would be a waste of time and energy for a male to take care of someone else’s offspring that do not have his genes. This is why we see male parental care more often in species with external fertilization.

-Q. Alarm calls put the caller at increased risk of predation by drawing attention to its location. Why might this behavior be favored by evolution?

-A. Animals that use alarm calls put themselves at risk but increase the chances of their relatives’ survival. Animals that live in colonies with alarm calls usually live in large family groups, so their genes benefit by allowing others in the group to survive. Alarm calls may be favored by kin selection.

-Q. What are some benefits to living in a group? What are some negative consequences of group living?

-A. Living in a group provides quite a few benefits. There is safety in numbers. Catching one animal is much harder when there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of similar animals nearby. Group members can cooperate in finding food. Group hunters can catch larger prey than individual animals can, and animals foraging might find spots where food is plentiful and all members of the group benefit rather than wasting time fighting over it. Groups can defend territories more efficiently than individuals can, and living in a group also provides better access to mates. There are also drawbacks to living in a group. Groups may attract predators or attacks by other animals because of scents or noises. Animals living in groups also spread disease more easily than animals living on their own.

-Q. Viceroy butterflies avoid predators by mimicking monarch butterflies’ coloration, but viceroys are not poisonous and monarchs are. When might this mimicry stop deterring predators?

-A. This type of mimicry depends on predators learning to avoid the butterflies. To do that, they have to taste a few to learn that they taste bad. If there are a lot more viceroys than monarchs, the predators will usually have a satisfying meal without getting sick, and will not associate getting sick (when they eat an occasional monarch) with eating the butterflies. The whole mimicry depends on predators making the association between color and poison.

-Q. Say you were in charge of a bird’s nest that the parents abandoned. What might you do to help the birds recognize their own species?

-A. The birds will probably imprint on you, but you could help them out by playing bird calls from their species. You could also show them pictures or dress up to look like that species of bird.

-Q. How does schooling behavior help fish avoid predation? What is a downside to schooling?

-A. Schooling is when tons of fish swim together in a tight group. Predators might avoid a school if they think it is one big fish rather than a bunch of little fish. Fish in a school also might confuse the predator because they can move in a bunch of different directions when the predator approaches. Schooling in fish makes it easy for humans with nets to catch them. Unfortunately, many fish species have been exploited so badly that there are not enough of them to catch anymore. The same schooling behavior that protects fish from most predators allows humans to take advantage of them.

-Q. What type of learning behavior do you use when training your pet dog?

-A. Dog training takes advantage of associative learning, which is when an animal associates two experiences. Dog training uses food as a reward for behavior. Just like Pavlov’s dog salivated when a bell rang, your dog sits because it associates sitting on command to getting a treat. You might have to reinforce this behavior with treats occasionally—if the dog stops getting treats when it sits, it might forget why it bothers.

-Q. Animals that migrate travel a very long distance away from home, which comes with a lot of risk—the possibility of getting lost, lack of food, exhaustion, injury. Why do animals migrate?

-A. Animals that migrate spend the winter away from their breeding grounds to go to a place with more food. In most northern climates, there are no leaves, flowers or fruits in the winter, which means there is not much food available. Migratory animals fly (or swim) to the tropics, where food is available year-round. With warmer winters and less snow in recent decades, many animals are delaying migration by anywhere from a few days to weeks. Under future climate change scenarios, migration might be altered even more.

-Q. Why mockingbirds mimic the songs of other birds?

-A. The mockingbird was given its name because of its ability to mimic the calls of dozens of other bird species. In fact, the mockingbird’s Latin name, Mimus polyglottos, means many-tongued mimic. The mockingbird has even been known to mimic the sounds of dogs and sirens!  This is likely a courtship, a territorial display, or both. Northern mockingbirds use song and display for courtship and for territory defence. Though they may have a repertoire of up to 200 songs, they tend to use some much more than others. A male with strong and varied songs sends a signal to females that he is healthy and a good choice as a mate. To rivals, his message says this is my turf, don’t mess with me.

-Q. What does ‘tail movement’ of cat denote?

-A. Cats use their tails to express a variety of emotions. Low flicks, wags and swishes indicate cats are annoyed, worried or scared. A side-to-side swish or wag at body level usually means they are concentrating on something they find interesting. It can also mean they are in a playful mood. An upright or quivering tail generally means they are happy and excited to see us.

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Section-6

Animal personality: 

Donkeys are stubborn, pandas are cute, and dogs are faithful — right? We usually describe people’s personalities, but are we right to assign personalities to animals, too?  Many pet owners think they recognize personality traits in their animals. Are they right?

The answer is, well…yes.

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In humans, it is widely accepted that every person is different; every person has its own personality. Some people are for example novelty-seekers while others avoid new situations (Kim et al. 2005). Even from monozygotic twins it is thought of as normal that they show individual differences in their behaviour (Freund et al. 2013). However, in animals, the existence of personality is not yet commonly accepted. Especially with genetically identical mice, we tend to think of them as one group showing the same behaviour.  In most research where behavioural tests are being used measures which lie too far away from the mean are called ‘outliers’ or variation in test results. This variation was seen as errors/noise (Nomakuchi et al. 2009, Réale et al. 2007, Uher 2011). However, research has shown that one of the causes of this variation is the individual differences in animal behaviour.

Anyone working with live animals can hardly dispute the fact that striking behavioural differences exist among individuals. This variation can dramatically, and often predictably, influence how individuals interact with their environment, and can affect the outcome of biotic interactions such as predation, competition, parasitism, cooperation and mate choice (Wolf and Weissing, 2012). However, it has taken over a century for researchers working on non-human animals to appreciate the magnitude as well as the ecological and evolutionary importance of behavioural variation.

Research has established that personality (a) exists and can be measured in animals; (b) can be identified in a broad array of species, ranging from squid, crickets, and lizards, to trout, geese, and orangutans; and (c) shows considerable cross-species generality for some dimensions.

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Animal personality definitions:

-1. It is consistent or repeatable inter-individual differences in behaviour across time and contexts (Réale et al., 2007).

-2. It is variation among individuals in the intercept of their behavioural reaction norm (Dingemanse et al., 2010).

-3. It is inter-individual variation in behaviour attributable to the combined influences of genetic effects and environmental effects that permanently affect the phenotype of an individual (Dingemanse and Araya-Ajoy, 2015).

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What is not animal personality?

Few concepts in the biological sciences currently face as much controversy and lack of consensus over their usefulness as animal personality. Everything from startle responses in sea anemones to social dominance in chimpanzees has been characterized under the personality moniker (Freeman and Gosling, 2010; Stamps et al., 2012). Although animal personality is now engrained as a mainstream concept in behavioural ecology, the field has its share of critics. Many researchers ignore or dismiss animal personality as a useful concept, perhaps because the field is mostly theory-driven but without a strong conceptual framework (David and Dall, 2016), suffers from a lack of empirical studies (DiRienzo and Montiglio, 2015) and is laden with terminological inconsistencies (Réale et al., 2007; Carter et al., 2013). For example, terms such as temperament, behavioural syndrome, behavioural type and coping style are often used interchangeably with personality (Réale et al., 2010). For the non-specialist, navigating this breadth of literature and semantics, as well as determining when behaviours should not be considered as personality traits, can be daunting, and may contribute to the dismissive attitude of many experimental biologists regarding the importance of individual behavioural variation.

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Personality is at the forefront of current behavioral ecological research. Most research concerns boldness, aggressiveness, activity, exploratory tendency, and sociability. However, many species may exhibit consistent variation in other traits, which the current research problematically misses. Exclusive adherence to the five traits ignores the possibility that other traits may be more consequential for a species and limits our understanding of the personality trait repertoire and the potentially complex associations among the usually sampled and other traits. Selecting personality traits based on species’ ecology is crucial for understanding the causes and consequences of personality, and assessing a broader range of personality traits yields a better understanding of the trait associations. Studying the five traits has been useful in delineating research methods and aims, but it is time to broaden the personality horizon.

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The evolution of animal personality:   

Within species or populations, individuals often vary consistently in their responses to environmental and social challenges, such as how to find food, deal with predators, or compete with conspecifics. Moreover, consistent individual differences in behaviour are often correlated across functional contexts. Such ‘personalities’, ‘behavioural syndromes’ or ‘coping styles’ are apparently ubiquitous in animals, including humans, but their ultimate causes are still an evolutionary puzzle. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain animal personality, either focusing on potential constraints or on adaptive causes. While ecological factors, such as the influence of predation, have been proposed as important causes of personality variation within populations, the potential significance of social factors has received less attention.  The existence of ‘animal personality’, i.e. consistent individual differences in behaviour across time and contexts, is an evolutionary puzzle that has recently generated considerable research interest. Although social factors are generally considered to be important, it is as yet unclear how they might select for personality.

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The social environment: a key factor for personality evolution:

The social environment is a crucial factor shaping behavioural traits and animal personality. The dynamics of social evolution are comparable to those of host–parasite, predator–prey and interspecific mutualism interactions, because social traits are both targets and agents of selection.

Table below shows experimental evidence suggesting social effects on personality and character displacement:   

Species	Social environment	Experimental manipulation	Context of conflict	Change in behaviour
Rat (Rattus norvegicus) ‘Wistar’	Group	Access to food	Foraging	Emergence of producers and scroungers
House mouse (Mus domesticus)	Siblings	Sex ratio of litters	Sibling composition (sex-ratio)	Attack latency / behavioural flexibility
Great tit (Parus major)	Siblings	Food rationing	Sibling competition	Exploration behaviour
Rainbow trout (Onchorhyncus mykiss)	Colony	Winner loser experience	Territorial conflict	Shyness towards novel object
Guppy (Poecilia reticulata)	Group	Rearing density	Competition for food	Sociability (shoaling tendency)
Cichlid (Neolamprologus pulcher)	Group	Rearing conditions (with or without dominants)	Competition for shelter	Aggressive and submissive behaviours
Sweat bee (Lasioglossum ctenonomia)	Usually breeding solitarily	Induced nesting association	Nesting tasks	Induced division of labour

The framework of social niche specialisation provides an adaptive explanation for the existence of animal personality differences among individuals in a social context based on the dynamic effects of interactions between individuals throughout life. It rests on the assumption that individuals increase their fitness by choosing behavioural strategies that reduce conflict with other members of the same population. Selection should favour traits providing effective solutions for social conflict. Behavioural consistency might serve to diminish conflict among conspecifics because it reduces niche overlap between individuals using the same resources, which is arguably the most important source of social conflict.

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The importance of animal personality:

Animal personality refers to consistency in the types of behavior that individuals exhibit. Behavioral biologists, psychologists, endocrinologists, and evolutionary and developmental biologists are now studying animal personality. Understanding personality in the context of epidemiology may help to inform captive breeding, reintroductions, and the conservation of endangered species, as well as potentially shedding light on disease transmission in humans.

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Bold or timid:

Many animal personality studies have converged on a common measure known as the shy—bold continuum. At one extreme are bold individuals who are relatively fearless of novel objects and new situations. At the other extreme are shy individuals, like the great tits in the experiment that never left their perch or elk too timid to approach the unfamiliar objects. In many organisms, bold individuals also tend to be more aggressive toward others. But not always. Even within the same species, the relationship appears to vary in intriguing ways.

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Researchers found that some great tits (Parus major) are consistently bold and that others are timid when they are introduced to an artificial environment.

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Sih and colleague Alison Bell from the University of Illinois set out to test whether the relationship between aggression and boldness might be context dependent. They suspected that a specific environment, such as a dangerous, predator-rich one, could induce a correlation between boldness and aggressiveness in sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a small stream-dwelling fish whose populations, Bell already knew, varied behaviorally, depending on their habitat.

Bell and Sih first tested each fish for its boldness—its willingness to look for food in a situation it might perceive to be dangerous—with a simulated predator strike by a fake great egret skull dipped into the water as the unsuspecting fish approached its food. Each stickleback’s level of aggressiveness was then assessed by observing how much the fish approached, chased, and bit a stickleback intruder. Bell and Sih subsequently subjected sticklebacks to predation by rainbow trout. Once half of the sticklebacks had been gobbled up, the trout were removed, and the sticklebacks were again tested for boldness and aggressiveness. Before the experiment, there was no relationship between boldness and aggressiveness. After the experiment, the boldest fish were also the most aggressive.

Examining survival and how the boldness—aggressiveness relationship changed in each fish, Bell and Sih determined that both selection and behavioral flexibility (plasticity) were contributing factors. As for why, it is not yet clear. Bell suggests that it is perhaps because different individuals in dangerous environments have different strategies for dealing with predators. Some use predator-inspection behavior—a risky strategy that can involve approaching the mouth of the predatory fish to check it out. Other fish use shoaling—swimming in loose schools to benefit from many eyes and to reduce the risk of being eaten. “Predator inspectors tend to be loners,” says Bell, “and therefore can afford to be aggressive.” However, fish that shoal need to cooperate with their neighbors and to prioritize group coordination, which makes overly aggressive behavior a disadvantage. Although Bell and Sih do not yet know why predation risk induces a boldness—aggressiveness correlation, their study supports the hypothesis that correlations between certain personality traits might be adaptive in some environments but not in others.

Bell has also explored lifetime personality stability, investigating whether personality is inherited, affected by the environment, influenced by development, or influenced by a combination of factors. Fathers are sole caregivers in sticklebacks, and Bell discovered that early treatment by dads has an impact on a young fish’s future personality. In an experiment in which she compared father-reared and orphaned fish, Bell found that offspring reared by attentive dads are more timid than orphans around predators. But there is much variation in parenting skills, and young fish with inattentive fathers behave no differently from those that are orphans, finds Bell. Her work suggests that early social interactions, at least in sticklebacks, are critical determinants of an individual’s future personality.

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Lovers or fighters:

At Flinders University in Australia, Michael Bull and his collaborators are studying the personality of lizards in relation to their social networks. With clever use of technology, Bull is investigating the social networks—not quite analogous to those on Facebook or Twitter—among group-living organisms. Bull has investigated behavior for more than three decades, studying monogamy—a relatively uncommon mating system among lizards. In the large, slow-moving species aptly called the sleepy lizard (Tiliqua rugosa), Bull noticed that some pairs were “like Romeo and Juliet; they were always together,” whereas in other pairs, the males were polygamous.

Hearing about Sih’s research, Bull realized that his well-studied, individually marked, and genetically pedigreed sleepy lizard population was a gold mine for personality research. With data loggers on lizards’ backs to measure activity, locations, and social contacts, Bull has determined that interactions are nonrandom. “They’re actually physically avoiding some of their neighbors,” explains Bull. Some lizards hang out together in lizard cliques. Others are not part of the social scene. Some males are aggressive, using wide open-mouth displays and showing their impressive blue tongues. Others are meek. Examining the social network, Bull finds that the most aggressive males interact with other males but with few females, whereas the least aggressive males have more female contacts. “So we can divide this population up into the lovers and the fighters. Females avoid aggressive males like the plague,” says Bull, so their personality affects their social network.

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Sleepy lizards (Tiliqua rugosa), found in South Australia, exhibit a range of personality types when it comes to social networks and mating.

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The methodology of Bull and his collaborators also sheds light on how personality affects the transmission of parasites and disease. By examining exactly who comes into contact with whom by means of location dataloggers, researchers can get a better idea of how the personality traits of individuals contribute to disease transmission, since disease-transmission behaviors can be difficult to observe directly in wildlife.

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Also on the leading edge of personality research, in more ways than one, is the University of Arizona’s Renée Duckworth. Examining geographic range expansion, Duckworth has uncovered a link between the aggressiveness of individual western bluebirds (Sialia mexicana) and their ability to outcompete closely related mountain bluebirds (Sialia currucoides). The former have undergone a 40-year trend of North American range expansion. Experimentally setting up new habitat for this cavity-nesting species by placing nest boxes in areas with no natural cavities, Duckworth quantified the aggressiveness of new colonizers. No matter where the populations were located, she found that the early colonizers tended to have more aggressive personalities.

When western bluebirds first colonize new areas, males that are highly aggressive dispersers acquire huge territories, Duckworth and her collaborators found. Her work has shown that more aggressive males have an advantage over nonaggressive males in competition for territories. But these male bullies invest little in parental care. When population density is low, the breeding success of these recently arrived male dispersers is reasonably good, but as density increases, the fecundity of aggressive males declines rapidly. In more established parts of the range, males benefit more from being nonaggressive, staying at home, and setting up shop near the parental nest box where they hatched. So in the population or species as a whole, both phases appear to be necessary, which suggests another case of fluctuating selection.

How does this system of shifting personalities work? “We see this really rapid shift in aggression once new areas are colonized, and we think that maternal effects might play a strong role,” says Duckworth. Her recent work suggests that by manipulating the laying order of female and male eggs in the nest, mother bluebirds can influence their sons’ aggressiveness. Moms might be playing an important role: producing sons well adapted to stay close to home when nesting sites are abundant and producing aggressive males better at dispersing when nest sites are limited. Although Duckworth’s work is focused on a native species undergoing range expansion, better understanding the role of personality in invasive species may one day provide fruitful strategies for their control.

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Only when territory is plentiful do male western bluebirds (Sialia mexicana) that are aggressive have high levels of breeding success.

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Section-7

Animal consciousness:

Animal consciousness, or animal awareness, is the quality or state of self-awareness within a non-human animal, or of being aware of an external object or something within itself.  In humans, consciousness has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, qualia, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is.

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The topic of animal consciousness is beset with a number of difficulties. It poses the problem of other minds in an especially severe form because animals, lacking the ability to use human language, cannot tell us about their experiences. Also, it is difficult to reason objectively about the question, because a denial that an animal is conscious is often taken to imply that it does not feel, its life has no value, and that harming it is not morally wrong. The 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes, for example, has sometimes been blamed for mistreatment of animals because he argued that only humans are conscious.

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Philosophers who consider subjective experience the essence of consciousness also generally believe, as a correlate, that the existence and nature of animal consciousness can never rigorously be known. The American philosopher Thomas Nagel spelled out this point of view in an influential essay titled What Is it Like to Be a Bat? He said that an organism is conscious “if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism”; and he argued that no matter how much we know about an animal’s brain and behavior, we can never really put ourselves into the mind of the animal and experience its world in the way it does itself. Other thinkers, such as the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, dismiss this argument as incoherent. Several psychologists and ethologists have argued for the existence of animal consciousness by describing a range of behaviors that appear to show animals holding beliefs about things they cannot directly perceive—Donald Griffin’s 2001 book Animal Minds reviews a substantial portion of the evidence.

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Animal consciousness has been actively researched for over one hundred years. In 1927 the American functional psychologist Harvey Carr argued that any valid measure or understanding of awareness in animals depends on “an accurate and complete knowledge of its essential conditions in man”. A more recent review concluded in 1985 that “the best approach is to use experiment (especially psychophysics) and observation to trace the dawning and ontogeny of self-consciousness, perception, communication, intention, beliefs, and reflection in normal human fetuses, infants, and children”.  In 2012, a group of neuroscientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, which “unequivocally” asserted that “humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neural substrates.” 

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The sense in which animals (or human infants) can be said to have consciousness or a self-concept has been hotly debated; it is often referred to as the debate over animal minds. The best known research technique in this area is the mirror test devised by Gordon G. Gallup, in which the skin of an animal (or human infant) is marked, while it is asleep or sedated, with a mark that cannot be seen directly but is visible in a mirror. The animal is then allowed to see its reflection in a mirror; if the animal spontaneously directs grooming behaviour towards the mark, that is taken as an indication that it is aware of itself.  Over the past 30 years, many studies have found evidence that animals recognize themselves in mirrors. Self-awareness by this criterion has been reported for:

1. Land mammals: apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas) and elephants.
2. Cetaceans: bottlenose dolphins, killer whales and possibly false killer whales.
3. Birds: magpies, pigeons (can pass the mirror test after training in the prerequisite behaviors).

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Until recently it was thought that self-recognition was absent from animals without a neocortex, and was restricted to mammals with large brains and well developed social cognition. However, in 2008 a study of self-recognition in corvids reported significant results for magpies. Mammals and birds inherited the same brain components from their last common ancestor nearly 300 million years ago, and have since independently evolved and formed significantly different brain types. The results of the mirror and mark tests showed that neocortex-less magpies are capable of understanding that a mirror image belongs to their own body. The findings show that magpies respond in the mirror and mark test in a manner similar to apes, dolphins and elephants. This is a remarkable capability that, although not fully concrete in its determination of self-recognition, is at least a prerequisite of self-recognition. This is not only of interest regarding the convergent evolution of social intelligence; it is also valuable for an understanding of the general principles that govern cognitive evolution and their underlying neural mechanisms. The magpies were chosen to study based on their empathy/lifestyle, a possible precursor for their ability of self-awareness. However even in the chimpanzee, the species most studied and with the most convincing findings, clear-cut evidence of self-recognition is not obtained in all individuals tested. Occurrence is about 75% in young adults and considerably less in young and old individuals. For monkeys, non-primate mammals, and in a number of bird species, exploration of the mirror and social displays were observed. However, hints at mirror-induced self-directed behavior have been obtained.

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Mirror test:

The mirror test is used to see if animals have awareness of themselves as the image that they see in a mirror. If a mark is placed on the animal, they should show signs of knowing that the mark is on their body. Maybe they try to rub it off with their hands or, if they can’t use their limbs that way, they may move their body a bit to see the mark better. 

The mirror test has attracted controversy among some researchers because it is entirely focused on vision, the primary sense in humans, while other species rely more heavily on other senses such as the olfactory sense in dogs.  A study in 2015 showed that the “sniff test of self-recognition (STSR)” provides evidence of self-awareness in dogs.

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Language:

Another approach to determine whether a non-human animal is conscious derives from passive speech research with a macaw. Some researchers propose that by passively listening to an animal’s voluntary speech, it is possible to learn about the thoughts of another creature and to determine that the speaker is conscious. This type of research was originally used to investigate a child’s crib speech by Weir (1962) and in investigations of early speech in children by Greenfield and others (1976). Zipf’s law might be able to be used to indicate if a given dataset of animal communication indicate an intelligent natural language. Some researchers have used this algorithm to study bottlenose dolphin language.

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Pain and suffering:

Further arguments revolve around the ability of animals to feel pain or suffering. Suffering implies consciousness. If animals can be shown to suffer in a way similar or identical to humans, many of the arguments against human suffering could then, presumably, be extended to animals. Others have argued that pain can be demonstrated by adverse reactions to negative stimuli that are non-purposeful or even maladaptive. One such reaction is transmarginal inhibition, a phenomenon observed in humans and some animals akin to mental breakdown.

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Cognitive bias and emotion:

Cognitive bias in animals is a pattern of deviation in judgment, whereby inferences about other animals and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. Individuals create their own “subjective social reality” from their perception of the input. It refers to the question “Is the glass half empty or half full?”, used as an indicator of optimism or pessimism. Cognitive biases have been shown in a wide range of species including rats, dogs, rhesus macaques, sheep, chicks, starlings and honeybees.

The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux advocates avoiding terms derived from human subjective experience when discussing brain functions in animals. For example, the common practice of calling brain circuits that detect and respond to threats “fear circuits” implies that these circuits are responsible for feelings of fear. LeDoux argues that Pavlovian fear conditioning should be renamed Pavlovian threat conditioning to avoid the implication that “fear” is being acquired in rats or humans. Key to his theoretical change is the notion of survival functions mediated by survival circuits, the purpose of which is to keep organisms alive rather than to make emotions. For example, defensive survival circuits exist to detect and respond to threats. While all organisms can do this, only organisms that can be conscious of their own brain’s activities can feel fear. Fear is a conscious experience and occurs the same way as any other kind of conscious experience: via cortical circuits that allow attention to certain forms of brain activity. LeDoux argues the only differences between an emotional and non-emotion state of consciousness are the underlying neural ingredients that contribute to the state.

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Neural correlates of consciousness:

The neural correlates of consciousness constitute the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms sufficient for a specific conscious percept. Neuroscientists use empirical approaches to discover neural correlates of subjective phenomena. The set should be minimal because, if the brain is sufficient to give rise to any given conscious experience, the question is which of its components is necessary to produce it. Visual sense and representation was reviewed in 1998 by Francis Crick and Christof Koch. They concluded sensory neuroscience can be used as a bottom-up approach to studying consciousness, and suggested experiments to test various hypotheses in this research stream.

Researchers have argued that consciousness in mammals arises in the neocortex, and therefore cannot arise in animals which lack a neocortex. For example, Rose argued in 2002 that the “fishes have nervous systems that mediate effective escape and avoidance responses to noxious stimuli, but, these responses must occur without a concurrent, human-like awareness of pain, suffering or distress, which depend on separately evolved neocortex.” Recently that view has been challenged, and many researchers now believe that animal consciousness can arise from homologous subcortical brain networks.

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A feature that distinguishes humans from most animals is that we are not born with an extensive repertoire of behavioral programs that would enable us to survive on our own (“physiological prematurity”). To compensate for this, we have an unmatched ability to learn, i.e., to consciously acquire such programs by imitation or exploration. Once consciously acquired and sufficiently exercised, these programs can become automated to the extent that their execution happens beyond the realms of our awareness. Take, as an example, the incredible fine motor skills exerted in playing a Beethoven piano sonata or the sensorimotor coordination required to ride a motorcycle along a curvy mountain road. Such complex behaviors are possible only because a sufficient number of the subprograms involved can be executed with minimal or even suspended conscious control. In fact, the conscious system may actually interfere somewhat with these automated programs.

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Mirror neurons:

Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron “mirrors” the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Such neurons have been directly observed in primate and other species including birds. The function of the mirror system is a subject of much speculation. Many researchers in cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology consider that this system provides the physiological mechanism for the perception action coupling. They argue that mirror neurons may be important for understanding the actions of other people, and for learning new skills by imitation. Some researchers also speculate that mirror systems may simulate observed actions, and thus contribute to theory of mind skills, while others relate mirror neurons to language ability. Neuroscientists such as Marco Iacoboni (UCLA) have argued that mirror neuron systems in the human brain help us understand the actions and intentions of other people. In a study published in March 2005 Iacoboni and his colleagues reported that mirror neurons could discern if another person who was picking up a cup of tea planned to drink from it or clear it from the table. In addition, Iacoboni and a number of other researchers have argued that mirror neurons are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran has speculated that mirror neurons may provide the neurological basis of self-awareness.

Mirror neurons are important to scientists attempting to find the basis of the way the human mind works, or at least to find correlates of that working, in the anatomy of human brains. The fact that those anatomical correlates keep turning up in non-human brains, too, is one of the current reasons for seeing animals as also being things with minds. Among mirror neurons there are spindle cells (also called von Economo neurons) which play a role in the expression of empathy and the processing of social information.

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Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness:

In 2012, a group of neuroscientists attending a conference on “Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals” at the University of Cambridge in the UK, signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness.

The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states. Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors. Consequently, the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates.

But to say that animals have a biological basis for consciousness is not the same as saying they actually think or feel. Here, ideas from the law may be more helpful than those from neurology. When someone’s state of being is clearly impaired by a calamity of some sort, it can fall to the courts to decide what level of legal protection should apply. In such cases courts apply tests such as: is he or she self-aware? Can he recognize others as individuals? Can he regulate his own behaviour? Does he experience pleasure or suffer pain (that is, show emotion)? Such questions reveal a lot about animals, too.

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Section-8

Have we descended from apes?    

Humans (Homo sapiens) are highly intelligent primates that have become the dominant species on Earth. They are the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina and together with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, they are part of the family Hominidae (the great apes, or hominids). Humans are terrestrial animals, characterized by their erect posture and bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterity and heavy tool use compared to other animals; open-ended and complex language use compared to other animal communications; larger, more complex brains than other primates; and highly advanced and organized societies.

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Early hominins—particularly the australopithecines, whose brains and anatomy are in many ways more similar to ancestral non-human apes—are less often referred to as “human” than hominins of the genus Homo. Several of these hominins used fire, occupied much of Eurasia, and the lineage that later that gave rise to Homo sapiens is thought to have diverged in Africa from other known hominins around 500,000 years ago, with the earliest fossil evidence of Homo sapiens appearing (also in Africa) around 300,000 years ago. The oldest early H. sapiens fossils were found in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco dating to about 315,000 years ago. As of 2017, the oldest known skeleton of an anatomically modern Homo sapiens is the Omo-Kibish I, dated to about 196,000 years ago and discovered in southern Ethiopia. Humans began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity at least by about 100,000–70,000 years ago and (according to recent evidence) as far back as around 300,000 years ago, in the Middle Stone Age. In several waves of migration, H. sapiens ventured out of Africa and populated most of the world.  

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Though most of human existence has been sustained by hunting and gathering in band societies, many human societies transitioned to sedentary agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago, domesticating plants and animals, thus enabling the growth of civilization. These human societies subsequently expanded, establishing various forms of government, religion, and culture around the world, and unifying people within regions to form states and empires. The rapid advancement of scientific and medical understanding in the 19th and 20th centuries permitted the development of fuel-driven technologies and increased lifespans, causing the human population to rise exponentially. The global human population was estimated to be near 7.8 billion in 2019.

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Please read my article https://drrajivdesaimd.com/2018/04/04/human-evolution/ published on this website.

I quote myself from my article ‘Human Evolution’:

Although humans didn’t descend from apes; humans and apes, both living and extinct, are related, is accepted by anthropologists and biologists everywhere. Human Chromosome 2 is a fusion of two ancestral chromosomes. All great apes apart from man have 24 pairs of chromosomes. Therefore the common ancestor of all great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two of the ancestor’s chromosomes created chromosome 2 in humans. Evidence from the fossil record and comparison of human and chimpanzee DNA suggests that humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor approximately 7 million years ago. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately 7 million years, from the separation of the Pan genus (chimpanzee) until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago. The first 3 million years of this timeline concern Sahelanthropus, the following 2 million concern Australopithecus and the final 2 million span the history of the Homo genus in the Paleolithic era. Human evolution from the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is characterized by a number of morphological, developmental, physiological, and behavioral changes. The most significant of these adaptations are bipedalism, increased brain size, shorter jaws with smaller teeth, use of tools, lengthened ontogeny (gestation and infancy), and decreased sexual dimorphism. Fossil evidence shows that our ancestors became bipeds first, followed by changes to the teeth and jaws. It was only much later that our larger brains and more complex technology set us apart as Homo sapiens.

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Why didn’t all primates evolve into humans?   

While we were migrating around the globe, inventing agriculture and visiting the moon, chimpanzees — our closest living relatives — stayed in the trees, where they ate fruit and hunted monkeys. Modern chimps have been around for longer than modern humans have (less than 1 million years compared to 300,000 for Homo sapiens, according to the most recent estimates), but we’ve been on separate evolutionary paths for 6 million or 7 million years. If we think of chimps as our cousins, our last common ancestor is like a great, great grandmother with only two living descendants.

But why did one of her evolutionary offspring go on to accomplish so much more than the other?

“The reason other primates aren’t evolving into humans is that they’re doing just fine,” Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. says. All primates alive today, including mountain gorillas in Uganda, howler monkeys in the Americas, and lemurs in Madagascar, have proven that they can thrive in their natural habitats.

“Evolution isn’t a progression,” said Lynne Isbell, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. “It’s about how well organisms fit into their current environments.” In the eyes of scientists who study evolution, humans aren’t “more evolved” than other primates, and we certainly haven’t won the so-called evolutionary game. While extreme adaptability lets humans manipulate very different environments to meet our needs, that ability isn’t enough to put humans at the top of the evolutionary ladder.

Take, for instance, ants. “Ants are as or more successful than we are,” Isbell says “There are so many more ants in the world than humans, and they’re well-adapted to where they’re living.”

While ants haven’t developed writing (though they did invent agriculture long before we existed), they’re enormously successful insects. They just aren’t obviously excellent at all of the things humans tend to care about, which happens to be the things humans excel at.

“We have this idea of the fittest being the strongest or the fastest, but all you really have to do to win the evolutionary game is survive and reproduce,” Pobiner said.

Again, I quote myself from my article ‘Human Evolution’.

Evolution is only “directed” in that it favors survival and reproduction by on-going process of trial and error. It is natural to think of humans as “more evolved” than other animals, but this isn’t true in any scientific sense. We are differently evolved, simply adapted to a different environment. It so happened that our intelligence, and the culture and technology that it spawned has turned out to allow us an unprecedented degree of success, and the ability to live in environments that our ancestors couldn’t. But evolution didn’t somehow anticipate this. Evolution does not favor high intelligence or walking upright or use of tools, unless these features aid in the survival and passing on of genes to the next generation.  

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What’s the difference between Chimps, Humans, and Monkeys?  

Monkeys, chimpanzees, and humans are primates. Primates are mammals that are characterized by their advanced cognitive development and abilities, grasping hands and feet, and forward-facing eyes, along with other characteristics. Some primates (including some great apes and baboons) are typically terrestrial (move on the ground) versus arboreal (living in the trees), but all species of primates have adaptations to climb trees. Millions of years ago, primate ancestors evolved different defining characteristics from one another, branching into many species within different groups.

This can get confusing because of the numerous categories of primates: great apes, lesser apes, and Old/New World monkeys, are seemingly similar. All of the groups have similar characteristics, but there are characteristics that separate us. Great apes (humans, chimps, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans) generally have larger brains, larger bodies, and no tail.

There are many different species of monkeys, and what are known as ‘lesser apes’. Lesser apes (gibbons and siamangs) are usually smaller in stature, with thin arms, and a slightly smaller brain. Finally, monkeys are divided into “New World” and “Old World” monkeys. Many Old and New World Monkeys have tails, tend to walk on all fours like a cat or dog, and have the smallest brain out of the groups. Some Old World monkeys include baboons and guenons, while some New World monkeys include Capuchin and spider monkeys!

Now let’s get back to chimpanzees and humans. Humans did not evolve from chimps, as is a frequent misconception. Chimpanzees and humans share a recent common ancestor, and as some of this ancestral population evolved along one line to become modern chimpanzees, others of this ancestor evolved along a line of various species of early human, eventually resulting in Homo sapiens (you and me!). Chimpanzees are genetically closest to humans, and in fact, chimpanzees share about 96% of our DNA. We share more of our DNA with chimpanzees than with monkeys or other groups, or even with other great apes! We also both play, have complex emotions and intelligence, and a very similar physical makeup.

In her research, Dr. Goodall made a revolutionary discovery when she observed that the chimps in Gombe were making and using tools. It was groundbreaking because it meant redefining everything that scientists thought they knew about what separated humans and chimpanzees! Furthermore, this redefined the notion that humans lived “outside” of the animal kingdom, and instead placed humans alongside the rest of animal-kind. It has also led to the revelation that other animals also make and use tools, have emotions, intelligence and sentience. Chimpanzees, more than any other living creature, have helped us to understand that there is no sharp line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. It’s a very blurry line, and it’s getting more blurry all the time.

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DNA:

Through news accounts and crime stories, we’re all familiar with the fact that the DNA in our cells reflects each individual’s unique identity and how closely related we are to one another. The same is true for the relationships among organisms. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the molecule that makes up an organism’s genome in the nucleus of every cell. It consists of genes, which are the molecular codes for proteins – the building blocks of our tissues and their functions.  It also consists of the molecular codes that regulate the output of genes – that is, the timing and degree of protein-making. DNA shapes how an organism grows up and the physiology of its blood, bone, and brains. DNA is thus especially important in the study of evolution. The amount of difference in DNA is a test of the difference between one species and another – and thus how closely or distantly related they are.

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Primate Family Tree:

Due to billions of years of evolution, humans share genes with all living organisms. The percentage of genes or DNA that organisms share records their similarities. We share more genes with organisms that are more closely related to us. Humans belong to the biological group known as Primates, and are classified with the great apes, one of the major groups of the primate evolutionary tree. Besides similarities in anatomy and behavior, our close biological kinship with other primate species is indicated by DNA evidence. It confirms that our closest living biological relatives are chimpanzees and bonobos, with whom we share many traits. But we did not evolve directly from any primates living today. DNA also shows that our species and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor species that lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. The last common ancestor of monkeys and apes lived about 25 million years ago. The amazing story of adaptation and survival in our species, Homo sapiens, is written in the language of our genes, in every cell of our bodies—as well as in the fossil and behavioral evidence.

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While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up?  All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA.

Geneticists have come up with a variety of ways of calculating the percentages, which give different impressions about how similar chimpanzees and humans are. The 1.2% chimp-human distinction, for example, involves a measurement of only substitutions in the base building blocks of those genes that chimpanzees and humans share. A comparison of the entire genome, however, indicates that segments of DNA have also been deleted, duplicated over and over, or inserted from one part of the genome into another. When these differences are counted, there is an additional 4 to 5% distinction between the human and chimpanzee genomes.

No matter how the calculation is done, the big point still holds: humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos are more closely related to one another than either is to gorillas or any other primate. From the perspective of this powerful test of biological kinship, humans are not only related to the great apes – we are one. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes.

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The strong similarities between humans and the African great apes led Charles Darwin in 1871 to predict that Africa was the likely place where the human lineage branched off from other animals – that is, the place where the common ancestor of chimpanzees, humans, and gorillas once lived. The DNA evidence shows an amazing confirmation of this daring prediction. The African great apes, including humans, have a closer kinship bond with one another than the African apes have with orangutans or other primates. Hardly ever has a scientific prediction so bold, so ‘out there’ for its time, been upheld as the one made in 1871 – that human evolution began in Africa. The DNA evidence informs this conclusion, and the fossils do, too. Even though Europe and Asia were scoured for early human fossils long before Africa was even thought of, ongoing fossil discoveries confirm that the first 4 million years or so of human evolutionary history took place exclusively on the African continent. It is there that the search continues for fossils at or near the branching point of the chimpanzee and human lineages from our last common ancestor.

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Shocking DNA similarities between Humans and Other Species:

Our bodies have 3 billion genetic building blocks, or base pairs (bp), that make us who we are. And of those 3 billion base pairs, only a tiny amount are unique to us, making us about 99.9% genetically similar to the next human. A recent TED talk by physicist and entrepreneur Riccardo Sabatini demonstrated that a printed version of your entire genetic code would occupy some 262,000 pages, or 175 large books. Of those pages, just about 500 would be unique to us. This is because large chunks of our genome perform similar functions across the animal kingdom. Humans are 99.9% similar to the person sitting next to us. The rest of those genes tell us everything from our eye color to whether we’re predisposed to certain diseases.

-A 2005 study found that chimpanzees — our closest living evolutionary relatives — are 96% genetically similar to humans.

-Cats are more like us than you’d think. A 2007 study found that about 90% of the genes in the Abyssinian domestic cat are similar to humans.

-When it comes to protein-encoding genes, mice are 85% similar to humans. For non-coding genes, it’s only about 50%. The National Human Genome Research Institute attributes this similarity to a shared ancestor about 80 million years ago.

-Domesticated cattle share about 80% of their genes with humans, according to a 2009 report in the journal Science.

-When it comes to insects’ DNA, humans have a bit less in common. For example, fruit flies share 61% of disease-causing genes with humans, which was important when NASA studied the bugs to learn more about what space travel might do to your genes.

-And while the egg-laying and feathered body are pretty different from a human’s, about 60% of chicken genes have a human gene counterpart.

-Even bananas surprisingly still share about 60% of the same DNA as humans!

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Section-9

Humans are not unique but similar to animals:    

There are many similarities between humans and other animals that you may have noticed. Humans and animals both eat, sleep, have sex and communicate. We are also similar in a lot of the ways our bodies work. But we also have a lot of differences. Are there any differences that set humans apart, uniquely, from all other animals?

Some people think that the main differences between humans other animal species is our ability of complex reasoning, our use of complex language, our ability to solve difficult problems, and introspection (this means describing your own thoughts and feelings). Others also feel that the ability for creativity or the feeling of joy or sorrow is uniquely human. Humans have a highly developed brain that allows us to do many of these things.

But are these things uniquely human?

Gunnison’s prairie dogs seem to have a fairly complex language… rather than just sounding a basic alarm call, researchers have found that their alarm calls can describe specific predator speed, color, shape, and size… So when is this communication complex enough for us to call it a language? Elephants have been found to communicate across miles of land through subsonic sound. And when researchers slow a hummingbird’s chirp down, it seems the song may be as complex as a song from some other birds, though more studies need to be done to understand this. Do we view animal “language” as limited just because we have trouble understanding it?

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Crow solving puzzles:

This Caledonian crow is solving a water level problem. It adds small blocks into columns of water to raise the water level, allowing it access to food. The crow also had to realize that one column was too wide, so the limited blocks wouldn’t raise the water enough. Caledonian crows can solve problems and build tools, and can solve multiple-step puzzles that require a plan. Are these examples of difficult problems? Where do we draw the line to say something is “difficult” enough, or that we’ve given an animal proper motivation to want to even solve one of these problems?

Gorillas and chimpanzees have painted pictures of birds, describing (through sign language) that that is what they were trying to create. If they had a goal in mind and then made it, is that a sign that they had introspection? That they are describing their own thoughts? And that they are doing it by using their own creativity? Seems like it might be.

And animals do appear to feel joy and sorrow. There are videos out there showing a raven using a piece of plastic to sled down part of a snowy roof. The raven picks it up and slides down over and over again… they aren’t playing with another bird, they are enjoying sledding and having fun, perhaps feeling joy. And we continue to learn of more and more species that show sorrow, especially at the loss of members of their family or other loved ones. Animals that grieve include elephants, wolves, sea lions, magpies, and many more. A recent video of javelinas (peccaries that live in the American southwest) show that they mourn their dead. But we didn’t realize this, until it was captured by a field camera.

So maybe there isn’t that much that makes us uniquely human. Maybe we need to pay more attention to what animals are doing, and try to view the world through their eyes. And, perhaps our ability to consider animal’s feelings and hope for the well-being of these other amazing creatures is our best, and most uniquely human ability.

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Everyone must admit that there are striking similarities between men and certain animals! For many people, the leading attraction at the zoo is the monkey house, because monkeys resemble humans more than any other animals do, and it is amusing to watch them! If you were to look at the skeleton of an ape and the skeleton of a person, you would discover many similarities! How can we explain these remarkable similarities? Evolutionists believe that similarity points to a common ancestry. They would say that animals resemble each other because they are related to each other, and thus they believe that resemblance indicates relationship. They would say that man looks like a monkey because he is a near kin to a monkey (related to a monkey through a common ape-like ancestor). Man does not look too much like an elephant, but he looks more like an elephant than he does a jellyfish, so this means that man is more closely related to the elephant than he is to the jellyfish (he is a close cousin to the elephant, but he is a distant relative to the jellyfish). Evolutionists believe that man is related to all plant and animal life because they say that all life began from that first living cell (our original ancestor!) which they think evolved in the primitive ocean many millions of years ago. Thus, evolutionists even believe that we are related to the moss we walk upon, to the mosquitoes which bite us, to the worms we fish with and to the fish we catch with the worms! They believe that all living things can trace their ancestry back to that first living cell.  And they believe that the first living cell somehow evolved from lifeless chemicals.

Below is a diagram of an evolutionary family tree. The base of the trunk represents unknown, primitive forms of life from which all plants and animals arose. This family tree shows how the evolutionists believe that all plants and animals are related to each other.

The theory of evolution (Darwin’s theory) teaches that all life started from a simple one-celled organism and then gradually evolved during millions of years into the complex forms of life that we see today.

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Biological similarity of humans and other animals:

Although humans and animals (technically “non-human animals”) may look different, at a physiological and anatomical level they are remarkably similar. Animals, from mice to monkeys, have the same organs (heart, lungs, brain etc.) and organ systems (respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous systems etc.) which perform the same functions in pretty much the same way. The similarity means that nearly 90% of the veterinary medicines that are used to treat animals are the same as, or very similar to, those developed to treat human patients. There are minor differences, but these are far outweighed by the similarities. The differences can give important clues about diseases and how they might be treated – for instance, if we knew why the mouse with muscular dystrophy suffers less muscle wasting than human patients, this might lead to a treatment for this debilitating and fatal disorder.

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Figure above shows that at a physiological and anatomical level, humans and other animals are remarkably similar.

Humans have always caught diseases from animals. In fact, most new infectious diseases come from wildlife. The HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s originated from great apes, the 2004-07 avian flu pandemic came from birds, and pigs gave us the swine flu pandemic in 2009. More recently, it was discovered severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) came from bats, via civets, while bats also gave us Ebola. The latest Covid-19 pandemic is caused by novel coronavirus that is thought to have stemmed from wildlife. We know that palm civets, mice, dogs, cats, camels, pigs, chickens, bats and a few other types of animals can be infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, but we don’t yet know all of the animals that can get infected.

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We have similarities with an enormous number of animals, going back to fish:

-two eyes

-two ears

-two forelimbs (and yes, fins definitely count)

-two rear limbs

-spinal column or at least a spinal cord type mass

-mouth and GI tract

One thing we share with all animals no matter how basic is DNA, and much of the DNA we have today can be traced directly to strands of similar DNA in similar position which govern similar things in other animals. We are definitely shown to all be related by our DNA.

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There are some human traits found in animals:

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Similarities between Humans and Animals in terms on “Culture” 

One of the main similarities between humans and animals is the ability to express shared attitudes and practices and passing them to the next generation. Humans express their culture through religion, arts, and other social activities, which are passed from one generation to another. It is worth noting that a specific community is recognized through its cultural events. On the other hand, animals have their artistic activities. For example, many primates have their own cultures and traditions such as the rain dances, which some chimpanzee assemblies perform, at the beginning of storms, which are passed from one generation to another.

Similarities between Humans and Animals in terms on “Expressing Emotions”

Both humans and animals express a wide spectrum of emotions owing to various events and experiences or the prevailing circumstances in their surroundings. Human beings live their life moving from one emotional experience to anger, from frustration to euphoria and other emotional skills, which are either positive or negative. Those people who have lived closer to animals understand that they also experience fear, desire, panic, and surprisingly, embarrassment. For example, dolphin mothers have been seen expressing grief after their infants died while elephants will wait to stand for a long time waiting for disabled herd member, which is a show of empathy.

Similarities between Humans and Animals in terms on “Communication”

Both humans and animals have a distinct way through which they communicate with their peers. Humans use verbal, writings, and sign language to communicate their needs, wants, and ideas to another human upon which they will receive a response through any method that suits the recipient. It is important to highlight that language and communication between human beings have been evolving. On the other hand, individual animals use language to communicate about danger, food, and excitement. For example, primates, whales, and birds have been shown to use distinct words and signs to identify objects, and actions. Moreover, chimpanzees even use syntax and grammar.

Similarities between Humans and Animals in terms on “Ability to Remember”

Humans and animals share another similarity in that both use their memories to remember past experiences, which they use to make immediate decisions concerning what they experienced. For example, humans can mentally capture their sensory information at a particular time and store it away for later use. Animals also have memories where they store information for later use. For example, domesticated animals like dogs and cats can remember the taste of food through smell, and they can recognize various commands and the expected response. Some squirrels have excellent spatial memories, allowing them to retain months later where they buried thousands of grains across areas of dozens of square kilometers.

Similarities between Humans and Animals in terms on “Making and Using Tools”

Lastly, both humans and animals have consistently shown that they can make and use tools for their benefits. One of the defining qualities is the ability to use tools to create cities, for farming purposes, and writing among other uses. Some animals have shown the capability to make and use tools for various purposes. Chimpanzees use stones as hammers and anvils and fashion spears for hunting. Additionally, elephants make water vessels to drink water.

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Ways in which chimpanzees and humans are the same! 

Although it is not used much outside of scientific language, we humans are part of the primate order. As one of the great apes, we have relatives in the ape world, some more distant than others. It is the chimpanzee which is considered our closest ‘cousin’, so it is understandable we should share some characteristics with them. Chimpanzees share nearly 96 % of our DNA. In fact, chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. But the similarities we share go beyond our genetic makeup. There are many ways in which chimpanzees and humans are the same!

1. Chimpanzees laugh when tickled. These primates can smile in silence, laugh out loud or burst out laughing, a range and flexibility in communicating positive emotions that until now was thought to be a unique human feature. Everything suggests that facial expressions linked to laughter were already present in our primate ancestors, appearing long before humans evolved. The only smile that for now seems unique to humans is the so-called Duchenne smile, a spontaneous expression that is recognizable by the involuntary contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle —which surrounds the eyes—, whose contraction raises the cheeks and forms wrinkles or “crow’s feet “around the eyes. This is the true and genuine smile and is linked to the activation of the brain’s limbic system -where emotions are generated-, as demonstrated years ago by French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne.
2. Like us, the first five years of a chimp’s life are spent playing, socializing and developing a strong infant-mother bond. Children are not the only ones who spend hours playing and having fun. Chimpanzees spend many hours playing —which ethologists, the behavioral scientists, have defined as any activity that produces no clear or immediate benefits, both during their childhood and their “youth”. Scientists at the University of Pisa (Italy) have demonstrated that social games, that is, those which are not played alone but with other chimpanzees, help them build strong social relationships and develop cooperative attitudes. And as in humans, game modes and playmates change as primates grow up. Among other things, games are more cooperative in early childhood, becoming more competitive as young primates grow older.
3. Though the human brain is larger, it is structurally identical to a chimpanzee’s. This means that chimpanzees are capable of reasoned thought, abstraction and generalization. They can even recognize themselves in a mirror. Chimpanzees have meta-cognition, that is, they are able to reflect on their own thoughts and mental processes, as demonstrated recently by researchers from several US universities in Cognition, the science journal. According to the authors, these primates are aware of what they do and do not know, and based on that they are able to display more or less confidence in their responses and behave accordingly, thus enabling them to make intelligent decisions.
4. They are fair and moral. The sense of right and wrong is not unique to humans. Chimpanzees also discriminate in terms of deciding what behavior is inappropriate, especially when it affects young and baby chimpanzees. In a study carried out at the University of Zurich and which was published in the journal Human Nature, it became evident that if a chimp sees scenes of a baby being harmed or killed by another member of its own species, it reacts with indignation and anger, something which does not happen in cases of violence among adult monkeys. The study indicates that these primates have a sense of morality that is similar to that of humans.

In addition, having played Ultimatum with chimpanzees –this is an experimental economics game that aims to show that choices regarding fairness and equality criteria take precedence over the benefits-, US biologists have demonstrated that these primates share our aversion to injustice. Specifically, chimpanzees tend to make fair and egalitarian offers, and only accept these kinds of offers from their peers. “For chimpanzees -who are very cooperative in the wild-, being sensitive to the equal distribution of rewards represents an evolutionary advantage because cooperation benefits them“, say the authors of the research.

5. They are gourmands. As they have no access to supermarkets or restaurants, chimpanzees are willing to travel any distance to find their favorite ingredients in order to prepare a succulent feast. This was the conclusion reached recently by scientists from Harvard University (USA), also demonstrating that chimpanzees share with humans a preference for cooked rather than raw food, as well as the ability to understand the transformation processes that occur when cooking food. Between the taste of a cooked potato and that of a raw one, primates opt without hesitation for the former. The only thing lacking for them to be considered chefs, researchers say, is controlling fire. Yet if they are given a heated pot or pan, experiments show that they learn immediately how to put it into use.
6. They have numerical memory scan. If you think that humans outperform chimpanzees in all cognitive functions, you are wrong. As it happens, the ability of a young (5 year-old) chimpanzee to remember the numbers displayed on a screen is considerably higher than that of an adult human, according to an experiment conducted at the University of Kyoto (Japan). Scientists attribute this to an equivalent of eidetic or photographic memory, that is, the ability to recall in detail what is seen or heard, which is present in human children and which declines with age.
7. They wage war. Of all the world’s species, humans and chimpanzees are among the only ones who participate in coordinated attacks on other members of their own species. In other words, both species are able to deliberately provoke a war. And in the case of primates, attacks are not caused by interference with humans, which was for some time wrongly thought to be the cause of the signs of aggressiveness displayed by these animals. What moves them to commit violent acts is in fact an adaptive strategy, as was recently concluded by thirty primatologists, based on the analysis of data gathered during five decades of research on conflicts involving chimpanzees. Attacks increase in denser populations and in those in which there is a greater number of males. And the victims are usually members of rival communities.
8. They cultivate friendship. The maxim that states “whoever finds a friend finds a treasure” also applies among chimpanzees. In case of any doubt, just ask Filippo Aureli, who —after a thorough study of the behavior of these primates— concluded that they live surrounded by good friends, that is, “not only unrelated individuals who spend time with them, but who also help them in cases of confrontation, sharing food and collaborating”. They even comfort one another and relieve other group members’ stress, as Aureli and colleagues demonstrated in a study published in PNAS. When choosing a friend, primates are selective. According to a study conducted by the University of Vienna, friendly relations are established between chimpanzees who share certain personality traits. Specifically, the most sociable individuals get along with each other, while other shy chimpanzees seek other equally timid individuals in order to socialize. This resembles the “similarity effect” in humans, which is simply the tendency to have as friends those subjects who resemble ourselves.
9. A chimp’s body is very similar to a human’s. We have the same bones, muscles, nervous system and the same number of fingers and toes. Chimpanzees see and experience the world much as we do. Their sense of sight, smell, hearing and touch are very similar to our own. Chimpanzees use tools. While we may not use them to forage for tasty termites like our primate relatives, they sure do come in handy for just about everything else!
10. Like humans, chimpanzees use body language to communicate. They kiss, hug, pat each other on the back, hold hands and shake their fists. Chimpanzees not only communicate like humans, they also demonstrate a range of emotions including joy, sadness, fear and even empathy.

There are of course many differences between the two species—we stand on two legs, have larger brains and are relatively hairless. But as we discover more and more about our intelligent and playful cousins in the animal kingdom, it is worth reflecting on the astounding number of characteristics we share rather than the differences that separate us. Just as humans deserve safety, protection and love, chimpanzees do too.

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Not So Different:

Molecular biologist Nathan Lents’ new book called Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals is a most interesting and wide-ranging book that focuses on similarities in the behavior and cognitive capacities of nonhuman animals (animals) and human animals (humans). The book’s description reads as follows:

Animals fall in love, establish rules for fair play, exchange valued goods and services, hold “funerals” for fallen comrades, deploy sex as a weapon, and communicate with one another using rich vocabularies. Animals also get jealous and violent or greedy and callous and develop irrational phobias and prejudices, just like us. Monkeys address inequality, wolves miss each other, elephants grieve for their dead, and prairie dogs name the humans they encounter. Human and animal behavior is not as different as once believed.

In Not So Different, the biologist Nathan H. Lents argues that the same evolutionary forces of cooperation and competition have shaped both humans and animals. Identical emotional and instinctual drives govern our actions. By acknowledging this shared programming, the human experience no longer seems unique, but in that loss, we gain a fuller understanding of such phenomena as sibling rivalry and the biological basis of grief, helping us lead more grounded, moral lives among animals, our closest kin. Through a mix of colorful reporting and rigorous scientific research, Lents describes the exciting strides scientists have made in decoding animal behavior and bringing the evolutionary paths of humans and animals closer together. He marshals evidence from psychology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, and ethology to further advance this work and to drive home the truth that we are distinguished from animals only in degree, not in kind.

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Humans are animals too:   

For a very long time, there have been two main camps on animal behavior and animal cognition: exclusivists, who focus on the differences between animals and humans, and inclusivists, who concentrate on similarities between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. This long-running debate goes back millennia, with philosophers like Aristotle and Descartes arguing that humans are the only animals capable of higher-order cognition such as rational thought and language, and equally distinguished thinkers such as Voltaire, Charles Darwin, and David Hume arguing that it is self-evident “that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as man.”

Straddling the bridge between evolutionary biology and cognitive science, University of Vienna cognitive biologist W. Tecumseh Fitch demonstrated that studying our more distant animal relatives is vital to understanding human cognition.

“The core message I want to get across to you today is that in a sense, both of these sides are correct,” Fitch emphasized during his keynote speech at the 2017 International Convention of Psychological Science in Vienna. “And from a modern biological point of view, we really need to turn these ideas on their head and recognize a very simple biological fact: It’s a truism, but people are animals, too.”

A Biology of Shared Fundamentals:

The basis of humans’ biology contains an immense amount of shared fundamentals: Every living thing from bacteria to daffodils shares our basic genetic code, and our nervous system structure is shared with lower-order animals such as flies and worms as well as closer relatives such as bonobos. But of course, every species is unique.

In Fitch’s field of cognitive biology, researchers attempt to make connections between basic evolutionary biology (e.g., Darwin) and the cognitive sciences (e.g., Noam Chomsky and B. F. Skinner). But cognitive biology is not the same field as evolutionary psychology, Fitch clarifies. While evolutionary psychology focuses on the human mind over the relatively short evolutionary period of the last 6 million years, cognitive biology adopts a more expansive approach that goes back much earlier in human evolution. Along with this highly comparative approach, cognitive biologists break down complex traits, such as language or music, into multiple basic components, some of which may be shared among humans and other animals, and some which may be unique to a particular species. Cognitive biologists call this the “divide and conquer” or multicomponent approach, Fitch explained. Based on the presence or absence of these components, we can map a phylogenetic tree that allows researchers to rebuild the evolutionary past of particular cognitive abilities.

Homologs and Analogs:

Humans share many traits with our nearest relatives, the great apes. We share large brains, large body size, long lives, and prolonged childhoods because our common ancestor, which was not a chimp or a gorilla or a human, also had those characteristics. This evolutionary process is called homology: Different species share a set of common traits because they were inherited from a common ancestor. The beauty of homology, Fitch said, is that we can use it to rebuild the past by looking at living species.

In contrast is the process of convergent evolution, in which different species independently adapt similar features. For example, humans and birds are both bipedal, but not because we shared a common two-legged ancestor. Humans and birds adapted to walking on two legs for different reasons at different points in time.

Fitch also pointed out that evolution is often circuitous rather than linear, with adaptations arising and disappearing multiple times across a single given species. For example, most humans and some other primates are trichromats — we possess color vision thanks to three different types of cone cells in our eyes. Most other mammals, on the other hand, are dichromats lacking color vision. If we examined only mammals, it would appear that trichromacy is a highly advanced adaptation that humans share with only a few other highly evolved species. But broadening the comparative net beyond mammals shows that birds not only have trichromacy, but actually possess four different cones — tetrachromacy, he explained. Fish, reptiles, and amphibians also have tetrachromacy, suggesting that that the common ancestor of all living vertebrates was in fact tetrachromatic, and that over time mammals lost the adaptation of color vision. Somewhere along the way, primates — at least some of us — regained back a sort of partial color vision, Fitch said.

Tool use is another adaptation that has evolved multiple times in different clades of animals. Chimps, our nearest living relatives, use tools to fish for termites and crack open nuts. Six million years ago, our common ancestor with chimps also probably used simple tools to perform similar tasks. Through homology, we can imagine the cognitive capabilities of our extinct ancestors.

But primates aren’t the only animals capable of tool use. New Caledonian crows use sharp straight objects in their environment to dig hard-to-reach grubs out of tree trunks. Researchers at the University of Oxford have found that in the lab, these crows will make their own tools by bending pieces of wire into hooked shapes for scooping food out of containers. “These are very smart animals, and they do have the capacity to solve tasks and to go beyond whatever their biological predispositions are in the same way that we can as humans. That’s how we can drive cars and make power drills,” Fitch said. Of course, Fitch added, our common ancestor with crows was not likely a tool user, so this is analogous adaptation.

Signals, Syntax, and Semantics:   

Along with tool use, humans share many cognitive abilities with other species, including the formation of memories, categories, basic emotions such as anger, planning and goal-setting, and rule learning. These kinds of basic nonverbal concepts likely predicated language by many millions of years of evolution. Unlike tool use, language appears to be a trait that only humans possess. However, most of the component parts of language are shared with other species, Fitch said. “The main difference that we have from other species is not that we have something to think about, but that we can communicate what we think about,” he said. Although some chimps and bonobos have learned to sign or communicate with a keyboard, none have ever learned to say “hello” or to sing “Happy Birthday.” This is not because chimps aren’t smart or aren’t able to imitate, but because they have a very limited ability to control their vocalizations and mimic sounds from their environments. One long-running hypothesis for primates’ inability to speak is that they (and other animals) lack the descended larynx that humans possess. Most of the information about animal larynxes, however, has come from dissections of dead animals. As a postdoc, Fitch became interested in the way that living animals communicate. So far, all of the mammals he’s examined lower their larynx to a human-like position while making loud vocalizations; when a dog barks, the larynx retracts down just for the moment of the bark and then it pops back up. “What’s unusual about us is not that we have a descended larynx, just that it’s down all the time,” Fitch explained.

But research suggests it’s not the vocal anatomy that is crucial for language, but rather something in the brain. One long-standing hypothesis is that most mammals have only indirect connections from their motor cortex to the neurons that control the vocal tract, larynx, and tongue. Humans, too, have those neural connections, but also have direct connections from the motor cortex to motor neurons that control the larynx. This is the key that gives humans the control over our vocal tracts that chimps lack.

However, humans aren’t the only animals capable of learning complex vocalizations; vocal learning has independently evolved in bats, elephants, seals, cetaceans, and several different clades of birds. By studying the neural correlates of vocal learning in a broad variety of species, researchers can test for this direct-neural-connections hypothesis. So far, studies have examined two clades of birds — song birds and parrots — and in both cases, the hypothesis held up. Birds with vocal-learning abilities have these direct connections, while birds that aren’t vocal learners, such as doves or chickens, do not.

Syntax: The Heart of Language:

Delving deeper into the subject of communication, Fitch said that syntax, the set of rules that determines the meaning of a sentence, is really at the heart of language. Beyond the spoken word, humans are able to use language in many forms: sign language and writing, for example, are possible because of our ability to use advanced syntax. Apes may not be able to talk, but they can learn and express hundreds of words through signs or keyboards. Despite mastering a large vocabulary, however, the level of syntax they obtain is approximately that of a 2-year-old child — basically, they have the ability to put two words together. Although it’s a very limited level of syntax, it’s still syntax, so there is something there in common with human language.

Humans don’t interpret language as just a string of words in a sequence; crucially, we are able to interpret these sequences as having a higher-order hierarchical structure. Fitch and colleagues are trying to determine which language components different organisms possess by examining their ability to learn simple grammar structures versus more complex ones.

So far, comparative experiments have shown that this ability to use hierarchical syntax may be unique to humans. In one series of experiments, researchers attempted to teach hierarchical grammar to two different species of birds: pigeons and keas. Keas are a type of parrot native to New Zealand, and they’re known for being extremely clever. Rather than using recordings of speech, the researchers trained the birds to recognize different visual patterns of abstract shapes. Even the pigeons — not the smartest birds — were able to master the simple sequential patterns, but although they underwent weeks of intensive training, both groups of birds failed to learn the more complex grammar.

“So where this leaves us right now is: lots of different species have been shown to do very finite-state grammars [and] simpler sequential grammars, but right now, the only good evidence of going beyond that to the hierarchical grammar is for human beings,” Fitch said.

What exactly allows humans to take this linguistic leap? Fitch suspects that humans have developed a cognitive proclivity for inferring tree-like structures from sequences that are difficult or impossible for other animals. According to his dendrophilia hypothesis, humans’ unique aptitude with syntax comes from automatically interpreting sequences into branching hierarchical chunks. To get to this next level of grammar, humans may have evolved an additional form of abstract memory that allows us to keep track of phrases even after they’re over, Fitch suggested. To enable this new adaptation, human brains may have beefed up the requisite neutral structures for processing language. Fitch pointed out that Broca’s area is seven times larger in humans relative to chimps, making it the most expanded area of the human brain compared with chimps that we know about. In addition, it is far more interconnected to other brain structures in humans than in other primates.

“For me, the most exciting possibility is again in syntax,” Fitch concluded. “We share a lot, but a relatively small difference in terms of brain architecture made a big difference in cognitive ability.”

Humans are biological creatures, as much as crocodiles, cougars, and capybara. We are the product of millions of years of evolution, our physical make-up changing to make us fitter to survive and reproduce. However, although humans are animals, we also have something that no other animal has: the most complex social structure on Earth. We gather in families, tribes, clans, nations. We have an incredibly sophisticated method of interacting — speech. We can communicate over time and distance through printing and broadcasting. Our memories are the longest, our interactions the most intricate, our perception of the world simultaneously the broadest and most detailed. The combination of biology and society is what makes us what we are and do what we do. Biology guides our responses to stimuli, based on thousands of generations of ancestors surviving because of their responses. Our social structures dictate restrictions on and alterations in how we carry out our biological responses. Neither biology nor society stands without the other. For some people, this is a contradiction — either nature (biology) controls people, or nurture (society) does. But in fact we filter everything through both to determine how we react to stimuli.

Dolphins have ‘human-like’ societies:  

Whales and dolphins live in human-like societies and share similar brain evolution to primates and man, scientist have concluded. A new study which looked at 90 species found a link between brain size and social and cultural traits in marine mammals. It is the first time that scientists have considered whether ‘social brain hypothesis’ applies to whales and dolphins, as well as humans. The theory suggests that intelligence developed as a means of coping with large and complex social groups. Just like humans, whales and dolphins live in tightly-knit social groups, cooperate with other species, talk to each other and even have regional dialects. They also engage in cooperative hunting, and pass on their skills to younger members. Some even have signature whistles, which are believed to represent names, so they can call to individuals….

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What behaviours say that humans are just animals?

1. Herd Mentality: Humans, in a large group, behave more or less like cattle or small birds in the face of a threat. We instinctively know that the safest place to be in a danger situation is with as many other people between us and the threat as possible. When there’s an initial shock, we instinctively go into a defensive crouch, look around to identify the threat, then either turn to face it or run like hell.
2. Mating Rituals/Obsession with Sex: As sophisticated and separate from our primal instincts as we think we are, it’s still all about sex and survival. Studies show that, even though there’s a cultural taboo about it being applied too explicitly, women are attracted to wealthy men because it indicates a good provider, while men are attracted to the three “critical measurements” (bust, waist, hips) because they indicate health, youth and the ability to bear and care for children. We dress up for each other to flaunt what we got, we dance for each other to prove our fitness and coordination, we fight with and even kill each other over romantic partners, and there’s even good evidence that women are more attracted to men, and even more attractive to men at a chemical level, when they’re near ovulation than at other times.
3. Maternal Instinct: We all know the stereotype of the “Mama Bear” human mother, taken directly from the maternal instincts of a very dangerous animal. In both species, if you make her kid cry for Mama, you’ll have more than you bargained for to deal with. In species where the male sticks around, you often have him to deal with too. There’s little logic to the magnitude of the reaction at the time it occurs, but there’s plenty of logic behind it, and it’s seen in virtually every animal species with a protracted maturation period, including cats, dogs/wolves, bears, large grazers like elephants and rhinos, and in primates, including humans.
4. Learning by Observation/Mimicry: The young of virtually every mammal, including humans, do the majority of their early learning during maturation by watching the grownups and mimicking what they do. Humans are no different. Babies learn to smile because they watch every other face they see smile at them, and when they do it back they get a positive reaction. If you’ve ever been in the same room with a two-year-old, you can be driven crazy by their repetition of the last few words or syllables you say, and their following behind you, re-doing everything you do, picking up something and moving it between two places because they saw you rearranging things around the house. But it’s a necessary component of animal learning; they don’t yet know why something’s done, they just know it’s something the grownups do, so they probably should as well. This stage of learning, and the deep lessons it ingrains on the mind of the person, are part of a reason why physical forms of punishment are so discouraged; all it teaches is that you hurt people who do things you don’t like.
5. Sleep Cycle: Practically every known mammal has a sleep/awake cycle. They don’t all resemble humans’; many animals are nocturnal, most, even when awake, are relatively inactive, and a few get by on only a couple hours of sleep a day (sometimes even sleeping in bursts of a few seconds; a lot of marine mammals sleep this way because falling too deeply asleep for too long in an environment where you can’t breathe is kind of a bad thing). We’re not 100% sure why we sleep; it’s thought that key processes in healing and growth occur during sleep, and in humans it’s thought that sleep is a way for the brain to process the memories gathered while awake and transition them from “short-term memory” to “long-term memory” by strengthening neural pathways through reuse (creating dreams as the exercise of these pathways brings the data back to processing centers in the brain). The restorative function of sleep may be a consequence of the enhanced removal of potentially neurotoxic waste products that accumulate in the awake central nervous system.

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Let us look at some of the most striking similarities between humans and animals.

1. Humans and Animals both have similar social skills.

It is quite surprising but animals have the same social skills as those of humans and in some cases even better. Dogs especially have genes that are very similar to humans and they pick and choose their social groups according to a specific preference.

2. We have facial expression similar to that of a mouse.

Humans have very similar facial expressions to mouse. In a recent study it was found that mouse makes the same expression as that of humans when in pain. The results are useful to detect when the lab experiment mouse are really suffering.

3. We talk things while sleeping just like dolphins.

Dolphins, like humans are found to have the trait of speaking while sleeping at night. Various studies and experiments were conducted by French researchers and the results were sparking. Dolphins do talk in the night’s sleep.

4. Just like Humans, Cows also have regional accents.

This is another one of those striking similarities. Cows are studied to have different accents in respect to different geographical locations. Their isolation in different regions has made them develop different sounds of “MOO”.

5. Dolphins, just like Humans get occasionally high.

We humans are not alone in this one, taking intoxicated stuff to relieve some pressure and tension. Dolphins pass Puffer Fish between their bodies for around 30 minutes. The Puffer fish releases a chemical for its defense which helps Dolphins in getting high.

6. We have ears similar to that of Katydid.

Katydid is an insect which has ears similar to that of a human. Humans have very complex ear structure and no other animals have such complexities in their bodies. But in a recent research it was found that Katydid had the same functioning ears and they can listen to a greater range as compared to humans.

7. The religious similarities.

Some animals like humans are also found out to follow certain religious practices. The most prevalent among those is that of chimps. They were studied to place rocks under certain structures which made no practical sense but a certain religious sense.

8. Like Humans some Animals are also homosexual.

While most of the humans and animals are bisexual, there are certain humans who are homosexual. In the Animal world as well, sheep are mostly Gay. Another striking similarity.

9. The communication skills.

Gibbons are believed to have similar communication skills as those of humans. Researchers have even discovered usage of many different words in their languages.

10. House building skills.

Octopus has a similar level of house building skills to that of a human. They are very skillful and similar to humans in this respect. Their houses have all the necessary arrangements plus the needed protection.

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Are we the only ones who vote, drink, sleep around, eavesdrop on conversations?

Every animal does the same thing. So, why not see the world through a new lens and realize that all of us are the same. It will make it easier for you not to make them suffer, or tolerate people and decisions that make them suffer. Identifying traits of animals that are similar to human beings will help people empathize with animals:

1. A study by psychologists in McGill University and the University of British Columbia, Canada, published in Nature Methods, shows that mice, like humans, express pain through facial expressions in the same way humans do. Scientists do their pain research on mice, which means subjecting them to terrible cruelty. Scientists have developed a Mouse Grimace Scale which shows that as the pain increases the mouse shows the same contortions of the face that humans show. Five facial features are scored: orbital tightening (eye closing), nose and cheek bulges and ear and whisker positions, according to the severity of the stimulus.
2. When a human male proposes, he offers a precious stone to his beloved. So does a penguin. According to Edinburgh zoo studies, pebbles are the most prized possession of Adelie penguins, equivalent to diamonds for humans. Adelie penguins use pebbles to make their nests and help keep their eggs afloat in the freezing water. Because they live on the frozen, barren Antarctica coast, these are scarce. Penguins are notorious for stealing each other pebbles and fighting over them. During courtship, the male will present the female with a pebble as a gift. If the female accepts the generous gift, they mate for life. But, like humans, female penguins, whether they are single or attached, will provide sex for stones, as the BBC recorded in Deep into the Wild series. The prostitution starts with the female penguin flirting with the male penguin. She will initiate a courtship ritual by joining him at his site and “head-bowing” to him. This is soon followed by copulation. After that, the female penguin will take a stone from his nesting site and return to her nest. Sometimes, she will come back for even more stones which the male will allow her to take.
3. The Royal Science Open Society scientists discovered that the chimps in Guinea frequently drink fermented palm sap, naturally-occurring alcohol, that human locals are also partial to. The chimps also use utensils to gather and drink this liquor, namely, crushed leaves they used as “sponges” to sop it up and move it to their mouths—often in such copious quantities that some of them actually get drunk.
4. Chickens value social status and each group has a very strict power hierarchy. When roosters mate with females, according to a study done by Oxford University and printed in The American Naturalist, the hens selectively eject sperm, from their reproductive tracts, from roosters who are low in rank, making sure that they only bear chicks from superior ranking fathers rather than from low-status ones. Both sexes mate with multiple partners. Hens sometimes don’t have a choice in choosing mates. They prefer important males, but other roosters with lower status will force them — the females are half their size — to mate. Rather than attempts to fight off undesirable mates, hens have developed a more subtle way to reject them. Humans employ similar tactic. The risk for pregnancy after rape is approximately 6%-7%. Emergency contraceptive (EC) pills are used to prevent pregnancy after rape.
5. Are humans the only ones that vote? Red deer of Eurasia live in large herds, either grazing or sitting down. Some deer are ready to move on before others are, but, research by biologists Conradt and Roper have noted that herds only move when 60 percent of the adults stand up — essentially voting with their feet. Even if a dominant individual is more experienced, and makes fewer mistakes than its underlings, herds typically favour democratic decisions over autocratic ones. African buffalo also make group decisions about when and where to move. Researchers realized that what looked like random stretching is actually voting behaviour in which females indicate their travel preferences by standing up, staring in one direction and then lying back down. “Only adult females vote, regardless of their social status within the herd,” biologist David Sloan Wilson writes. The herd moves always in the direction of the majority gaze.

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Human courtship just as elaborate as animal courtship:

In the game of life, survival is only part of the battle. One must also succeed in attracting a suitable mate. Animals use a broad range of strategies to advertise themselves in the mating market. In some instances, visual cues highlight a morphological feature – for example, the peacock’s tail. Auditory courtship displays are common across many types of animal, including birds (song), frogs (vocalisation), monkeys (calls), whales (song) and crocodiles (bellowing). Many species employ visual and auditory cues as part of their elaborate courtship displays. Specific behaviours are also part of the signalling repertoire and might include fighting (rams), dancing (red-capped manakin), applying make-up (flamingos) or creating art (satin bowerbird). In some instances, courtship displays take place within a communal space known as a lek.

Heterosexual humans exhibit traits and behaviours that are at times analogous to those expressed by animals. Specifically, humans use sex-specific products as sexual signals (e.g. men show off their luxury sports cars and women beautify themselves). Researchers examined how men’s product-related showing off affects their testosterone levels. For example, young men drove a Porsche and an old sedan in downtown Montreal (a human lek) and on a deserted motorway (non-lek). After each test, researchers collected salivary assays to measure possible fluctuations in their testosterone levels. In both settings, men’s testosterone levels increased significantly after driving the Porsche, as this endocrinological response corresponds to that experienced by individuals who win intrasexual competitions. In addition to serving as a conduit for peacocking, luxury cars alter men’s perceived morphological features.

Although in most species males are more likely than females to engage in elaborate forms of sexual signalling, this does not imply that females don’t do so as well. When in oestrus, females of many species exhibit visual cues – for instance, enlarged and engorged genitalia – to communicate sexual receptivity. Miami University’s researchers tested this principle in the context of women’s beautification practices. They reasoned that women’s menstrual cycles should affect the extent to which they advertise themselves via beautification acts, such as wearing cosmetics. They tracked behaviours, preferences, desires and purchases across 35 consecutive days (the average menstrual cycle is 28 days). Beautification, behaviours and purchases were greater in the maximally fertile phase of their cycles.

In a wide array of species, nuptial gifts are central to the courtship ritual because of their signalling value. In many instances, food is the gift of choice. The calories-for-sex trade is replete in the animal kingdom, but perhaps the most “romantic” instantiation of this phenomenon is sexual cannibalism – largely found among spider and insect species – wherein males are devoured during copulation. For humans, gift giving is a universal ritual laden with evolutionary implications. Men are more likely to offer gifts for tactical, mostly signalling reasons: displaying financial resources; creating a good impression; and showing signs of long-term interest as a means of seduction.

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Is Homo sapiens the only species that has decoupled sex from reproduction?

Enjoying sex might seem like a uniquely human experience, yet while we are reluctant to consider pleasure in other animals, we are certainly not the only animals that engage in non-reproductive sex. Zoo behaviour is often weird, as animals in captivity are far from their natural environment, but there are two male bears in Zagreb zoo who enjoy a daily act of fellatio, while simultaneously humming. Some goats perform auto‑fellatio (which, according to the famous Kinsey Report on sexual behaviours, 2.7% of men have successfully attempted). Males of some 80 species, and females of around 50 species of primates are frequent masturbators. Some behaviours reflect deviant or criminal sexual behaviours, such as sea otters who drown females and then keep their bodies to copulate with. The award for sheer ingenuity goes to the dolphins: there is one reported case of a male masturbating by wrapping an electric eel around his penis.

Some – not all – of these seemingly familiar sexual practices can be explained readily. Male Cape ground squirrels are promiscuous, and masturbate after copulation, we think, for hygiene reasons, protecting themselves from sexually transmitted diseases by flushing their tubes. Other behaviour is still mysterious to us: giraffes spend most of their time sexually segregated, and the vast majority of sexual relations appear to be male-to-male penetration. As with the myriad examples of sexual behaviour between members of the same sex, it demonstrates that homosexuality – once, and in many places to this day, decried as a crime against nature – is widespread.

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HUMAN IS ANIMAL: hyponym or metaphor:

One view suggests that what we share with animals is much more important than what we don’t share. Or we might opt for various kinds of metaphorical interpretation. Depending on one’s beliefs and ideology, one might see more or fewer grounds of similarity between the humans and the animals/apes. So if one were to see many salient and important grounds the metaphor would, perhaps, approximate to a literal statement, paraphrased, “Humans are more or less animals/apes.” At the other extreme the differences would be more important than the similarities so the interpretation would be ‘Humans are in a few minor respects similar to animals/apes.’ Human nature could be much more dependent on culture, society, discourse, language, symbolism, indeed, metaphor itself. There are, of course, various mid-points between these two extremes.

So there are at least three interpretations of “humans are animals.” Humans are one kind of animal; Humans are more or less animals; Humans are not animals but are in some/few respects like animals.

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Human as a kind of Animal or More or Less Animal—Selfish, Competitive, and Aggressive:

Laland and Brown in Sense and nonsense (2002) give a table summarizing the various attempts within zoology and evolutionary social theory to impose MAN IS ANIMAL as a more or less literal hyponymic statement. All these approaches regard humans as sophisticated animals.

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What Are Human Beings?*

* (Laland and Brown, 2002, p. 302)

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In sociobiology, from which most of these theories stem, humans are simply sophisticated animals. It follows that animal behavior is natural to humans, and socio-biology generally regards it as competitive and aggressive. Lorenz in On aggression (1963) claimed that “fighting and war are the natural expression of human instinctive aggression” (quoted in Laland and Brown, 2002, p. 60). Thornhill and Palmer, in The natural history of rape, suggest that “rape . . . should be viewed as a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage” (quoted in Ryan, 2002, p. 254). Sociobiologists have linked aggression to DNA. In Demonic males: Apes and the origins of human violence Wrangham and Peterson (1996) find a natural inclination of the human male to be aggressive—to be “demonic.” This inclination is “written in the molecular chemistry of DNA” (p. 63).

According to Dawkins’ The selfish gene (1990) human behavior can be explained by the drive to pass on our genes, and this explains why we favor relatives, with whom we share more genes, over others who share less genetic material. “If you accept that evolution is all about selfish genes, the group has no role to play. Survival of the fittest means survival of the fittest DNA. There is no such thing as society.” (Lynn Dicks, quoted in Ryan, 2002, p. 242).

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Humans may be in many respects like Animals, but Ideally are Different:

There is a long tradition, in Western philosophy and cosmology, of regarding animals as inferior to humans. The classical and medieval view is well summed up by Tillyard in The Elizabethan world picture (1959). Topmost in the hierarchy were purely spiritual beings, God and the angels. Just below them, and in an ambiguous situation, were humans, partly spiritual and partly animal. They had the free will to choose between these two natures, and the main feature distinguishing them from animals was their ability to use reason to control their will. By foregoing reason and abandoning themselves to irrational emotion, they would become like animals, and descend in the hierarchy (Lakoff & Turner, 1989).

The Medieval Hierarchy of Being:

1. GOD
2. ANGELS
3. MAN
4. ANIMALS
5. PLANTS, MINERALS

The idea of the superiority of humans over animals was boosted by Lamarckian views of evolution, in which later forms were thought superior. Each species could then move up the ‘chain of being’, which culminated in human beings. . . . Lamarck’s view of evolution was linear and progressive, with species having an inherent striving to evolve greater complexity, with the pinnacle of creation being human beings. (Laland & Brown, 2002, p. 40). Darwin, too, is constantly using the word “improvement” to talk about natural selection and readily adopted Spencer’s phrase “the survival of the fittest”.

The biologist Romanes, in 1882, made an interesting comparison between phylogenetic development, the evolutionary development of life forms, and ontogenetic development, the development of the individual human during the early stages of its life, as shown in Table below:

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A Comparison of Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Development:

* (Laland and Brown, 2002, p. 45)

This widespread and persistent view that humans are somehow at the pinnacle of creation has given rise to a general pattern among HUMAN IS ANIMAL metaphors: the great majority are negative and pejorative.

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The issue addressed above was to what extent HUMAN IS ANIMAL is a statement of hyponymy (‘a human is a kind of animal’) or a near identity statement (‘humans are more or less animals’), or whether it is a metaphor of some kind (‘humans are like animals’), and if the latter, what the grounds of comparison are and how extensive they are (Table below).

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Summary of Approaches to the HUMAN IS ANIMAL Statement/Metaphor:

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The most common animal metaphors for humans are pejorative, suggesting that it is desirable to distance ourselves from animals, both conceptually and emotionally. But those arguing from an opposite direction, espousing the naturalistic fallacy, suggest that it is pointless to appeal to cultural or religious values for which there is no instinctual basis.

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By studying animal behaviour we gain an insight into our own:

In the field of animal behaviour, there is one topic that is almost guaranteed to get your study in the popular press: showing how an animal behaves just like humans. This can be solving problems, using tools, acting pessimistically when feeling down, or taking care of their grandchildren. People love stories of seemingly clever animals.

Yet people usually only consider this comparison from one side: they are amazed that any other animals can be as intelligent, emotional or altruistic as humans can be. They never really consider what this comparison means for how we understand ourselves.

For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to understand what makes us unique. But people often forget that humans are not alone in being unique. Every species on the planet has some features that it shares with other species, and some that make it stand out. What the evolutionary approach allows us to do is to investigate which features or traits are shared with others and what that sharing tells us about the species in question.

Species can share a trait for two reasons: either the species are closely related and they have inherited the trait from their common ancestor, or the shared trait is an adaptation to similar evolutionary pressures. Both of these ways of looking at similarities can be enlightening when trying to understand the nature of humans.

Take a look at similarities derived from common ancestry. Everybody expects chimpanzees (and bonobos) to be similar to us, because they are our closest relatives. So when we look at them, we usually focus on the ways in which we differ from them. After all, any traits we don’t share with them must have evolved in our own lineage, and therefore be uniquely human.

There are two problems with this. First, any differences between us and chimps are just as likely to be due to changes in chimps since our last common ancestor as they are changes in us. So we can only start concluding that a trait has evolved through the human lineage if chimps share their traits with other apes and maybe even other primates, but we don’t.

Second, just because humans are the only primate that has a certain trait does not mean that trait is uniquely human. One obvious example is vocal learning. As far as we know, humans are the only primates who learn to make the sounds that comprise their means of communicating with one another. We call this trait “vocal learning”, and it is the basis for human speech and language. However, there are many other groups throughout the animal kingdom that learn their vocalisations, for example parrots and songbirds seals and dolphins. So we’re far from unique in this case.

Situations like this allow us to use the natural experiment of evolution to understand the conditions under which vocal learning can evolve and apply this to human evolution as well.

In songbirds for example, song learning might have evolved through sexual selection – from females preferring mates with complex songs. Those males who could mimic sounds composed more complex songs, which gave their genes a better chance of being passed to the next generation. Analogously, some have suggested that human vocal learning may have originally evolved as a male sexual display, in other words singing. This is just one possibility, but it illustrates how comparative approaches can tell us more about ourselves.

Another example is that many animals, from pigs to bees, will act “pessimistically”, that is, respond as if they expect the worst following a bad experience. This is a common characteristic of humans in low mood as well. It’s still not clear what these animals experience subjectively, but the findings do give us a much deeper insight into why we respond to negative experiences the way we do. Increased caution after a bad experience may well be an evolutionary adaptation that increases our chances of survival.

So comparative approaches help us test hypotheses about ourselves that otherwise would remain pure speculation. It has long been thought that human females live long after the menopause, when they stop being fertile, in order to raise their children and grandchildren to adulthood. So this explanation would predict finding similar behaviour in other long-lived animals with similarly long-developing young as humans. And that is exactly what was found in killer whales (although it was not easy data to obtain), a corroboration that makes the explanation more likely in the case of humans too.

So next time you read a story about clever animals that are just like us, try to think about what this says about us and our, not their, evolutionary history. For a greater appreciation of the complexities of nature, try looking at both sides of the coin.

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Section-10

Humans are unique, different from animals:

[The counterview of section-9] 

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Difference between Humans and Animals:

Anatomically, humans are quite similar to most other animals as we share a common body structure. For instance, the hand of a bat and the hand of a human are considered homologous as a result of shared ancestry. From a biological perspective, humans are animals, as we share quite a few anatomical and physiological similarities with them—however, enough differences to exist to separate us from other animals. 

Following are some of the important difference between humans and animals:

Humans	Animals
Humans belong to the species “Homo sapiens”	Animals cover a number of species.
Humans are omnivores.	Most animals are either herbivores or carnivores. Animals like bears are omnivores.
The average human brain weighs 1.2 kgs	Brain size varies across species – with the largest ones weighing in at 6.92 kgs (blue whales) and the smallest ever belonging to the ragworm, measuring just under 180 micrometres across (equal to the width of a human hair)
Just like animals, humans are also driven by instincts. However, we can also reason.	Animals are primarily driven by instincts.
Modern humans are bipedal.	Most vertebrates are quadrupedal, i.e., they walk on four legs. Few animals such as snakes crawl. The aquatic organisms have fins to swim.
Humans have “true language” to express themselves.	Animals communicate with each other; however, none have the complexity nor the expressiveness of the human language.

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Humans have long been the rulers of all creation. We are above all other animals on this Earth. We completely and totally rule over all creatures. Even though we may share some characteristics, and even some anatomical similarities, humans and animals are vastly different.

There are several things that make humans different from other animals. Most of these differences are easily seen.

1. Humans bury/cremate their dead out of respect. When a human die, we all feel sad emotions if we felt a strong bond with that person. We often have elaborated burial ceremonies to show respect for our dead. However, animals rarely do such a thing. Only a few animals have been observed to throw a few leaves on their dead. But animals do not routinely bury their dead like us humans.
2. Animals are mostly driven on instincts. We humans also have instincts, however, we can control them much better. We are mostly driven by reason. Animals are driven much more by instincts, and only use some reasoning. They have it pre-programmed in their minds from birth on what to do in many situations. Isn’t that amazing? Most animals from birth know what foods to eat and how to eat them. They know how to reproduce, where to migrate, and more. Even a baby turtle comes out of its shell and immediately knows to swim towards the ocean.
3. Humans are aware of “self,” and contemplate the afterlife. Other animals do not think of the afterlife. They tend to live in the “now.” They live in the heat of the moment. Their main goals all day long are to eat, sleep, mate, and survive. Humans, however, spend a lot of time thinking of the future, past, and present. We think about ourselves and how we relate to life. We think of what happens when we die.
4. Humans feel a sense of right and wrong and good and evil. We all have a basic conscience. Animals kill and never think twice. They kill for food, and they kill based on instincts. They do not stop to think about if they have “sinned.” When a human murder another human, it is out of evil pre-meditation. We know better, but we murder someone anyways. That is a huge difference. Most animals kill purely to eat, or to defend themselves.
5. Humans have a complex language and communication method– Humans can talk, write, read facial expressions, gestures, and more. Some can even speak multiple languages. Animals do communicate, but they cannot communicate with the level of a human.
6. Humans use their brains in much more complex ways– The cognitive abilities of a human compared to an animal is incredible. Humans can critically think, invent, find solutions to problems, and much more. Animals are much more simple-minded. An anteater looks for ants all day. A bear gets in the water and slaps salmon out. They never stop to think of a more efficient way of doing things. The bear never creates a net or constructs a fishing pole. They find something that works, and will continue doing it. Humans will always seek out more efficient ways, and even invent complex tools. Again, this gets back to our more complex mental faculties. 
7. Technology– We humans have the ability to quickly learn new technology, and adapt and use that technology. We can create machines and computers that help us to do work more efficiently. Even the most complex animals do not share this feature. The only tool you will likely ever see an animal use is a stick or a rock. And even then they look confused and clumsy with it.

These are just a few examples, but there are so many differences between humans and animals. These differences range from anatomical structures, physiology, and even brain power. Our minds are set up in a way so that we are radically different from every animal. Even monkeys pale in comparison to a human being, and no other creature will ever rival our human intelligence.

Animals are designed to do specific things. From birth, they immediately begin doing things that have been pre-programmed into their minds. Many animals can stand and walk just minutes after birth. Yet it takes humans up to a year or more to learn how to walk. Animals can hunt and kill food almost immediately in many cases. Some breast feed for only a few days, weeks, or months. They can then go out and capture their own foods. Humans, however, must be fed for years by parents. It is a bit strange considering that humans are the most intelligent creatures alive, yet they require the most care up until about our teenage years.

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Human Society and Animal Society:

Society is not limited to human beings alone. There are actually animal societies of varying degrees. It is not man only who wants to live in society and exhibit natural sociality but ants, termites, birds, monkeys, apes and countless other animals also are moved to live in society by the requirements of their nature.

Need of Society for Animals:

Sexual Instinct:

The first instinct that leads animals like human beings to form society is the instinct of perpetuation of their species. Sex instinct is equally prevalent among the animals. For the satisfaction of sexual instinct and reproductive urge animals need co-habitation.

Physical needs:

Secondly, animals need society for protection, comfort and nurture.

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Socio-cultural differences between human and animal society:

From the socio-cultural viewpoint, the human society differs from the animal society in the following respects:

1. Human Society is a society of civilized and cultured beings:

It is obvious that animals also live in society for certain purposes. However, the human society differs from animal society both in degree and kind. The human society is a society of civilized and cultured beings.  It satisfies not only the physical but also the cultural needs of man. It is a higher stage of society in which men behave towards one another in ways determined by the laws of the land and are clearly conscious of the social awareness and social contact that exist among them as members of society. On the other hand, an animal society is a society of beasts who are far removed from any degree of civilization. The needs of animals are few and mostly physical which are met by inherited mechanisms. The needs of human society are met by cultural transmission.

2. Animal society is based on instincts:

Animal society is mainly based on instincts or reflex behaviour, whereas human society is based on reason or rational behaviour. There are no rights and duties in animal society. Every animal lives upon his physical powers whereas human society has a wonderful system of law and order.

3. Social Awareness:

The animals live in society but are not conscious of it. The degree of social awareness is extremely dim. They lack the ability to perceive logical relations between things and the power of integrating (not merely associating) various order of things through mental synthesis. Of course, it may be said that bees show a remarkable degree of organization and therefore, intelligence in building their hexagonal cells for storing honey or that the birds evince a high degree of understanding in building their nest, singing their songs and protecting themselves against the huntsmen, yet nobody would grant to bees, birds or animals more intelligence than to man. Their division of labour is not learned, it is based upon biological specialization. Their societies are the sole result of biological evolution, rather than social evolution. The way in which animals perform their work is quasi-mechanical and stereo-typed whereas the work of man, even if it is inferior, is done with forethought and understanding.

4. Mode of Organization:

The animal modes of organization are relatively fixed and rigid, whereas the human modes are flexible and adaptable. Man is not predisposed to live together as the bees and ants are. He is capable of developing complex modes of organization and changes them as the needs change. In human society we find institution of marriage to regulate the sex behaviour of men and women but in animal society marriage is non-existent.

5. Absence of Symbolic Communication:

The animal society is a society of beings who lack intelligence, reason, culture and stay on the same level despite the advance of thousands of years. It is based upon instinct. Being incapable of symbolic communication, the animals are incapable of transmitting their culture to the next generation. Each generation of animals has to acquire the same knowledge and attitudes all over again through its own actual participation. They cannot be told about anything until actually see it. They cannot be told without seeing a snake that snakes are dangerous. They cannot be told about gods, spirits and ghosts or about truth, patriotism and duty. Several investigators have tried without success to teach animals to speak. An animal can learn to brush his teeth, to spit, to eat with a spoon, to go to bed and several other human activities but he cannot learn to speak. Animals do not possess the faculty of language. The absence of culture in animal society sharply separates it from human society which may be termed a “bio-socio- cultural” group.

As a biosocial system human society exhibits the same general traits as animal society but whereas in animal group the manifestation and modification of general traits occur primarily on a physiological basis, they occur in human society on a cultural basis. The foundations of human society are qualitatively different from those of animal society.

Darwin and his followers have tried to prove that there is no difference between man and higher animals in their mental faculties. After having examined many cases Darwin concluded that “the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

But the differences of degree become in time differences of kind. As R. A. Wilson says in refuting Darwin and his followers that these authors forget in their study what is more important, i.e., “the total or central unifying mental faculty of man, which is definitely superior to the central unifying mental faculty of animal.”

The animals never develop “anything approximating to true language.” Such germs of language as the animals possess remain but rudimentary; man alone has developed them into the wonderful outgrowth of speech. Were the animals to do the same, they would become men. The fact, therefore, remains that no animal has ever raised himself to the level of articulate speaking man.” The investigators properly concluded that animals do not possess the faculty of language in the proper sense of the word. Even the ape whose mouth parts are similar to men never tries to speak.

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Humans are qualitatively different from animals:  

One of the cornerstone ideas of the animal rights movement is that there are no fundamental differences between humans and animals: humans are just animals, only more intelligent (Ryder, 1991). Therefore, some argue, since having a larger brain is just another quirk, like having larger tusks, animals should have many of the same rights as humans. In particular, they should have a right to life, a right to freedom and a right not be used by humans. Moreover, the well-being of humans should not be put above the well-being of animals (Singer, 1991), so that doing research on animals cannot be justified by improvements in human health, as scientists claim (Ringach, 2011; Bennett and Ringach, 2016). Of course, all of this flies in the face of the values of all human societies from prehistory to date, which have used animals for food, clothing, work and entertainment. No matter, says the animal right activist, that is unethical and has to stop (Reagan, 1985).

In the past, justification for human primacy over animals came from religions that stated that humans are superior to animals because they have an immortal soul, and that God commanded humans to rule over animals. However, the Theory of Evolution and modern physiology have pushed back against those beliefs, showing that there is an evolutionary continuum between animals and humans and that there are no fundamental differences between the physiology of the humans and other mammals (Rachels, 1990). If the only difference between humans and animals is that of a higher intelligence, does that justify that we treat ourselves better than the animals? Or is this just self-interested behavior, “speciesism”, as the animal rights proponent Richard Ryder has called it (Ryder, 1991)? To strengthen their case, animal right proponents invoke the “marginal case”: these include infants and those with significant mental impairment who, lacking superior intelligence, then should presumably be treated the same way as animals (Reagan, 1985; Singer, 1991). Otherwise, they argue, we should be prepared to give animals the same rights that we readily give these marginal case humans.

However, modern neuroscience has in fact uncovered many differences between humans and the rest of the animals that makes us unique. These differences are not limited to a quantitative difference in intelligence but extend to many other mental and behavioral abilities that make us completely unique (Penn et al., 2008), a qualitatively different type of being.  Here is a list of the most important of those abilities.

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1. Theory of mind (ToM):

Theory of Mind is the ability to understand what other people are feeling and thinking. We do that by running inside our heads a model of what is happening in another person’s mind. Of course, the model is not always right, but nevertheless it is extremely valuable because it lets us predict the behavior of people around us. Theory of mind seems to require the right anterior insula, a part of the brain cortex that evolved very rapidly in apes. The function of the right anterior insula is to create hypothetical models of the internal state of our body in different circumstances (Craig, 2010, 2011). For example, when we imagine what it would feel like to stab our toe, is the right anterior insula doing that. Likewise, the right anterior insula can make a model of the internal state of the body of another person. Of course, theory of mind is much more than that and involves the cognitive abilities of many other parts of the brain. Research on theory of mind has revealed it to be uniquely human (Penn and Povinelli, 2007), although some studies claims to have found it in rudimentary form in chimpanzees (Call and Tomasello, 2008; Yamamoto et al., 2013). One negative aspect of theory of mind is that it often creates the delusion of attributing human consciousness to inanimate objects or animals. The same way we project our thoughts and feelings to a person that we see behaving in a way similar to us, we project human thoughts and feelings to an animal or an object we see doing something that resembles human behavior. This delusional form of theory of mind is responsible for the anthropomorphizing of animals that is so common in modern culture.

The advanced function most clearly associated with the reorganization of the human brain is complex social cognition. No less than language, it distinguishes humans from animals. The function is precocious, one of its earliest signs being empathy, which is found in 18-month-old infants. When an infant sees an individual in distress, for example, a child who cries when her teddy bear breaks, the infant consoles her, pats her, speaks softly to her, and may even try to fix the teddy bear.

Human adults explain the actions of others by attributing states of mind to them, such as want, belief, hope, trust, promise, etc. Chimpanzees and monkeys do the same, albeit in a highly circumscribed way. The animals attribute only two mental states, goal-seeking and perception. For instance, if a monkey sees food close to its trainer, and the trainer happens to be looking to the right, it will attempt to steal food from the left, suggesting that the monkey attributes perception to the trainer, as well as the goal of preventing the monkey from taking food. Competition has been hailed as the magic key for bringing out the animal’s motivation to use ToM. The individual must, indeed, be motivated to use ToM, and competitive motivation is often easy to arrange; however, cooperative motivation, once arranged, is as effective as competitive.  

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2. Episodic memory.

There are two basic forms of memory: procedural and declarative. Procedural memory is present in both humans and animals and consists in the retention of perceptual, motor and cognitive skills that are then expressed non-consciously. For example, when we walk, swim, ski, listen to music, type on a keyboard or process the visual information we get from a television screen, we use procedural memory. Declarative memory stores information about facts and beliefs about the world, and can be further divided into semantic and episodic memory. Semantic memory is about facts in the world that stand by themselves, independently of our self, whereas episodic memory is remembering things that happened to us. That is, episodic memory retains events as they were experienced by ourselves in a particular place and time. Episodic memory appears to be uniquely human, because it involves subjective experiences, a concept of self and subjective time. This is important because it allows us to travel mentally in time through subjective experiences, while animals are locked in the present of their current motivational state.

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3. Humans emotions.

Mammals, birds and some other animals have a set of six basic emotions listed by Ekman: anger, fear, disgust, joy, sadness and surprise. However, we humans are able to feel many other emotions that regulate our social behavior and the way we view the world: guilt, shame, pride, honor, awe, interest, envy, nostalgia, hope, despair, contempt and many others. While emotions like love and loyalty may be present in mammals that live in hierarchical societies, emotions like guilt, shame and their counterparts pride and honor seem to be uniquely human. There is much controversy these days on whether dogs feel guilt and shame, there is evidence that they do not, but they may also have acquired this emotion as a way to interact with humans. What is clear is that many of the emotions that we value as human are not present in animals.

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4. Empathy and compassion.

Empathy is defined as the capacity to feel what another person is feeling from their own frame of reference. It is a well-established fact that many animals react to distress by other animals by showing signs of distress themselves. However, this does not seem to represent true empathy as defined above, but a genetically encoded stress response in anticipation of harm. Since empathy requires feeling what the other person is feeling from their own frame of reference, it seems to require theory of mind. Only if we stripe the requirement of adopting the other’s frame of reference we can say that animals have empathy. Empathy involves the newly evolved anterior insula in humans (Preis et al., 2013), bonobos and chimpanzees (Rilling et al., 2012). Compassion is currently thought to be different from empathy because it involves many other parts of the brain. It seems to be associated with complex cultural and cognitive elements. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that animals are not able to feel compassion.

Do either of the two basic evolutionary models for altruism—kin selection and reciprocal altruism—explain empathy? In fact, empathy is not confined either to kin or to individuals who have been helpful in the past; it has only one triggering condition: an individual in distress. Nevertheless, the evolutionary factors may have contributed to the evolution of empathy. The kinship level was high in hunter–gatherer bands, not only among the men, but also among the women (who were often sisters or cousins, having been brought in as wives from the same village). Empathy is one of three principles of which human morality may consist: (i) do not harm others; (ii) deal fairly with others; and (iii) help those in distress. The power of these simple principles lies in their fecundity. “Harm” may consist of either physical or mental injury: hitting another or telling lies about him. “Fairly” is equally prolix and may take innumerable forms, such as paying proper wages or sharing goods. “Distress,” too, includes innumerable examples ranging from a minor accident to the loss of a loved one. It is because humans can recognize all the forms that fecundity is effective.

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5. Language and culture.

Although animals do communicate with each other using sounds, signs and body language, human language is a qualitative leap from any form of animal communication in its unique ability to convey factual information and not just emotional states. In that, human language is linked to our ability to store huge amounts of semantic and episodic memory, as defined above. The human brain has a unique capacity to quickly learn spoken languages during a portal that closes around 5-6 years of age. Attempts to teach sign languages to apes has produced only limited success and can be attributed to a humanization of the brain of those animals, raised inside human culture. The effectiveness of spoken and written language to store information across many generations gave raise to human cultures. The working of the human brain cannot be understood without taking culture into account. Culture completely shapes the way we think, feel, perceive and behave. Although there are documented cases of transmission of learned information across generations in animals, producing what we could call an animal culture, no animal is as shaped by culture as we are.

The faculty of recursion has two expressions in humans: number and language [the recursion reported in birds represents a weak degree of recursion, comparable with the double alternation (AABB) of raccoons, far below the minimum requirements for human language, number, etc.]. Digital numbers are infinite because every number has a successor based on adding one. Sentences in a recursive language can, in principle, be infinitely long. Recursion permits dependence among words that are physically remote. In the sentence, “If she uses lilac-scented soap, then Madge and I will blow bubbles with her,” “if” and “then” are dependent on each other even though they are separated by a variable number of words. Recursion also permits phrases of like kind to be embedded in one another. One can talk of “Ida the red-haired women who left her hat in the theater, the old one that burned down, because arguing with Henry, her husband of forty years, who still has all his hair, wears a maroon smoking jacket in the evenings and is as broke as ever, had rattled her.” The grammar of a recursive language permits an endless compacting of information limited only by human memory.

Because animals lack recursion (and human language is recursive), the animals’ lack of language is attributed to this factor. But recursion is not the only factor animals lack. If a species lacked language, even a nonrecursive language would be an enormous boon. Yet, chimpanzees have no language of any kind, recursive or nonrecursive.

A number of factors stand between animals and language. For instance, chimpanzees lack voluntary control of their voice. When a chimpanzee wants the attention of its trainer, it does not call; instead, it pounds on a resonant surface. Chimpanzees, therefore, could not have speech. But sign language is a possibility, for they do have voluntary control of their hands. Chimpanzee sign language, however, could not be comparable with human sign language, because chimpanzees also lack voluntary control of their face, and in human sign language, facial expression plays grammatical roles, such as denoting the boundary of clauses.

Teaching is essential for language. Not for grammar, which arguably cannot be taught, but for words. Children are taught their initial words by their mother, and only later do they acquire words more or less on their own. Inasmuch as chimpanzees do not teach, even if they possessed all the other factors mentioned above, they could not have evolved language. In humans, the evolution of teaching evidently preceded that of language.

If someone asked you what separates humans from other animals, one of the first things that would probably come to mind is language. Language is so fundamental to human life that it’s hard to imagine what life would be like without it. In fact, the original term for language referred to it as part of the body—language is derived from the Latin word lingua, meaning tongue. Barnett highlights the inseparability of language from man when he says, “Verbal communication is a condition of the existence of human society.” But at the same time, other animals also communicate: Your cat may let you know when its hungry, ants use pheromones and sound to indicate social status and distress, bees dance to tell one another where to find honey, and chimpanzees can learn sign language. So when we think of language as a way of setting ourselves apart, what is it about our language that is different than how other animals communicate?

Difference Between Animal and Human Communication at a glance:

	Human	Animal
Duality of Patterning	Distinctive sounds, called phonemes, are arbitrary and have no meaning. But humans can string these sounds in an infinite number of ways to create meaning via words and sentences.	Other animals do not communicate by arranging arbitrary sounds, which limits the number of messages they can create.
Creativity	New words can be invented easily.	Animals have to evolve in order for their signs to change.
Displacement	Humans can talk about remote, abstract, or imaginary things that aren’t happening in their immediate environments.	Animal communication is context driven—they react to stimuli, or indexes.
Interchangeability	Any gender of human can use the same languages.	Certain animal communications in the animal world can only be used by one gender of that animal.
Cultural Transmission	Humans acquire language culturally—words must be learned.	The way that animals communicate are biological, or inborn.
Arbitrariness	Human language is symbolic, using a set number of sounds (phonemes) and characters (alphabet), which allows ideas to be recorded and preserved.	Animal communication is not symbolic, so it cannot preserve ideas of the past.
Biology	On a purely biological level, the human voice box and tongue are very unique, and are required to make the sounds we recognize as language.	Other animals have different biological structures, which impact the way they make sounds.
Ambiguity	A word, or sign, can have several meanings.	Every sign has only one meaning.
Variety	Human language can arrange words into an infinite number of ideas, sometimes referred to as discrete infinity.	Animals only have a limited number of combinations they can use to communicate.

When considering the evolution of human cognition, we will be fundamentally misled if we attribute to animals only those concepts they can communicate. Externalization of concepts is just one component of language, and another is to help structure our private internal thought. Thus, we cannot accurately limit our estimation of what humans know to what they say. The same is true of animals, only more so. The flexibility of human language means that we can use it to represent virtually anything we can think (perhaps with considerable effort, in the case of visual, musical or highly abstract concepts). The same flexibility and expressivity is simply not present in animal communication systems. This limitation, rather than any fundamental non-existence of animal concepts, was surpassed by humans during language evolution. Thus, our (linguistic) ability to refer, not our basic ability to conceptually represent, must be explained if we hope to understand the neural and ultimately genetic basis of human language.

This is not to deny that externalized language gives humans a huge conceptual advantage over other species. We acquire many concepts via language that we have no direct access by personal experience, vastly enlarging our potential store of knowledge (some readers may never have personally seen an octopus, but most will nonetheless have some concept OCTOPUS). Blind people, thanks to language, have surprisingly rich conceptions of colour terms, and many abstract or scientific terms such as ‘electron’ or ‘truth’ have no sensory manifestations at all. Animals do not have precisely the same concepts as humans. The cognitive processes that allow concepts to be formed based on sensory experience and combined at a basic level are shared across species and were therefore present before language evolved and provided the precursors of more complex human concepts.

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6. Esthetic sense:

Esthetic sense or the appreciation of beauty also seems to be uniquely human. Of course, animals can produce great beauty in the form of colorful bodies, songs and artful behavior. What seems to be lacking is their ability to appreciate and value that beauty beyond stereotypical mating and territorial behaviors. Even attempts to teach chimps to produce art by drawing have largely failed.

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7. Ethics.

Ethics is the ability to appreciate fairness, justice and rights. It is at the very core of our ability to form stable societies and to cooperate to achieve common goals. It depends on theory of mind (which allows us to “put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes”); on social emotions like guilt, shame, pride and contempt; on empathy and compassion, and on cultural heritage. Lacking all those mental abilities, animals have no sense of ethics. Even though some studies have shown that monkeys have a primitive sense of fairness (particularly when it applies to their own interest), it is but a pale anticipation of our sense of justice. It simply goes to show how that ethics is rooted in our evolutionary history.

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8. Extended consciousness.

The question of what is consciousness has been called by scientists and philosophers “the hard problem” due to the difficulty of answering it (Blackmore, 2004). Therefore, the related question of whether animals have consciousness, or what animals have it, remains similarly unanswered in the strict sense. However, based on their behavior, we commonly assume that animals like cats, dogs and horses are conscious and able to make some autonomous decisions. On the other hand, unless we invoke some mystical definition of consciousness, it is safe to assume that animals with small nervous systems, like jellyfish, worms, starfish, snails and clams have no consciousness whatsoever. They are like plants: living beings able to react to the environment as automatons. That leaves a lot of animals for which it is hard to guess whether they are conscious or not: insects, fish, octopi, lizards and small mammals like mice and rats. What has been becoming clear is that we humans possess a kind of consciousness that no other animal has: the ability to see ourselves as selves extending from the pass to the future. This special kind of consciousness has been called by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio “extended consciousness” and allow us a sort of “mental time travel” to relive events in the past and predict what may happen to us in the future (Suddendorf and Corballis, 2007). Extended consciousness is based on our ability to have episodic memory and theory of mind. Episodic memory configures remembered events around the image of the self, whereas theory of mind allows us to create a model of our own mind as it was during a past event or to hypothesize how it would be in a future event. Few animals (apes, dolphins and elephants) may turn out to have episodic memory, theory of mind and hence extended consciousness. However, this is still very much in doubt.

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9. Suffering and happiness. 

It is a common mistake to confuse suffering with pain and happiness with joy. Pain is the representation of a bodily state and the emotion associated with it (Craig, 2003). Likewise, joy is an emotion associated with an excited but pleasant body state in an agreeable environment. Suffering and happiness are much deeper than that, and refer to the totality of a mental state, encompassing cognition, emotion and state of consciousness. Although suffering and happiness are normally associated with certain emotions, there is not always a correspondence with them. For example, one can be happy while feeling scared or sad, or suffer even in the presence of a passing joy. The error of philosophers like Peter Singer (Singer, 1991) and Tom Reagan (Reagan, 1985) is that they consider suffering as something that occurs independently of cognition and other mental abilities, when it does not. Arguably, happiness and suffering require some continuity in time, which would seem to require extended consciousness. Furthermore, conceptions of happiness extending to antiquity refer to lifelong attitudes like hedonism (the quest for personal pleasure) and eudemonia (working to acquire virtue or to achieve goals that transcend oneself), pointing to the fact that human happiness depends on cultural values. In view of all this, we need to wonder whether happiness and suffering can exist in beings that have no episodic memory, no extended consciousness, no sense of self, and no culture. Can happiness and suffering really be attributed to animals lacking these mental abilities? Or is this an illusion, an anthropomorphizing caused by the overreaching of our theory of mind? Without going to that extreme, it is quite clear that we humans have a capacity to be happy and to suffer that goes far beyond what animals can experience. So human suffering counts more than any suffering than an animal could have.

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Remember, even when a human brain is damaged by disease, accident or old age, most of the properties listed above remain because they are deeply engrained in the way the human brain works. Theory of mind and extended consciousness appear early in human life and are the last things to go in a deteriorating brain. It takes coma to deprive us of them. A person may have a reduced intelligence or other cognitive disabilities, but s/he still has theory of mind, empathy, compassion, extended consciousness and all those human emotions. That is why when we encounter those people we recognize them as humans and we know we should treat them as humans. They are not animals and should never be treated as such. Intelligence is just a tiny part of what it means to be human.

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Above discussion is not an argument to treat animals cruelly or poorly. It is only an argument to treat humans better than animals and to keep using animals for our benefit. We should care about the welfare of animals, even as we try to understand how similar and how different they are from ourselves. What moves us to treat animals well is our empathy, our compassion, our sense of fairness and our cultural values. Things that animals do not have. Ultimately, we must treat animals right not because of what they are, but because of who we are.

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The Major differences between Human and Animal Brains:

The major differences between human and animal brains are as follows:

1. Structural difference:

Let’s look at the most basic, obvious difference between animal and human brains. Although our brains all look very similar, there are distinct differences between each species’ brain that set them apart.

Humans have large brains, weighing between about 1.25 and 1.45 kilograms, but elephant brains can weigh more than 4 kilograms, and whale brains as much as 9 kilograms. Elephants and whales also have the biggest bodies in general, so it may be considered fairer to compare our relative brain sizes. Our brains represent about 2% of our overall body mass (though they consume some 25% of our energy), whereas the brains of elephants and whales constitute less than 1% of their bodies.

The Encephalization Quotient (EQ) describes the brain’s size as a ratio of the expected average brain’s size for a given body weight. For example, humans have an EQ of about 7.5, which means that our brains are seven and a half times larger than what you would expect from an animal of our size. A squirrel, on the other hand, has an EQ of 1.1. This is pretty average for an animal of its size.

Another ratio that is worth mentioning in this discussion is that of the size of the cerebral cortex in relation to the size of their brains. The cerebral cortex is where the cerebral hemispheres are found. These areas are responsible for communication, thinking, and memory. Now when it comes to brain size, humans have the largest cerebral cortex of any mammal.

Wrinkles:

The human cortex is full of wrinkles, which increases its surface area so that a larger cortex can fit inside of our skull. In many animals, including the brown rat, the cortex is smooth. Since the cortex houses many areas responsible for cognition and language, this is believed to be one of the main reasons humans are more intelligent than our animal friends.

Neocortex:

The neocortex is the part of the brain that drives higher-order brain functions such as sensory perception, spatial reasoning, cognition, language, and the generation of motor commands. In humans, the neocortex is more developed, as with most mammals.

Association cortex:

Most of this brain-size difference reflects the evolutionary expansion of the association cortex, a group of regions that supports such sophisticated cognitive functions as language, self-awareness, and problem solving. The size of the human association cortex is only part of what makes this region unusual in humans.

White Matter:

As its name suggests, white matter is white and is the part of the brain that connects the cells together so the nerves can communicate. When comparing human brains with those of our primate cousins, the chimpanzee, the Smithsonian found that a chimp’s temporal cortex is made up of less white matter. This indicates fewer connections between the nerve cells. Humans, on the other hand, have more white matter in our temporal cortex, which is why we are able to process information more quickly and thoroughly. As similar as we are to primates, this is one area where humans definitely have the advantage. In addition to having more neurons in the association cortex, brain imaging studies comparing the brains of humans to other primates show humans have a greater number of fibers connecting the brain regions involved in such human-specialized functions as language, tool making, reasoning, and social cognition.

2. Microscopic difference between human and animal brain:

Charles Darwin held that humans were essentially “big-brained apes”. Neuroscientists concurred with Darwin until well into the 1980s, arguing for what they called the “basic uniformity” of the mammalian brain. Not until the 1990s when, aided by new histological techniques, neuroscientists turned to the microscopic study of the human brain did this simple picture change. In 1999, Preuss and Coleman became the first to show microscopic differences in brain organization between apes and humans. In one layer of the human primary visual cortex, nerve cells were organized in a complex meshlike pattern very different from the simpler vertical arrays of cells in other primates. At about the same time, Hof and associates rediscovered a slender tapered neuron, labeled VEN, in both human and ape. Humans, however, have many more Von Economo neurons (VENs) than apes; individual VENs are markedly larger; and those in the human are located in only two parts of the brain: the anterior cingulate cortex and the frontoinsular cortex. Both of these structures appear to be involved in complex social emotion/cognition such as empathy, feelings of guilt, and embarrassment.

The human reorganization of the brain affected even the minicolumn—80–100 neurons bundled vertically that supports parallel processing—which is the basic unit of information processing in all mammalian brains. Human minicolumns in the left planum temporale, an area involved in language and perhaps music, are organized differently than those of chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys. They are far wider, an average of 51 μm compared with 36 μm in the chimpanzees and monkeys. The increase is due to an enlarged neuropil space, which contains the axons, dendrites, and synapses that make neural connections.

What causes synapses between neurons to form? Barres and associates found, in answering this question, that specialized neuroglial cells called astrocytes (which make up nearly half the cells in the human brain) must be present for synapses to form; these cells secrete a protein called thrombospondin that triggers synapse formation. Preuss and associates then found that human brains produce up to six times as much thrombospondin messenger RNA than do either chimps or macaques. Moreover, the areas found to have enhanced thrombospondin expression have larger neuropil space and thus more room for synaptic connections.

Virtually all the newly discovered human singularities are located in areas associated with either complex social cognition [theory of mind (ToM)] or language. But the reorganization of the human brain has not been without cost. In addition to advancing language and ToM, it brought about neurodegenerative disease: schizophrenia, autism, Alzheimer’s, etc. These diseases are as unique to humans as is advanced cognitive function.

3. Cognitive difference:

We’ve looked at the evolutionary approach and found several structural differences. Now it’s time to explore the cognitive differences that cannot be measured as easily through a microscope.

Self-Awareness:

It would be easy to say that self-awareness distinguishes humans from all animals. But this simply isn’t true. It does, however, set humans apart from most other species. Apes, for example, demonstrate metacognition, which is our own awareness of our ability to think. Scientists would argue that since self-awareness and thereby, cognition, are possible due to the prefrontal cortex, those animals that do not demonstrate metacognition and self-awareness, lack this area in their brain. In testing for self-awareness, scientists have conducted the mirror test. Animals are marked with a colored dye or dot on their forehead and shown their own reflection in the mirror. If they try to remove or get a better view of the spot by moving their body, scientists have concluded they are aware that the reflection is their own.

Attention:

The attention network of humans was found to have expanded over time as we evolved. During a recent study, scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, on humans and macaque monkeys, to observe their brain activity. During this test, it was found that the monkeys lacked the temporal junction found in human brains. This is significant because it helps to pinpoint evolutionary stressors that caused this differentiation. The study found that since humans are more complex in how we interact socially, we need a better ability to pick up on subtle cues and then use that information to guide our next steps. This finding also indicates that there are some aspects of human cognition that can only be studied using human participants.

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The uniqueness of the human brain at genetic level:

The human brain is unique: Our remarkable cognitive capacity has allowed us to invent the wheel, build the pyramids and land on the moon. In fact, scientists sometimes refer to the human brain as the “crowning achievement of evolution.” But what, exactly, makes our brains so special? Some leading arguments have been that our brains have more neurons and expend more energy than would be expected for our size, and that our cerebral cortex, which is responsible for higher cognition, is disproportionately large—accounting for over 80 percent of our total brain mass.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist at the Institute of Biomedical Science in Rio de Janeiro, debunked these well-established beliefs in recent years when she discovered a novel way of counting neurons—dissolving brains into a homogenous mixture, or “brain soup.” Using this technique, she found the number of neurons relative to brain size to be consistent with other primates, and that the cerebral cortex, the region responsible for higher cognition, only holds around 20 percent of all our brain’s neurons, a similar proportion found in other mammals. In light of these findings, she argues that the human brain is actually just a linearly scaled-up primate brain that grew in size as we started to consume more calories, thanks to the advent of cooked food.

Other researchers have found that traits once believed to belong solely to humans also exist in other members of the animal kingdom. Monkeys have a sense of fairness. Chimps engage in war. Rats show altruism and exhibit empathy. In a study published in Nature Communications, neuroscientist Christopher Petkov and his group at Newcastle University found that macaques and humans share brain areas responsible for processing the basic structures of language.

Although some of the previously proposed reasons our brains are special may have been debunked, there are still many ways in which we are different. They lie in our genes and our ability to adapt to our surroundings.

1. Gene expression:

As humans evolved, studies show that changes occurred in their patterns of gene expression in the brain, impacting everything from brain metabolism to the ability of cells to establish new connections with other cells. Such differences in gene activity are believed to have contributed to greater levels of neuronal activity and plasticity across much of the lifespan, and may have influenced our susceptibility to neurodegenerative diseases (such as Alzheimer’s disease) and to neuropsychiatric diseases (such as autism and schizophrenia). Compared to other mammals, humans appear to be unusually, and perhaps uniquely, vulnerable to these diseases.

2. Unique genetic signatures:

Scientists at the Allen Institute for Brain Science have developed detailed atlases of the expression patterns of thousands of genes in various species, including those of adult mice and human brains. In a study published in Nature Neuroscience researchers used these enormous data sets to look for the patterns of gene expression that are shared within the human population. They were able to identify 32 unique signatures within 20,000 genes that appear to be shared across 132 brain regions in six individuals. This unique genetic code may help explain what gives rise to our distinctly human traits.

When the researchers compared humans with mice, they found that whereas the genes associated with neurons were well preserved among species, those associated with glial cells—nonneuronal cells with a wide variety of functions—were not. They also found the gene patterns associated with glia overlap with those implicated with disorders of the brain, such as Alzheimer’s disease. This adds to the recent developments revealing that glial cells, which for a long time were thought to simply be the brain’s support cells, are actually a major player in both development and disease.

3. Plasticity:

This finding may have another important implication—the capacity for plasticity; researchers have found the glia play an important role in shaping the brain. Plasticity may be what underlies the specific differences in our brain that lead to our unique cognitive abilities. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that human brains may be less genetically inheritable, and therefore more plastic, than those of chimpanzees, our closest ancestors.

Aida Gómez-Robles, an anthropologist at The George Washington University, and her colleagues compared the effect of genes on brain size and organization in 218 human and 206 chimpanzee brains. They found that although brain size was highly heritable in both species, the organization of the cerebral cortex—especially in areas involved in higher-order cognition functions—was much less genetically controlled in humans than in chimps. One potential explanation for this difference, according to the researchers, is that because our brains are less developed than those of our primate cousins at birth, it creates a longer period during which we can be molded by our surroundings.

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Humans are indeed unique:

We humans tend to think of ourselves as better than, or at least separate from, all other species on this planet. But every species is unique, and in that sense humans are no different. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that there is something extra special about us — after all, we are the species running the zoos.

What are the physical differences that distinguish us from our closest animal relatives?

There are some notable ways in which our bodies differ from those of apes and old-world monkeys. We can lock our knees straight, have longer legs than arms, and habitually walk upright, freeing our hands to do things other than carry our weight. We have a chin. Our body surface is covered in sweat glands that provide a more effective cooling system than those of other primates. We have lost our canines and much of our protective fur — leaving males with the apparently pointless, but persistent, growth of beards. The iris of our eyes is relatively small and surrounded by white rather than dark sclera, making it easy for us to identify the direction of another’s gaze. Human females show no outward markers of their fertile phase, and human males lack a penis bone. These are not exactly groundbreaking traits, compared to, say, the emergence of wings in birds, which catapulted their bearers into a new sphere of possibility. Yet despite the paltry list of distinct physical attributes, we have managed to seize control of much of the planet. It is widely assumed that the reason for this has to do with our brains.

What are the differences that enabled us to dominate the planet?

The most common traits that sets us fundamentally apart from the rest are: language, foresight, mind-reading, intelligence, culture and morality.

On inspection it becomes clear that various animals, in particular our closest animal relatives, the great apes, have some sophisticated capacities in even these domains. Nonetheless, the human ability in each of these contexts is special in certain respects. Two characteristics in particular keep re-emerging as critical: our deep-seated drive to exchange our thoughts, and our ability to think about alternative situations and embed them into larger narratives.

Humans rely on a uniquely flexible, but also risky, way to control behavior through clever thinking. We can travel mentally in time and consider how events unfolded or what the future might hold. We can compare alternative routes to the future and deliberately select one plan over another — giving us a sense of free will and an edge over creatures with less foresight. This also burdens us, however, with the responsibility for getting it right. The future is uncertain and, of course, we often get it wrong.

The key to making this a successful strategy has been our fundamental urge to link our minds together, to look to one another for useful information. We ask questions and give advice. We bond through sharing experiences. We can use our imagination to entertain the perspectives of others as well as to consider entirely fictional scenarios. This allows us to take advantage of others’ experiences, reflections and imaginings to prudently guide our own behavior.

These two attributes appear to have been essential to our ancestors’ transforming common animal traits into distinctly human ones — communication into open-ended language, memory into strategic planning and social traditions into cumulative culture. Our extraordinary powers do not derive from our muscles and bones, but from our collective wit. Together, our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies through which we have changed the face of the Earth, while even our closest animal relatives live quietly in their dwindling forests.

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Fundamental difference between Humans and Apes:

Jonathan Marks is a biological anthropologist who recently wrote an essay on the profound differences between human beings and apes.

Marks asserts:

The argument that “we are apes” is not a valid evolutionary one. After all, the distinguished evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote in a 1949 classic, “It is not a fact that man is an ape, extra tricks or no.”  Marks accepts the theory of common ancestry, and believes that we are descended from apes. He points out that evolutionary relationships are not the same thing as identities. Descent from apes does not mean we are apes. Taxonomy is not the same thing as identity.

Marks puts that this way:

Science no more says that I am an ape because my ancestors were, than it says that I am a slave because my ancestors were. The statement that you are your ancestors articulates a bio-political fact, not a biological fact.

Regardless of the strengths and weaknesses of the evolutionary argument that humans are descended from apes, the differences between humans and apes are so profound as to render the view that humans are apes abject nonsense.

It is important to understand the fundamental difference between humans and nonhuman animals.

Nonhuman animals such as apes have material mental powers. That means powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite. Nonhuman animals have a mental capacity to perceive and respond to particulars, which are specific material objects such as other animals, food, obstacles, and predators.

Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts. Human beings are rational animals.

Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. Human rationality is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.

There is a difference between representation and instantiation. Representation is the map of a thing. Instantiation is the thing itself. Universals can be represented in matter — the words you write are representations of concepts — but universals cannot be instantiated in matter. You cannot put the concepts themselves on a computer screen or on a piece of paper, nor can the concepts exist physically in your brain. Concepts, which are universals, are immaterial.

Nonhuman animals are purely material beings. They have no concepts. They experience hunger and pain. They don’t contemplate the injustice of suffering.

A human being is material and immaterial — a composite being. We have material bodies, and our perceptions and imaginations and appetites are material powers, instantiated in our brains. But our intellect — our ability to think abstractly — is a wholly immaterial power, and our will that acts in accordance with our intellect is an immaterial power. Our intellect and our will depend on matter for their ordinary function, in the sense that they depend upon perception and imagination and memory, but they are not themselves made of matter. It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference.

We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. Our difference is a metaphysical chasm. It is obvious and manifest in our biological nature. We are rational animals, and our rationality is all the difference. Systems of taxonomy that emphasize physical and genetic similarities and ignore the fact that human beings are partly immaterial beings who are capable of abstract thought and contemplation of moral law and eternity are pitifully inadequate to describe man.

The assertion that man is an ape is self-refuting. We could not express such a concept, misguided as it is, if we were apes and not men.

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Our imaginations and the urge to connect our minds separate us from animals:   

Like many a scholar before and since, Bertrand Russell confidently asserts that certain traits—“speech, fire, agriculture, writing, tools, and large-scale cooperation”—set humans apart from animals. Although we appear to excel in many domains, such claims are not typically founded in any thorough comparison. In fact, if you set the bar low, you can conclude that parrots can speak, ants have agriculture, crows make tools, and bees cooperate on a large scale. We need to dig deeper to understand to what we owe our unique success—what separates us from other animals in the domains of language, mental time travel, theory of mind, intelligence, culture, and morality. In each domain, various nonhuman species have competences, but human ability is special in some respects—and they have much in common.

In all six domains there are two major features that set us apart: our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect on different situations, and our deep-seated drive to link our scenario-building minds together. It seems to be primarily these two attributes that carried our ancestors across the gap, turning animal communication into open-ended human language, memory into mental time travel, social cognition into theory of mind, problem solving into abstract reasoning, social traditions into cumulative culture, and empathy into morality.

Humans are avid scenario builders. We can tell stories, picture future situations, imagine others’ experiences, contemplate potential explanations, plan how to teach, and reflect on moral dilemmas. Nested scenario building refers not to a single ability but to a complex faculty, itself built on a variety of sophisticated components that allow us to simulate and to reflect.

A basic capacity to simulate seems to exist in other animals. When rats are in a well-known maze, the sequential firing of so-called place cells in the hippocampus suggests that the rats can cognitively sweep ahead, considering one path and then the other, before making a decision about where to go. Appropriate place-cell sequences have also been recorded during sleep and rest, suggesting a neural basis for the learning of the maze layout and its options. The challenges of navigation may well have selected for the fundamentals of mental scene construction. Moreover, great apes have demonstrated several other relevant capacities. They can think about hidden movements, learn and interpret human symbols, solve some problems through mental rather than physical computation, have complex sociality and some traditions, console each other, recognize themselves in mirrors, and show signs of pretense in play and deception. Great apes have a basic capacity to imagine alternative mental scenarios of the world. In certain contexts their abilities are comparable to those of 18- to 24-month-old human children.

Human development of mental scenario building explodes after age 2, however, while great apes’ capacities do not. Children spend a considerable amount of their waking life in fantasy play. They conjure up and untiringly repeat scenarios with props such as dolls and toys. Thinking, in a fundamental way, is imagining actions and perceptions, and it has been argued that in play children test hypotheses, consider probabilities, and make causal inferences not entirely unlike (adult) scientists. Play certainly provides opportunity to practice, to build up expectations, and to test them. Children take on roles and act out narratives of what happens in certain situations. Gradually, they learn to deliberately imagine scenarios and their consequences without having to act them out. They learn to simulate mentally. They learn to think.

Eventually, children can imagine an almost limitless array of events. They begin to deploy counterfactual reasoning in which they contrast what did happen with scenarios of what did not happen. They increasingly consider what might happen in the future. A key to our open-ended, generative capacity is our ability to recursively embed one thing in another, as it enables us to combine and recombine basic elements such as people, objects, and actions into novel scenarios. Such nesting is also essential for reflection: our capacity to think about our own thinking. Nested thinking allows us to reason about the mental scenarios we entertain (just as we can draw pictures of ourselves drawing a picture).

We can connect diverse scenarios into larger plots. Narratives provide us with explanations for why things are the way they are and with opportunities for predicting how they will be. We can compare alternative routes to the future and deliberately select one plan over another—giving us a sense of free will and an edge over creatures with less foresight.  We can prepare for what lies ahead and actively shape the future to our design. However, this capacity also burdens us with the responsibility of getting it right.

Individual simulation is flexible and powerful but also a risky way of making decisions that can lead us fatally astray. In the heat of Australia’s north a river may appear inviting for a swim—until you note the sign about the crocodiles. Individually, we often miscalculate, harbor false expectations, and become confused as to which option to pursue. Nested mental scenario building is not a crystal ball, nor is it a logical supercomputer. For flexible scenario building to really take off as the ultimate survival strategy, it required a second leg to stand on.

Our ancestors discovered that they could dramatically improve the accuracy of their mental scenarios by increasingly connecting their minds to others. We give each other advice—for instance, by posting signs about the possible presence of crocodiles. We can broadcast our imaginary play not only throughout our own system but to others around us. We exchange our ideas and give feedback. We ask others, and we inform them—for instance, by recounting what it was like when we were in a similar situation. We take an interest even without knowing whether anything important or useful comes of it. There are individual differences in how much an interest people display in what certain others have to say, but we are generally driven to wire our minds to those around us. Our expectations and plans are subsequently a lot better than they could have been if we didn’t listen. It is generally good advice to consider advice—preferably from a variety of sources before making up your own mind.

Nested scenario builders can benefit from cooperating with other scenario builders in many other ways. For instance, our audience can be recruited for common goals. We can hatch complex plans, divide labor, and pledge cooperation. We can accumulate our achievements and pass them on to the next generation. To ensure all this happens, we appear to be hardwired with an insatiable urge to connect our minds.

Primates are social creatures, and evidence that social pressures have driven the evolution of primate intelligence is mounting. Humans have taken this sociality to another level. Unlike other primates, children sob to attract attention and sympathy. We ask what’s wrong and try to make things better. We look each other in the eye, share what’s on our minds, and absorb what is on the other’s. This urge to connect must have been crucial to the establishment of signs and words that allow us to effectively read others’ minds and express our own. As Michael Tomasello and colleagues have demonstrated, we make and pursue shared goals where our closest animal relatives do not. Even 2-year-old children outperform great apes on tasks of social learning, communication, and intention reading. Other animals may give alarm calls and food calls but otherwise do not show many signs of a drive to share their experience and knowledge with others. Again, in all six domains this cooperative drive is evident and plays a significant role. Language is the primary means by which we exchange our minds. We talk to each other about the past and make plans about the future. We read and tell each other what is on our minds. We reason and solve problems collectively. We build social narratives that explain the world around us. We teach, and we learn from each other. And we argue about what is right and what is wrong. These examples serve to remind us how pervasive the urge to connect is. Those who lack this drive have severe social difficulties (and may be diagnosed as autistic). Our urge to connect was essential for the creation of cumulative cultures that shape our minds and endow us with our awesome powers.

Our capacity for nested scenario building even allows us, drawing on past experiences, to imagine others’ advice internally. (Hearing voices is quite normal. Relax. The trouble starts when you attribute these internal voices to external sources.) So you might ask yourself what your mother would have said about the situation you find yourself in. We care about whether our parents, friends, heroes, or gods would be proud of what we do, even if they no longer exist (or never did). We can consider what others might remember us for. These thoughts can be important drivers motivating us to go beyond satisfying immediate personal self-interests in pursuit of “higher” notions of honor, valor, and glory.

We might aspire to nobility in character and virtue in action. We can invest heavily in unselfish actions, such as fighting oppression or pollution or helping a club, a person, or an animal. When we take on a cause, we seem to become part of something bigger and from such endeavors may derive some of the deepest feeling of meaning. One of the most remarkable things about humans is that we can strive to make some kind of difference. We may deliberately practice random acts of kindness, spread the word, fight injustice, teach the next generation, or start a revolution. Without the urge to connect our minds, such traits could not exist.

The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killed around 200,000 Japanese people. No other species has ever wielded such power, and no species could. The technology behind the atomic bomb only exists because of a cooperative hive mind: hundreds of scientists and engineers working together. The same unique intelligence and cooperation also underlies more positive advances, such as modern medicine. We have a fundamental urge to link our minds together. This allows us to take advantage of others’ experiences, reflections and imaginings to prudently guide our own behaviour. We link our scenario-building minds into larger networks of knowledge. This in turn helps us to accumulate information through many generations.

That our rapidly expanding technology has allowed us all to become instant publishers means we can share such information at the touch of a button. And this transmission of ideas and technology helps us in our quest to uncover even more about ourselves. That is, we use language to continue ideas that others put forward.

Charles Darwin, in his book The Descent of Man, wrote that humans and animals only differ in degree, not kind. This still stands true but it is precisely these gradual changes that make us extraordinary and has led to “radically different possibilities of thinking”.  And it is these thoughts that allow us to pinpoint to our differences with chimpanzees. That we do so is because they are the closest living relative we have.

In sum, nested scenario building and the drive to link our scenario-building minds turned ape qualities into human qualities. They created powerful feedback loops that dynamically changed much of the human condition. They carried us where other animals could not go.

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Laser beam versus floodlight intelligence:

A new study at Harvard University has shed light on the key differences in human and animal cognition. Marc Hauser, professor of psychology, biological anthropology, and organismic and evolutionary biology in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences proposed four key differences in human and animal cognition. “Animals share many of the building blocks that comprise human thought, but paradoxically, there is a great cognitive gap between humans and animals,” said Hauser.  “By looking at key differences in cognitive abilities, we find the elements of human cognition that are uniquely human. The challenge is to identify which systems animals and human share, which are unique, and how these systems interact and interface with one another,” he added.

The four novel components are the ability to combine and recombine different types of information and knowledge in order to gain new understanding; to apply the same “rule” or solution to one problem to a different and new situation; to create and easily understand symbolic representations of computation and sensory input; and to detach modes of thought from raw sensory and perceptual input.

Hauser said that animals have “laser beam” intelligence, in which a specific solution is used to solve a specific problem. But these solutions cannot be applied to new situations or to solve different kinds of problem.

On the other hand, humans have “floodlight” cognition that permits them to use thought processes in innovative ways and apply the solution of one problem to another situation.

“For human beings, these key cognitive abilities may have opened up other avenues of evolution that other animals have not exploited, and this evolution of the brain is the foundation upon which cultural evolution has been built,” said Hauser.

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Human morality as part of collective cognition:  

Dale Peterson’s aim in his new book The Moral Lives of Animals is to downplay what is unique about human morality. He argues that animals’ moral systems are not merely “analogous to our own” — that is, superficially similar due to coincidental factors — but “homologous to our own” — that is, similar due to a “common origin.” He asks us to view morality as a “moral organ” equivalent to the elephant’s nose: enormous, powerful, multifaceted. Our “moral organ” may have features that differ from that of other animals, Peterson tells us, but ultimately human morality is, like animal morality, an organ residing in the limbic system of the brain.

Peterson proposes a functional definition of morality: “The function of morality, or the moral organ, is to negotiate the inherent serious conflict between self and others,” he claims. But humans and animals negotiate “conflict” by fundamentally different means. Peterson is presenting us with examples not of animal morality, but of Darwinian evolution selecting for behaviours that minimise conflict and strengthen social ties among group-dwelling animals.

Take his examples of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” in the animal kingdom. Chimpanzees, for instance, spend an inordinate amount of time grooming each other. As Jeremy Taylor, author of Not a Chimp says: ‘’Strong alliances between individuals in a group will almost certainly lead to a better prognosis for each individual who has successfully cultivated them. There is plenty of evidence, for instance, which shows that an individual that has a strong reciprocal grooming relationship with another will be more inclined to intervene on her behalf in an encounter.”

Human beings, however, negotiate conflict through socially created values and codes of conduct. If one reduces everything to its simplest form, then one can find parallels between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. But this kind of philistinism does not deepen our understanding of human beings and human society or indeed of animal behaviour.

For instance, Peterson’s approach strips a concept like empathy of any deeper meaning. “I would prefer to consider empathy as appearing in two different but related forms, contagious and cognitive,” he writes. Contagious empathy is “the process in which a single bird, startled by some sudden movement, takes off in alarm and is instantly joined by the entire flock.” Cognitive empathy “is contagious empathy pressed through a cognitive filter: a brain or mind.” In other words, these two types of empathy are just different forms of the same thing. But there is a world of difference between an instinctual connection between organisms — including some of our instinctual responses, such as yawning when others yawn — and human empathy involving a Theory of Mind, that is, the ability to recognize that one’s own perspectives and beliefs can be different from someone else’s. Once children are able to think about thoughts in this way, their thinking is lifted to a different level.

Human beings, unlike other animals, are able to reflect on and make judgments about our own and others’ actions, and as a result, we are able to make considered moral choices. We are not born with this ability. As the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget showed, children progress from a very limited understanding of morality to a more sophisticated understanding — involving, for instance, the consideration of the motives and intentions behind particular acts. So, for pre-school children, a child who accidentally breaks several cups, when doing what he’d been asked to do by an adult, is “naughtier” than one who breaks one cup while trying to steal some sweets. Young children judge actions by their outcomes or consequences rather than by their intentions. Claiming that our morality is merely based on “gut instincts” ignores the transformations children go through in their moral understanding from infancy to adolescence.

Human beings have something that no other animal has: an ability to participate in a collective cognition. Because we, as individuals, are able to draw on the collective knowledge of humanity, in a way no animal can, our individual abilities go way beyond what evolution has endowed us with. Our species is no longer constrained by our biology.

Many scientists reject any notion that human beings have abilities that are profoundly different from other animals. To do so, they fear, will give ammunition to creationists and spiritualists. But we do not need spiritual or “magical” explanations to grasp that the difference between human beings and other animals is fundamental rather than one of degrees. There are some fascinating theories put forward in the last decade that go quite far in explaining the emergence, through evolution, of uniquely powerful human abilities. We don’t know how or when, but there must have been some gene mutation or set of mutations tens of thousands of years ago that endowed us with the unique ability to participate in a collective cognition.

A small difference in our innate abilities led to a unique connection between human minds — allowing us to learn through imitation and collaboration — leading to cumulative cultural evolution and the transformation of the human mind. It is this unique ability to copy complex actions and strategies (even those that the individual doing the copying would never have been able to come up with on their own), along with unique forms of cooperation and an ability to teach, that creates the uniquely powerful ‘ratchet effect’ in human culture, whereby gains are consolidated and built on rather than having to be rediscovered.  The evolution of the human genetic makeup is merely the precondition for the emergence of distinctly human cultural abilities. We need to look to cultural evolution, rather than genetic evolution, to explain the vast gulf that exists between the capabilities and achievements of humans and those of other animals.

Human beings are not perfect and never will be, but we are special and unique among the animal kingdom. We are capable of making judgments about our own and other people’s behaviour, and have the capacity consciously to change the way we behave and society as whole.

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Suicide is unique to humans and sets us apart from other animal species:

Suicide is a distinctive feature of humankind.

The characteristics of living organisms have developed as a result of evolution with the aim of improving the likelihood of survival or successful reproduction of organisms. It is therefore difficult to find evolutionary explanations to self-destructive behaviour. The genes that cause suicidal behaviour should have been eliminated by natural selection long ago. Nevertheless, suicide and deep depression leading to it has never been a more serious problem in modern society than now. The estimated number of suicides committed each year is around one million. How can evolutionary biology explain suicide?

Is suicidal behaviour genetically determined, or is it purely the unfavourable environment that leads to suicide? Indeed, studies have shown that suicidal behaviour is hereditary, just as susceptibility to depression. For example, first-degree relatives of individuals who have committed suicide have more than twice the probability of killing themselves than the average of the general population, and for identical twins, the relative risk is 11 times higher than average in the case of one of them committing suicide.

Suicidality is estimated to be approximately 43% heritable or in other words, the role of the environment makes up more than the half. For comparison, the heritability of alcohol use is about 50%. As with other behavioural traits, it is probable that a lot of genes are involved in the development of suicidality, with each gene having its own small role. In the future, however, each of us could know the genetic risk of suicidal behaviour and prevent it, if possible.

Most studies on suicidality focus on its direct causes and identification of risk factors. Genetic predisposition, personality traits (impulsiveness and aggressiveness), development conditions before and after birth, traumatic events in the early years of life and disorders of the nervous system have been identified as long-term risk factors, and in a shorter perspective, use of substances, psychological crises, the availability of a means to take one’s life and suicidal examples have been suggested as short-term predictors of suicidal behaviour. Considering the heritability, kinship can be easily explained, but the other aspects are probably not. While the mentioned factors may account for individual deaths by suicide, none of them explain why natural selection has not eliminated the so-called suicide genes from the gene pool of different species.

Do animals commit suicide? 

When trying to understand the evolutionary background of suicide, we naturally wonder how widespread it is in the world of animals. Although the stories about animals having committed suicide abound in the internet, most of the described events turn out to be a myth (e.g., lemmings do not actually jump off the cliff) or accident (e.g., the dogs seemingly jumping into a cleft may have smelled a prey). Animal suicide is a contradictory subject in the scientific world and the approved opinion is that other species besides humans do not deliberately take their own life. However, some animals (mostly laboratory mice) are used in animal models to study behavioural traits (aggressiveness, impulsiveness, anxiety, hopelessness) that lead to suicide, and to examine associated neural mechanisms.  Consequently, development of suicidal behaviour in animals seems possible, but in the human species these characteristics have evolved into a type of behaviour, i.e. causing one’s own death, which is wrong in evolutionary terms.

The scientifically proved suicide events by animals are mainly related to parasites affecting the behaviour of animals. Namely, eating up the host is in the interests of some parasite and makes it possible for the parasite to spread from one intermediate host into another. The protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, for example, not only makes rodents to serve as brave and aggressive intermediate hosts, but the animals also start to show strong preference for cat scent.  As a result, the mice and rats with Toxoplasma infection actually try to find their predators themselves and help the parasite to move on in its life cycle.

Schistocephalus solidus is a tapeworm that infects fish and causes them swim up to surface waters where the fish passively wait for their predators, being the fish-eating birds. A well-known example is also a parasite-infected grasshopper that drowns itself – the parasite needs water for the next stage of its life cycle.

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Cannibalism is common in the animal kingdom but for humans it’s the ultimate taboo:

Vulnerable spadefoot tadpoles eat their smaller competitors to speed towards toadhood as quickly as possible. Gulls and pelicans are among bird species that eat hatchlings for food or to prevent the spread of disease. In insect species such as the praying mantis or the Australian redback spider, males offer their bodies as a final gift to females after mating. It’s more common than you’d think in mammals too. Many rodent mothers may eat some of their young if they’re sick, dead, or too numerous to feed. Bears and lions kill and eat the offspring of adult females to make them more receptive to mating. Chimpanzees sometimes cannibalize unlucky rivals, usually infants, seemingly for the mere opportunity of some extra protein.

For humans though, cannibalism is the ultimate taboo. In fact, our aversion to cannibalism is so strong that consent and ethics count for little.

In one experiment, participants were asked to consider the hypothetical case of a man who gave permission to his friend to eat parts of him once he died of natural causes. Participants read that this occurred in a culture that permitted the act, that the act was meant to honour the deceased, and that the flesh was cooked so that there was no chance of disease. Despite this careful description, about half of the participants still insisted that the act was invariably wrong.

Even in the starkest of situations, the act of eating another human’s flesh remains almost beyond contemplation. Survivors of the famous 1972 Andes plane crash waited until near starvation before succumbing to reason and eating those who had already died. One survivor, Roberto Canessa, felt that to eat his fellow passengers would be “stealing their souls” and descending towards “ultimate indignity” – despite recalling that in the aftermath of the crash, he like many others had declared that he would be glad for his body to aid the communal survival mission.

The tragic anecdote above illuminates why humans are the exception to the animal cannibal rule. Our capacity to represent the personalities of the living and the departed is unparalleled. This deep connection between personhood and flesh can mean that careful reasoning in certain situations over the merits of cannibalism is overridden by our feelings of repulsion and disgust.

So why our disgust for human flesh but not that of other animals? Philosopher William Irvine has us imagine a ranch that raises plump babies for human consumption, much like we fatten and slaughter cattle for beef. Irvine suggests that the same arguments we apply to justify the killing of cows also apply to babies. For example, they wouldn’t protest, and they’re not capable of rational thought. Although Irvine is not seriously advocating eating babies, the scenario is useful for illuminating our bias when considering the ethics of cannibalism. From a young age, we tend to think about categories, such as humans or cows, as having an underlying reality or “essence” that cannot be observed directly but that gives a thing its fundamental identity. For example, humans are intelligent and rational thinkers, we have personalities and a desire to live, and we form bonds with each other. This psychological essentialism is a useful shortcut to guide our expectations and judgements about members of the category.  Research shows that the more we think of animals as having human properties – that is, as being “like us” – the more we tend to think they’re gross to eat.

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The reason we humans prefer to have sex in private:

In the entire animal kingdom, only humans and one species of bird have sex in private. New research proposes an evolutionary reason to explain this behavior.

We share the sexual reproduction with all animal species and some plants; however, of the millions of living beings that practice sex to reproduce, only a few are aware of it. And between that much, only the humans and the Arabian tordalino (a species of bird from the Middle East) have a completely customary habit that is as normal in everyday life as it is strange to the animal kingdom: have sex in private.

But what are the origins of this practice? Why, unlike the most human-like mammals, did we choose to have sex in private since the beginning of time?

This was the question that prompted Yitzchak Ben Mocha, an anthropologist at the University of Zurich, to investigate human sexual habits and their scientific explanation. To answer this question, Ben Mocha analyzed different cultures of all times and geographies in search of practices that favored the public sex as a rule in some particular society. Of the 4,752 ethnographic studies analyzed, none exhibited sex-related behavior in public, even in societies where it is difficult to find a private space. Regardless of the culture and morality that was built around sex for millennia, the research tried to find some link between this behavior and a evolutionary trait of the human species.

The result of the study suggested a novel explanation that goes back to the most primitive behavior of humans: Ben Mocha and his colleagues concluded that the reason why both our species and the Arabian tordaline have sex in private is that in this way, the males prevent other specimens from looking at their female partners in a state of excitement.

According to the anthropologist, this behavior would prevent other males from trying to have sex with this female and, therefore, would function as a coercion mechanism in a group, avoiding conflicts between its members. Although it is hardly a hypothesis, later research on human sexual behavior and its relationship with early societies could add to the understanding of key concepts such as family wave monogamy.

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What Makes Us Human (Homo sapiens)? The Challenge of Cognitive Cross-Species Comparison: 2007 study:

Two major theoretical approaches have dominated the quest for uniquely human cognitive abilities: a developmentalist approach stressing the importance of environmental and social conditions, and a predominant approach in experimental and comparative psychology, the deterministic approach suggesting the effect of environmental and social to be minimal. As a consequence, most claims of human cognitive uniqueness are based on comparisons of White middle-class Westerner humans (Homo sapiens) with captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). However, humans are much more than only White middle-class Westerners, and chimpanzees are much more than only captives. A review of some data available on different populations of humans and chimpanzees reveals that only the predictions of the developmentalist approach are supported. In addition, systematic biases are too often introduced in experiment protocols when comparing humans with apes that further cast doubts on cross-species comparisons. The author argues that only with consideration of within-species population differences in the cognitive domains and the use of well-matched cross-species experimental procedures will an objective understanding of the different cognitive abilities between species emerge. This will require a shift in the theoretical approach adopted by many in experimental and comparative psychology.

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Why do we want to think humans are different? A 2018 paper:

One harmful consequence of creating categories where one group is unique and superior to others is that it justifies committing negative, often atrocious, acts on the members of the inferior group. Correcting divisive human categorizations (racial superiority, gender superiority) has bettered society. Scholars have often claimed that humans are unique and superior to nonhuman animals. These claims need to be reevaluated. Many have already been refuted. Animals have been shown to outperform humans in many tasks, including cognitive ones. Here we raise the question: Has the false sense of superiority been used to justify human cruelty to animals?

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Humans have the propensity to place things into categories (i.e., good vs. bad, full vs. empty, black vs. white), which can directly shape how we view the world. Since categorization shapes our actions, it is important to evaluate their validity and distinctness and the degree to which one category blurs into the next. One categorization that has intrigued scholars for centuries is that of humans versus nonhuman animals. We often put humans on a pedestal, as unique and superior to all other animals: one of a kind; unlike any other animal. For example, in the 17th century, Rene Descartes stated that only people were creatures of reason, linked to the mind of God, while animals were merely machines made of flesh. His follower Nicolas Malebranche went on to say that animals “eat without pleasure, cry without pain, grow without knowing it: they desire nothing, fear nothing, know nothing.” Today Descartes’s and Malebranche’s statements may seem extreme and wrong (Call, 2006), but they clearly reflect the propensity to see animals and humans as very different and humans as superior. 

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The view of humans and animals has changed since the 17th century (Fuentes, 2018; Marks, 2016; Van Schaik, 2016), thus these categories need to be reevaluated. Other categorizations have changed dramatically over time, with very positive effects on human societies. When the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution was written, “only white male property holders [were] deemed adequately endowed to be included in the category of personhood” (US 1776). This is no longer the definition of personhood. In fact, the question of whether great apes warrant being accorded personhood is generating much academic interest today (Kurki and Pietrzykowski, 2017; Shyam, 2015; Wise, 2014).  A second reason to reevaluate the human/animal distinction is that many of our previous criteria for human uniqueness have proved wrong. Thomas Carlyle (1833) stated that “Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all” (Carlyle, 1833). This definition of “Man the Tool Maker” was largely viewed as true until the 1960s, when Jane Goodall’s observations of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) using tools to extract termites from their mounds (with the help of publicity from National Geographic) eventually invalidated Carlyle’s definition. It had taken well over a century (Goodall, 1986; Goodall, 1964). Prior to the Goodall findings, there had already been considerable evidence, largely ignored, that the definition was flawed. For example, in 1925 Köhler reported a series of simple experiments that clearly demonstrated chimpanzees could use tools and even cooperate in tool use to obtain food rewards. The chimpanzees would pile boxes one on top of another and then use sticks (even putting two sticks together) to reach a food reward hung high above their heads. Several primate species have now been shown to be habitual tool users, some maintaining tool-using cultures for hundreds of generations (Haslam et al., 2017).  Today we know that tools are also used by many non-primate species such as elephants (Hart and Hart, 1994), Caledonia crows (van Casteren, 2017), African grey parrots (Pepperberg, 2004), sea otters (Hall and Schaller, 1964; Fujii et al., 2014), rodents (Nagano and Aoyama, 2017), octopuses (Finn et al., 2009), and some fish (Bernardi, 2012). 

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A similar failed criterion had been put forward in 1891 by Sir William Osler, who stated: “A desire to take medicine is, perhaps, the great feature which distinguishes man from other animals.” The subsequent extensive documentation of medicinal plant use by chimpanzees (figure below) and other primates opened the flood gates for research in this area (Huffman, 1997; Huffman, 2007), leading to examples of medicine use not only by other mammals (e.g., elephants, bears, civets, coatis, porcupines), but also birds (e.g., snow geese, finches, raptors) and insects (e.g., bumble bees, ants, butterflies) (Engel, 2002; Huffman, 2007). 

Figure above shows chimpanzees use plants for their curative properties. Here the individual is folding and swallowing the whole leaves of Aspilia mossambicensis, one of over 40 different species ingested in a way that has been shown to physically purge intestinal worms from Africa great apes (Huffman et al., 1997). 

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Chu (2014) suggested that humans are unique in their ability to build complex structures. A number of authors have since echoed this (Fuentes, 2017; Marks, 2015) despite the evidence of complex living constructions by animals such as beavers (Castor canadensis), birds, bees and wasps (Doucet et al., 1994; Hansell, 2000; Hepburn et al., 2016). Termite mounds are remarkable structures with specific areas built for different purposes, elaborate features for draining water and cooling the mound, and even gardens to cultivate fungi as a source of food and medicine (Darlington, 1985; Korb, 2003; Korb, 2010). 

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These and many other such claims about putative defining differences between humans and animals span from 1833 to 2014 have proved wrong. Yet the desire to see humans as unique still remains. Is this a valid scientific question? One of the distinctive features of science is hypothesis testing (Cartmill, 1990; Popper, 1968). If hypotheses about human uniqueness repeatedly prove to be wrong for one trait after another, does this not imply that the hypothesis itself is wrong? We can keep resurrecting the hypothesis with new traits not yet considered, but to what end?  

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Evolutionary theory is a widely accepted explanation for the diversity of life on the planet. If uniqueness were intended to mean humans are one of a kind, unlike anything else, this would contradict evolution. Evolution consists of changes in genetically coded traits:  if a new trait is advantageous for survival and reproduction in the environmental setting in which it occurs, its frequency will increase. Any trait (e.g., human intelligence) must have its roots in common ancestors; there are no “Hopeful Monsters” as proposed by Goldschmidt (1940). Matt Cartmill (1990) summarized this well when reviewing some of the early critics of natural selection. Some scholars argued that natural selection could not account for some human traits, such as our intellectual capacities and our moral faculties, as they could not have been generated through survival of the fittest variants among apelike ancestors. This argument was countered by Darwin (1871) and his followers who simply asserted that these traits had selective advantages and thus the moral and intellectual gap between humans and other higher mammals was only a matter of degree. All genetic traits are derived from predecessor traits; thus, there are similarities among the closest living relatives.

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Many claims about the uniqueness of people state or imply that humans are superior to animals. In both Judaism and Christianity, humans are said to be made in the image of god and given dominion over lower creatures (Genesis). Aristotle believed that plants and animals were made for the sake of humans (Taylor, 1984). A number of religions in the Orient believe in the concept of a gradation of beings, with humans being the ultimate state. In Jainism there are four states with gods the highest, humans second, suffering in hell the third, and plants and animals last (Laidlaw, 1995). Belief in human superiority is clearly deep-rooted. When scholars make such assertions today, they often select traits on an ad hoc basis according to what they view as important among the things at which humans excel. Examples include the traits discussed above (tool use, medicine, construction). As part of Tetsuro Matsuzawa’s 40 years of research on chimpanzee cognition (Matsuzawa, 2017), one candidate, the ability to solve complex problems, was examined in a beautiful study by Inoue and Matsuzawa (2007). They developed a memory test in which numbers where shown on a computer screen and then covered by opaque boxes. Chimpanzees were rewarded if they touched the boxes in the sequence that the numbers had been represented (i.e., 1 to 5). The researchers concluded that their study “shows that young chimpanzees can quickly grasp many numerals at a glance, with no decline in performance as the hold duration is varied. Moreover, the young ones showed better performance than adults in the memory task. Our study shows that young chimpanzees have an extraordinary working memory capability for numerical recollection, even better than that of human adults” (Inoue and Matsuzawa, 2007).

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Claims of human superiority are used to justify human cruelty toward animals (Arluke, 2017), such as those raised for food (Taylor and Fraser, 2017). They mirror how claims of ethnic superiority are used to justify atrocities and even genocide against people trying to escape from famine or violence (Kunst et al., 2017; Staub, 1989). Authors think it is time for our species to use our intellect to change our actions. This must start by recognizing that while differences exist between animals and humans or among cultures or peoples, they should not be ranked vertically. Differences are value-free and of interest because they provide diversity, whether genetic or cultural; studying them allows us to better understand ourselves. Problems arise only when a cultural belief infringes on the rights and safety of others (Mechoulan, 2017; Twining et al., 2000; Bauman et al., 2014). 

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There are many differences (and similarities) between human and nonhuman species, just as there are differences (and similarities) between any two species, any two cultures, or even any two individuals. However, since all traits cannot be taken into account simultaneously, it is inappropriate to accord superiority to a subset of traits that are preselected in a biased or ad-hoc fashion. Species can be compared on a suite of singled-out traits, as is done in multivariate university rankings, but the exercise is likely to be just as arbitrary. 

We should use the traits we are so proud of — our vaunted intellect, communication skills, and morality — to create positive change. There is little doubt that now is the time when these skills are desperately needed. The world’s ecosystems are in peril. Since our species is the major cause, we must provide solutions. Biodiversity is being lost at an accelerating rate, with current extinction rates approximately 1,000 times higher than background rates observed in the fossil record (Pimm et al., 2014). Extant vertebrate species have declined in abundance by approximately 25% since 1970 (Dirzo et al., 2014). Between 2000 and 2012, 2.3 million km2 of forest were lost globally, and in the tropics, tropical forest loss has increased annually (Hansen et al., 2013). 

To put this in perspective, the area of forest lost is approximately the size of Mexico. Global estimates of the extent of wildlife over-exploitation are very poor; however, in Africa, four million metric tons of bushmeat are extracted each year from the Congo basin alone (equivalent to approximately 4,500,000 cows, or 80 million small (5 kg) monkeys). (Not all bushmeat is primate; Fa and Brown, 2009.) Global temperature is predicted to increase by 1.5°C by the end of the 21st century (IPCC, 2014) and researchers have projected that by 2100, 75% of all tropical forests present in 2000 will experience temperatures that are higher than the temperatures presently supporting closed canopy forests (Wright et al., 2009; Peres et al., 2016). 

Figure below shows extinction of various species:  

These statistics illustrate that we continue to place human profit ahead of the rights of animals and the ecosystems that support them, not to mention the rights of future human generations. An example of the drive for profit is that the conversion of forest to oil palm plantations was responsible for 3 million hectares of deforestation from 2000-2011 (an area the size of the Philippines) (Vijay et al., 2016). This was a significant factor leading to the loss of 100,000 orangutans between 1999 and 2015 (Voigt et al., 2018). Ever more land is projected to be needed for agricultural activities because of human population growth and people electing to eat higher up on the food chain (Delgado, 2003). Yet this is also the time when people have options to use products not containing palm oil, to eat lower on the food chain, and to use products that do not support the deforestation of tropical forests. As the duration of inaction continues, the options available to society become progressively limited — climate change represents a clear example (IPCC, 2018).  Many human traits once thought unique to our species have proved to differ only in degree from those of many other species living on the planet. We cannot survive without many of those other species today; it is because of the existence of other species that we exist. We need to treat them with the respect they deserve and not judge their intelligence by how much they resemble us, nor evaluate them only on the basis of what they provide us. We need to acknowledge how much we resemble them and how much we have to learn from them. Doing so will allow us to make decisions — such as whether to use palm oil or how high on the food chain to eat — with a realistic understanding of the consequences of our actions, for them as well as for us.  

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Section-11

Animal cognition:

Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology; the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition. Researchers have examined animal cognition in mammals (especially primates, cetaceans, elephants, dogs, cats, pigs, horses, cattle, raccoons and rodents), birds (including parrots, fowl, corvids and pigeons), reptiles (lizards, snakes, and turtles), fish and invertebrates (including cephalopods, spiders and insects). 

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The study of animal minds was long divided between what are sometimes called “scoffers” and “boosters.” Scoffers refused to acknowledge that animals could think at all: Behaviorism—the idea that scientists shouldn’t talk about minds, only about stimuli and responses—stuck around in animal research long after it had been discredited in the rest of psychology. Boosters often relied on anecdotes and anthropomorphism instead of experiments. Animal cognition ignores the fact that humans are animals too.

Psychologists often assume that there is a special cognitive ability—a psychological secret sauce—that makes humans different from other animals. The list of candidates is long: tool use, cultural transmission, the ability to imagine the future or to understand other minds, and so on. But every one of these abilities shows up in at least some other species in at least some form. New Caledonian crows make elaborate tools, shaping branches into pointed, barbed termite-extraction devices. A few Japanese macaques learned to wash sweet potatoes and even to dip them in the sea to make them more salty, and passed that technique on to subsequent generations. Western scrub jays “cache”—they hide food for later use—and studies have shown that they anticipate what they will need in the future, rather than acting on what they need now.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that these human abilities also appear in other species. After all, the whole point of natural selection is that small variations among existing organisms can eventually give rise to new species. Our hands and hips and those of our primate relatives gradually diverged from the hands and hips of common ancestors. It’s not that we miraculously grew hands and hips and other animals didn’t. So why would we alone possess some distinctive cognitive skill that no other species has in any form?

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For centuries, it was believed that a clear discontinuity held between the cognitive capabilities of humans and animals. Philosophers and other thinkers tended to be quite skeptical of animals’ mental abilities. For example, the great French philosopher Rene´ Descartes deemed animals to be mere machines whose actions could be explained without invoking any cognitive processes whatsoever. In his Letter to the Marquess of Newcastle, Descartes proposed that “the reason why animals do not speak as we do is not that they lack the organs but that they have no thoughts.” Approximately 50 years later, the great British philosopher John Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, joined Descartes in disparaging the cognitive capacities of animals: “the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to.”

All that changed some 200 years later when Charles Darwin advanced his revolutionary ideas about the evolution of species. In The Descent of Man, Darwin went beyond suggesting the evolution of physical traits to proposing the evolution of the mind as well. For Darwin, there was “no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties” (p. 66). Human and animal intelligence differ only in degree, not in kind, Darwin argued; so, there should be no sharp schism between human and animal mind. The human mind might be the final step in the evolution of intellectual functions, but the roots of human mental processes should be observable in animals as well.

Darwin’s unsettling ideas had actually been presaged by other philosophers and psychologists. In his Principles of Psychology, Herbert Spencer suggested that the mind could be understood only by examining how it had evolved. According to Spencer, mental capacities could be represented along a continuum with no great gaps: a continuous progression from simple associative learning to complex forms of abstraction and reasoning.

The ideas of Darwin and Spencer on the evolution of the mind were staunchly defended by Thomas Huxley, who wrote in 1874 that: “the doctrine of continuity is too well established for it to be permissible to suppose that any complex natural phenomenon comes into existence suddenly and without being preceded by simpler modifications; and very strong arguments would be needed to show that such complex phenomena as those of consciousness first made their appearance in man.”

These principles of evolutionary biology clearly clashed with Cartesian philosophy. The gradual evolution of cognition was a direct consequence of this new biological vantage point. Critically, within that new paradigm, it was entirely plausible to believe that mental capabilities could be observed in organisms other than humans.

Once the hypothesis of mental continuity was enunciated, evidence to support it was needed. Darwin himself amassed a large collection of supportive anecdotes: stories told by naturalists, zookeepers, and pet owners attesting to how smart animals really were.

For example:

Dr. Hayes, in his work on The Open Polar Sea, repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead of continuing to draw the sledges in a compact body, diverged and separated when they came to thin ice, so that their weight might be more evenly distributed. This was often the first warning which the travelers received that the ice was becoming thin and dangerous.

Darwin was alert to the hazards of relying on anecdotal evidence alone; such observations lacked the information needed to pinpoint the mechanisms responsible for the animals’ behavior. Relevant to the prior example, Darwin wondered about the origins of the dogs’ behavior: “now, did the dogs act thus from the experience of each individual, or from the example of the older and wiser dogs, or from an inherited habit, that is from instinct?”

Any bona fide scientific analysis of animal cognition requires careful recording of the relevant behaviors as well as precise knowledge and control of the variables influencing or determining that behavior. Darwin’s disciple, George Romanes, advocated for an objective analysis of the mind in his book Animal Intelligence: “We can only infer the existence and the nature of thoughts and feelings from the activities of the organisms which appear to exhibit them.” (p. 1). Yet, despite his advocacy for and his interest in documenting mental continuity across species, Romanes’ work too was simply a compilation, albeit extensive and thorough, of still more informal observations and anecdotes.

The true transition to the scientific study of animal cognition began with C. Lloyd Morgan. In his Introduction to Comparative Psychology, Morgan emphasized the importance of distinguishing between an animal’s behavior and the interpretation of that behavior. In order to properly interpret an organism’s behavior, high standards of objectivity are needed. As well, systematic experimental studies are required in order to reach incisive conclusions as to the origins of behavior, which he himself undertook with baby chicks whose developmental history could be known and carefully controlled. Finally, circumspection was to be one of Morgan’s enduring contributions. Morgan’s famous canon urged researchers to be cautious in advocating advanced cognitive interpretations when the behavior in question might be more parsimoniously explained by simpler behavioral processes.

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How do animals use the information they obtain from their environment to move through space, time their activities, assess quantity, or remember the past?

Honey bees provide an intriguing example of how animals exhibit extraordinary abilities to navigate their worlds. Some of these behaviors remind us of our own abilities, whereas others extend beyond human cognition. Either way, these amazing behaviors beg a number of questions. Do honey bees possess a mental map of their environment? What about other animals? What kind of cognitive capacities do they need to process information they receive from their environment?

Studying Animal Cognition:

Studying the animal mind poses unique challenges because we project ourselves onto animals, as seen in the example of Clever Hans. Hans was a German horse who became a global phenomenon in the early 1900s because of his ability to answer mathematical questions. His ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide (by stomping the correct number of times) was examined by a number of professionals and determined to be real.

Although many people were thoroughly convinced of Hans’s mathematical prowess, some remained skeptical. Oskar Pfungst made careful observations of Hans’s behavior and discovered that although Hans could correctly answer questions from a variety of people, he could do so only if the questioner were visible. Pfungst discovered that when people asked Hans a question, they slightly moved their heads when the correct answer was presented. Hans was indeed clever: he was attuned to the subtle subconscious body language of the people around him (Pfungst 1911). Clever Hans taught comparative psychologists an important lesson. Avoiding pitfalls such as this requires carefully controlling experimental studies and following Lloyd Morgan’s canon: accept the simplest explanation for a behavior in favor of a more complex cognitive process.

Cognitive Capacities:

The physical world poses a number of problems for animals to solve. On a daily basis, animals must find food, avoid predators, and seek shelter. Solving these problems requires cognitive capacities. Cognition involves processing information, from sensing the environment to making decisions based on available information. Such cognitive capacities include, among others, the ability to navigate through space, account for the passage of time, determine quantity, and remember events and locations.

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Now let me discuss prominent aspects in animal cognition: numerical processing, memory and planning, conceptualization, metacognition, navigation, and time:

1. Numerical Processing

Number is an important property of objects in the external world. Critically, numerical processing can be considered to be mediated by an abstract cognitive process, because behavioral control by number must be made irrespective of the specific physical features of the items to be evaluated; 2, 5, or 8 items are 2, 5, or 8 regardless of whether the items are apples, pebbles, or geckos. Traditionally, it has been believed that linguistic competence is necessary for numerical processing. Although it is the case that a verbal system does mediate several numerical and mathematical operations, considerable evidence has been obtained documenting numerical processing by animals and infants lacking language; this evidence suggests that common preverbal processes underlie numerical and mathematical competencies in humans and animals.

Basic numerical abilities comprise: learning and using symbols to denote specific quantities; discriminating, ordering, and comparing different quantities; and, combining quantities so that basic arithmetic operations, such as addition and subtraction, can be accomplished.

The Japanese primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa taught a 5-year-old chimpanzee, Ai, to use Arabic numerals to denote the number of items in a display. Ai was first presented with either 1 or 2 items in a display window and then required to choose either the ‘1’ or the ‘2’ key on a numeric keyboard. As Ai mastered the lower numbers, higher numbers of items were progressively introduced, up to a maximum of 6. Regardless of the items being colors, objects, or symbols, Ai’s accuracy exceeded 90%. Nevertheless, Ai had greater difficulty reporting the numbers when they were close to one another (e.g., it was easier for Ai to distinguish 2 from 5 than to distinguish 2 from 3) and when the numbers were at the higher end of the scale (e.g., Ai was more accurate at identifying 2 and 3 than at identifying 5 and 6, even when the disparity between them was in both cases 1 item). It seems that, as quantities increase, the discrepancies between them become less obvious and, in turn, the discrimination between them becomes more challenging.

Interestingly, Ai’s behavior is not an isolated curiosity. Humans too find it easier to distinguish between 2 and 14 items than between 4 and 5 items. This finding is called the numerical distance effect. As well, humans can rapidly distinguish between 2 and 3 items, but we cannot so rapidly say if there are 14 or 15 items, in this case showing what is called the numerical magnitude effect. The numerical magnitude effect has also been found in monkeys, rats, and pigeons.

Estimating and representing numerical values appears to be necessary for the next step in numerical reasoning: interrelating quantities so that operations like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing can be accomplished. Can animals perform these basic arithmetic operations? Studies using a preferential looking paradigm have suggested that preverbal human infants and monkeys can understand simple arithmetical operations, such as adding and subtracting a small number of visually presented objects.

For example, when monkeys watched as two eggplants were placed behind a screen, they looked longer when the screen was removed and only one eggplant was present than when two eggplants were present. Monkeys may have spent more time looking at the incorrect outcome because it surprisingly violated the rules of arithmetic. But, the results of such studies may be explained in terms of the infants’ and monkeys’ understanding of object permanence: organisms can keep track of occluded objects and when one object unexpectedly appears or disappears, they are surprised; no real arithmetic ability is required in that case.

More compelling evidence of addition in monkeys has been found by Brannon and Cantlon. They presented animals with two sets of dots on two sequential screens. Then, on a third screen, the monkeys had to choose from two sets: one containing the number of dots equal to the sum of the two sets and a second containing a different number of dots. Monkeys learned to choose the array that roughly corresponded to the arithmetic sum of the two sets of dots and they readily transferred this behavior to novel combinations.

Figure above shows a monkey performing the addition task designed by Brannon and Cantlon. The monkey had to choose from two sets of dots: one set containing the same number of dots as the sum of two previously presented sets and a second set containing a different number of dots.

When humans were given the same nonverbal task, their pattern of performance was strikingly similar. Although humans were generally more proficient than monkeys, both species’ reaction times and accuracies were affected by the ratio between the numerical values of the choice arrays: the larger the numerical difference between the correct and the incorrect choices, the better the performance. These results further suggest that humans and animals share an approximate calculation system that does not involve verbal processing.

Research in numerical processing thus shows that animals possess the evolutionary precursors to advanced mathematical abilities: animals can identify and name quantities, compare and discriminate different quantities, and even manipulate those quantities to perform simple additive operations.

Many aspects of an animal’s environment vary visibly in size and quantity. Peahens (Pavo spp.), for instance, use the number of eye spots on a male’s tail as a cue when selecting a mate (Petrie & Halliday 1994). To use this cue, females must have some way to assess the quantity of eye spots. The ability to discriminate numbers is also important for group-living, territorial animals. For example, black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra), which are highly territorial, can assess relative group size based on the number of males howling in a rival troop. This ability allows the monkeys to avoid potentially injurious encounters with larger troops (Kitchen 2006).

How accurate are animals at discriminating quantities? One rather accurate method would be to count the number of items. Hauser and colleagues (2000) tested free-ranging rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to determine whether animals can precisely distinguish between small numbers. They placed apple slices into each of two boxes in full view of a monkey. They then allowed the monkey to choose a box from which to feed. When the number of slices put into a box was four or less, the monkeys accurately chose the box that contained more slices, but when the number of slices exceeded four for both options, they chose randomly. Yet in many situations, determining which of two options is “more” is important to an individual’s fitness, so animals must use another mechanism to assess quantity. For example, many fish species group together in shoals; a larger shoal should provide greater benefits by decreasing predation risk. Agrillo and colleagues (2007) tested mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) and found that the fish could distinguish between shoals that varied by a 1:2 ratio (1:2, 2:4, 4:8, and 8:16), but they were unable to discriminate a ratio of 2:3. Many species show this effect of reduced precision as the ratio increases, and, like timing, animals are less accurate at quantifying as the magnitude increases (Brannon & Roitman 2003).

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2. Memory

There is no question that animals can learn new information. Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiments showed that, after presenting dogs with a sound followed by food, the mere presentation of the sound alone would make the dogs salivate, a response that was initially elicited only by food. We can infer that the dogs learned that the sound predicted food. And, if animals can learn, then that implies they remember the events they experienced in the past. So, the fact that the dogs came to salivate to the sound suggests that they remembered the pairing of sounds with food.

Unlike humans, animals cannot verbally express their recollections; but, there are other ways we can study their memory. One popular procedure is delayed matching-to-sample. In the basic task, a sample stimulus (a colored light or a picture) is presented for a few seconds. Then, the sample is removed and a delay ensues. After this delay (which can range from seconds to minutes), the sample is again presented along with one or more comparison stimuli. The animal’s task is to pick the choice stimulus that matches the sample. Monkeys and pigeons successfully perform this task. Moreover, their accuracy generally decreases as the delay increases, which is true for humans as well. Further, animals can perform this matching task even when new sample and comparison stimuli are presented to them, showing effective transfer to a novel situation.

Human memory studies have traditionally involved learning and retrieval of lists of items. People are given lists of items and they must later recall as many items as possible. In this situation, the first and the last items in the list tend to be better recalled – primacy and recency, respectively. Animals too show these serial position effects.

The memory of pigeons, monkeys, and humans for lists of visual items has been directly compared after different delays between the last item and the recognition test. All three species show the same pattern: strong recency, but no primacy at the shortest delays; the classic U-shaped serial position function at intermediate delays; and, strong primacy, but no recency at the longest delays. Thus, the same mechanisms may mediate the serial memory performance of all three species.

Although similarities between species abound, there are disparities too. Sometimes, animals can be even more proficient than humans! One noteworthy example comes from Tetsuro Matsuzawa’s laboratory in Inuyama, Japan. Chimpanzees were first taught to contact each of the numerals from 1 to 9 in order when they appeared in random locations on a computer touchscreen. Even when the sequence lacked some of the numbers (e.g., 1-3-4-6-8-9), the chimpanzees could still respond in sequential order from the smallest to the largest. Humans could also do this, of course. But, a critical variation was later introduced. The numerals were presented for a very short duration (from 650 to 210 ms) and then they were replaced by white squares (see figure below). Now, subjects had to remember which numeral appeared in which location and then touch each of them in the correct sequence. Humans’ performance plummeted, but chimpanzees’ performance remained high. The chimpanzees could retain an accurate image of the very brief visual scene, an ability that surpasses our own perceptual memory capacity. This eidetic (or photographic) memory can sometimes be seen in young children, but very rarely in adults. This striking developmental disparity was also seen in chimpanzees; the young animals were the best performers in this task.

Figure above shows a chimpanzee performing the memory task designed by Matsuzawa and his colleagues. On the left, the chimpanzee is touching in sequential order the numerals from 1 to 9 located randomly on the screen. On the right, after brief presentation, the numerals were covered by white squares; here too, the chimpanzee has to touch each of the squares in the correct sequence.

Storing and retrieving information we have encountered previously can be useful when making predictions about the future. For animals as well, it is often beneficial to remember past information, and some animals seem to have enhanced memory for tasks that they face repeatedly in their natural environments. Several species of birds cache seeds for the winter. Many mammals and birds are food-hoarding animals; they cache food in specific places for future use. Food hoarding implies that: (1) food has to be stored and concealed and (2) actual consumption is deferred for hours, days, weeks, or months. Successful hording appears to require animals to use past spatial and temporal information to retrieve food later. For this to be an effective strategy, they must be able to remember the location of their caches months later, when they need the food. For example, captive black-capped chickadees (Parus atricapillus) are capable of recovering caches up to 28 d after caching (Hitchcock and Sherry 1990). Caching may have strong influences on at least two types of memory. First, caching species may have superior spatial memory. Clark’s nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) are corvids that cache up to 30,000 seeds each year (Vander Wall & Balda 1977). These seeds are an important winter food source for nutcrackers. Compared with non-caching corvid species, nutcrackers excel at remembering the locations of food when these species are tested in spatial memory tasks (Balda & Kamil 2006).

Caching may also impart an advantage to episodic memory. Episodic memory is the memory we use to recall experiences: the who, what, when, and where that we recall from specific episodes in our past. Though difficult to test in animals, there is evidence that some species have “episodic-like memory.” Scrub jays (Aphelecoma californica), a relative of nutcrackers, also cache food.  In a series of experiments with scrub jays, Nicola Clayton and her colleagues allowed animals to store and recover worms and peanuts. Fresh worms are the scrub jays’ preferred food. But, the worms do not last very long; after a few days, they degrade and become unpalatable. Peanuts are less appetizing, but they are nonperishable; so, they can be consumed at any time. The jays were trained in the laboratory to cache worms on one side of a distinctive tray and to cache peanuts on the other side (Figure below shows a scrub jay caching food from a tray). Critically, the jays were allowed to retrieve their caches either 4 or 124 h later. After 4 h, the birds tended to inspect the side of the tray where the worms should be; but, after 124 h, the birds tended to inspect the side where the peanuts should be. No olfactory or visual food cues were available; the jays had to rely on their memory at the time of cache recovery.

Figure above shows a scrub jay caching worms and nuts in the compartments of a sand-filled ice-cube tray.

Evidently, the jays can remember: (1) whether peanuts or worms had been cached – what; (2) on which side of the tray each of the food items had been stored – where; and (3), whether a short or a long time had elapsed since the food items had been cached – when. Thus, the cache and retrieval behaviors of the scrub jays meet the criteria for episodic memory.

Many researchers believe that such successful and elaborate food caching suggests that animals plan for the future. However, in order to speak of planning, current behavior must be based on its future consequences and must be independent of the animal’s prevailing motivation. Clayton and her colleagues asked if scrub jays could anticipate their future need states and act accordingly. The researchers placed the jays into two different compartments on alternate mornings for 6 days. In one compartment, food was always there in the morning; in the other compartment, the bowl was empty. Following 6 days of exposure to the two compartments, the jays were unexpectedly given a bowl of cacheable pine nuts after the evening meal; they were also given free access to the two different compartments in which the caching trays had been placed. The jays could either eat the pine nuts or store them in one or the other of the two compartments. The birds opted to store the food, but not randomly; they presumably anticipated their future needs and cached more food in the compartment in which food was not going to be available in the morning. Thus, it seems that scrub jays can plan for a future motivational state.

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3. Conceptualization

It is generally admitted that the higher animals possess memory, attention, association, and even some imagination and reason. If these powers are capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability in more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of abstraction, … having been evolved through the development and combination of the simpler ones.

Darwin’s speculation that higher-order cognitive capabilities are the evolutionary outgrowth of more primitive cognitive capacities, has bolstered the search for evidence of abstract concept learning in animals. Over the last quarter century, the extent to which animals, especially those phylogenetically distant from humans, can learn abstract concepts and, particularly, understand the relations of sameness and differentness, has become a focal concern of this work.

Animals must possess at least some primitive sense of sameness and differentness. Animals are comfortable with members of their own species, but they flee from members of alien species. Plus, animals behave consistently in familiar situations, but they change their actions when something unusual transpires. For example, when uninformative stimuli repeatedly occur, a wide range of animals cease responding to them. This phenomenon of habituation requires the animal to perceive a particular stimulus as the same as one presented before. By contrast, when a second novel stimulus is introduced along with the habituated stimulus, the organism starts responding again – dishabituation. Now, the organism detects something different in the situation and its behavior changes accordingly.

We also know that behaviors which are associated with some stimuli in some contexts generalize to other stimuli in other contexts. Indeed, generalization and its counterpart, discrimination, are the foundations of categorization, another familiar instance of conceptual behavior. When an organism makes the same response ‘car’ to discriminably different cars, it is generalizing among all cars; when an organism makes the same response ‘flower’ to discriminably different flowers, it is generalizing among all flowers; at the same time, it is discriminating flowers from cars. Categorization thus involves generalization within a class, but discrimination between classes. If sameness within a category and differentness between categories are not perceived, then each event would have to be treated as entirely unique; animals would need to learn the appropriate response each time that each event is encountered, an excruciatingly demanding and inefficient chore.

Pigeons can learn to respond to photographs that contain a human being and not to respond to similar photographs in which human beings are absent. Even when people in the pictures differ in age, size, race, sex, clothing, and posture, pigeons learn to respond to the photographs when they portray people with a high level of accuracy.

Pigeons can also learn categorization tasks which are even more similar to the real-world situations that confront humans. Wasserman and his colleagues wanted to see if pigeons could report which stimuli belonged to which of four different categories of objects: cats, flowers, cars, and chairs. One image at a time from each category was presented on a viewing screen. Four report keys were also available, each corresponding to a different category; these four different keys effectively served as four different ‘words’ for the pigeons (see figure below). Pigeons learned to select the appropriate key for the different categories. After learning, the birds were given novel items from the training categories to see if they would exhibit reliable transfer from the training stimuli, the critical test to document concept learning. The pigeons passed the test; they successfully used the four report keys to classify the novel items from the four trained categories.

It should be noted that items belonging to such categories as cats, flowers, cars, or chairs share a number of physical properties; so, it is generally accepted that perceptual similarity guides classification learning in animals, as it does in humans. A higher level of conceptualization is represented by relational concepts, which do not depend on perceptual similarity, but require learning about the relations between or among two or more stimuli. Here, the absolute properties of the stimuli must be transcended and knowledge of universal applicability must be extracted.

Figure above shows illustration of one trial of the categorization task designed by Wasserman and his colleagues. In this case, a stimulus from the flower category is presented on the screen. The four report keys correspond to each of the four experimental categories; cats, flowers, cars, and chairs. For each of the categories, the pigeons had to choose the appropriate key. Text labels are included for explanatory purposes; they did not appear on the screen.

In order to speak of a true same–different concept, relational learning and generalization to novel situations must be demonstrated. Habituation and categorization suggest that abstract conceptualization may be within animals’ capabilities, but more explicit evidence is required. Initial efforts to teach pigeons to report whether 2 items – the smallest number that is possible to make a same–different discrimination – are the same as or different from one another were not successful. But, perhaps it would be easier for pigeons to learn same– different discriminations with displays of items containing more than two stimuli.

Therefore, Wasserman and his colleagues trained pigeons to peck one button when a stimulus array comprised 16 identical icons and to peck a second button when a stimulus array comprised 16 nonidentical icons (figure below, top). Now, pigeons readily learned the discrimination to high levels of accuracy and, critically, they later transferred the discrimination with little decrement to both identical and nonidentical arrays constructed from novel visual items.

Figure above shows examples of 16-item same and different arrays used in Wasserman and colleagues’ research on same–different discrimination. The top panel shows orderly arrays, whereas the bottom panel shows disorderly arrays. Pigeons are highly adept at discriminating both orderly and disorderly arrays.

One characteristic of the same and different arrays depicted in figure above is that they differed in their spatial orderliness; the same arrays entailed clear horizontal and vertical regularities that the different arrays lacked. Pigeons could have been performing a perceptual rather than a conceptual discrimination. Remember Morgan’s canon of parsimony? 

Nonetheless, when pigeons were trained to discriminate 16-icon Same from 16-icon Different arrays in which the items were randomly placed on the screen, the birds readily acquired the discrimination and showed excellent transfer to new arrays (figure above, bottom). Moreover, randomly rotating the items in an array did not adversely affect pigeons’ discrimination behavior. Finally, when pigeons were shown successive lists of same and different items on a one-at-a-time basis – thereby making spatial orderliness an unusable cue for solving the discrimination – the pigeons still exhibited robust discrimination learning and transfer performance. This pattern of results discredits simple perceptual accounts and strongly suggests that pigeons in these studies had acquired a same–different concept. Even Morgan would have been convinced.

To discriminate collections of same and different items involves understanding what are called first-order relations. Can animals go to the next level and learn higher-order relational concepts? Can they understand, not only that several identical apples are the same and that several identical balls are the same, but also that the relation between the apples and the balls is sameness? Judging relations between relations is basic to analogical reasoning; many authors have proposed that analogical competence is the very essence of human intelligence.

In an analogical or relational matching-to-sample task, the animal is given a sample stimulus set (either two or more identical items on some trials and two or more nonidentical items on other trials), and two choice stimulus sets (one containing two or more identical items and the other containing two or more nonidentical items). Critically, none of the items in the sample is presented in the choice sets; so, if the sample is AA, then the choices can be BB or CD. To be successful, the animal must select the set of choice alternatives that instantiates the same relation as the sample set. Given that there is no overlap between the sample and choice items, only attention to the matching relations (same sample to same choice and different sample to different choice) can yield successful performance.

When baboons were given a relational matching-to-sample task in which the sample and choice arrays contained 16 items, they successfully learned to choose the 16-item choice array instantiating the same relation as sample array. Accuracy was high when sample arrays containing novel items were presented, thereby attesting to the generality of the relational matching concept; but, when the number of items in the sample arrays was reduced from 16 to 12 to 8 to 4 to 2, baboons’ accuracy systematically fell to chance level. For the baboons, the task proved too taxing when too little pictorial information was available. Similar results have been reported with pigeons.

In contrast to baboons and pigeons, chimpanzees solve relational matching-to-sample problems even when only 2 items are presented in the sample and the choice arrays. The first chimpanzee to exhibit a variety of analogical behaviors was Sarah, who could evaluate, complete, and even create analogies.

Sarah initially learned to use one plastic token for the concept ‘same’ and another plastic token for the concept ‘different.’ In a set of later experiments, Sarah was given four geometric forms on a display board in a 22 format. The 2 items on the left represented one relation and the 2 items on the right represented another relation. Sarah had to choose the correct plastic token (one for ‘same’ and one for ‘different’) and place it in the middle of the board to indicate whether the relations between the set on the left and the set on the right were same (thus representing an analogy) or different. Sarah chose correctly about 80% of the time.

In other experiments, Sarah was given 2 items on the left side and only 1 item on the right side. The token for ‘same’ was placed in the middle of the board and Sarah now had to choose, from two alternatives, the item that completed the analogy. Sarah chose the correct option most of the time. She even did so when items representing functional relations were presented. For example, when shown a lock and a key on the left side, and a can on the right side, Sarah would choose the can opener to complete the analogy.

Another set of studies explored whether Sarah could also construct analogies. She was given an empty board and 4 or 5 items that could be used to create a valid analogy. This task was especially challenging because Sarah had to find unspecified relations among the items and arrange them on the board so that they would represent a proper analogical relationship. When only 4 items were available, Sarah created a valid analogy 76% of the times. Her performance dropped when 5 items were available, but it was still above chance level.

Premack and his colleagues have contended that language training and/or prior experience with arbitrary symbols for the abstract concepts of same and different are needed for animals to exhibit analogical reasoning. Such training may have allowed Sarah to display analogical abilities that had been believed to be uniquely human. Language or symbol systems may facilitate relational and analogical behavior because they provide a way for animals to represent abstract relations so that these relations can be encoded and manipulated.

However, the research described above with baboons and pigeons suggests that language or symbol training may not be necessary for disclosing this cognitive capacity. Perhaps critically, both baboons and pigeons had been trained to discriminate same from different collections of items before training on the relational matching-to-sample task. That prior learning of first-order relations may have provided the scaffolding required to process second-order relations.

It is concluded from all of this research that animals either have a rudimentary capacity for analogical reasoning or they at least possess the basic mechanisms that evolved into this capacity. These observations have important evolutionary implications. Higher-level cognition was once believed to be the unique province of human beings; but, we now know that chimpanzees, baboons, and pigeons show similar intellectual abilities, at least in their basic form. The roots of abstract thought may thus lie deep in our animal ancestry.

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4. Metacognition

Demonstrations of numerical and basic mathematical abilities, different types of memory, as well as abstraction and analogical reasoning clearly document that animals possess a broad range of cognitive abilities, albeit in primitive form. But, do animals know what they know? This question is not a tricky word play, but the core matter of research in the growing field of metacognition. Metacognition in humans is said to be associated with conscious awareness of one’s own cognitive states. People know whether they can retrieve a specific memory, whether they can ascertain if they have enough information to make a decision, and whether they can assess the amount of knowledge they have about a certain topic; in short, people can think about their own cognitive states and processes.

In the last decade, several researchers have studied metacognition in animals as well. Metacognition in animals is plausible. Imagine this common scene: you are walking through a park and you encounter a woman walking her dog; the dog sees you and then it starts looking back and forth to his owner, as if deciding ‘should I stay or should I go?’ Or we see a hesitant squirrel at the base of a wall apparently deciding if the wall is low enough for her to jump up and land on it safely. When animals do not know what to do, they might defer their actions and seek help or information. These behaviors may be the result of a metacognitive process; but, do they really require metacognition? Do animals have access to their own cognitive states and can they use those states to control their behavior?

First attempts to address animal metacognition used what has been dubbed the uncertainty paradigm, in which animals must learn to discriminate between categories of stimuli, for example, between high-pitch and low-pitch sounds or between pixel-dense and pixel-sparse visual images by choosing one of two different responses for each of the categories. Animals receive food reward for a correct response and a time-out period for an incorrect response. When the stimuli are near the extreme values, the task is easy; but, the task becomes increasingly difficult the closer values are to the middle of the continuum.

In addition to the two category responses, animals are also given a third option – the uncertainty response – that avoids the target discrimination altogether and takes the animal to another easier task and a smaller amount of food than if they had chosen the correct response for the training categories. If animals can monitor their knowledge, then they might choose the uncertainty response when the values to be discriminated are highly similar and failure is likely. And, so they do. Dolphins and monkeys choose the two category responses when the task is easy, but they choose the third uncertainty response when the task is more difficult.

Nevertheless, the uncertainty response paradigm has raised several concerns, because alternative explanations based on simple associative learning can explain animals’ apparently metacognitive behavior. For example, animals may have learned to select the uncertainty response for a particular range of stimuli (the difficult ones near the middle of the continuum) because of the reinforcement history with those stimuli (animals are consistently rewarded if they choose the uncertainty response, but they are inconsistently rewarded if they choose the category responses), not because of a subjective feeling of uncertainty.

In order to avoid this problem, other paradigms have been devised. As we saw earlier, animals have excellent memories for rich and varied information; but, as in the case of humans, these memories may fade or become difficult to retrieve over time. One interesting possibility is to see if animals can report their having good or poor memory for an event that happened some time ago.

Hampton trained rhesus monkeys on a matching-to-sample task in which a delay was introduced between offset of the sample image and the testing stimuli, with the sample presented along with three distractors. On some trials, an intermediate choice was introduced at the end of the delay interval which allowed the monkeys to either accept the memory test and receive a preferred reward if they were successful or to decline the memory test and receive a guaranteed, but less desirable reward. On other trials, at the end of the delay interval, only the option to take the test was given, so that the monkeys had to take the memory test. If monkeys have metamemory, then when given the option to accept or to decline the test, they should accept the test if their memory is strong, but they should decline the test if their memory is weak.

As a consequence, the monkeys should be more accurate on those trials in which they are given the choice. They should accept the test on choice-test trials when they know that their memory is good. But, the forced-test trials will also include cases in which the monkeys’ memory is poor, thereby, lowering their overall accuracy. Monkeys’ performance accorded with this prediction; they were more accurate on trials in which they accepted the test than on trials in which taking test was the only option, suggesting that the monkeys could distinguish between their different memory states. Similar results have been found with rats.

Figure above shows method for assessing monkeys’ metamemory designed by Hampton. Colored panels represent what the monkeys saw on the computer monitor. At the start of each trial, monkeys studied a randomly selected image. After a delay period, on two-thirds of trials, monkeys could choose between taking a memory test (right, left-hand stimulus) or declining the test (right, right-hand stimulus). On the remaining third of the trials, monkeys were forced to take the test (left).

Monkeys’ confidence in their memory has also been evaluated by allowing them to gamble. Monkeys viewed a series of six pictures, one by one; after the last picture, nine pictures simultaneously appeared on the screen, only one of which had been presented in the prior series. The monkeys’ task was to select this picture. But now, before feedback was provided, the monkeys were given a choice of 2 icons, representing a high-risk option and a low-risk option. A high-risk choice resulted in the gain of three tokens (that could be later exchanged for food) if the monkeys’ response in the picture memory test had been correct, but a loss of three tokens if the monkeys’ response had been incorrect. A low-risk choice resulted in a sure gain of one token.

The rationale was that a monkey showing metacognitive capabilities should make a high-risk bet when confident about its prior response, but it should make a low-risk bet when unsure about its prior response. In fact, monkeys chose the high-risk button more often on correct trials than on incorrect trials, suggesting that they knew whether they had responded correctly before the presentation of any feedback. Moreover, monkeys generalized the use of the high- and low-risk options to a variety of different perceptual discrimination and memory tasks. This flexibility further helps to discount any specific associations between the presented stimuli and the alleged metacognitive responses.

Animals can certainly exhibit complex behaviors in these metacognitive tasks; nevertheless, some researchers believe that it is premature to conclude that those behaviors are the result of access to and evaluation of internal cognitive states. Metamemory tasks, the gambling paradigm, and other studies do suggest that animals can adaptively regulate their behavior under conditions of uncertainty and respond in accord with the knowledge they posses. But, that behavioral regulation may be achieved by means other than metacognitive processes. For example, animals may use their latency to respond as a cue for subsequent behavior (humans also take into account their speed of coming up with an answer to decide whether or not they really know). Although metacognition is a plausible mechanism for the animals’ behavioral regulation, it is not yet clear whether it is the only possible mechanism. Again, Morgan’s Canon comes into play.

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5. Navigation

Most animal species move about in their habitat, which requires navigating between locations. Navigation occurs over different spatial scales, from centimeters to thousands of kilometers, and different mechanisms are used at different scales. At small scales, in which animals navigate around their home territory, they can use dead reckoning, landmarks, and cognitive maps to navigate.

Dead reckoning involves estimating the distance and direction one has traveled. For instance, desert ants (Cataglyphis spp.) track how far away and in what direction they have traveled from home in order to return home after searching for food (Wehner 2003).

Other species use landmarks to guide their movement. Animals can learn the relationships among landmarks such as rocks, trees, or other large objects to triangulate their position. Landmarks are often the primary cues that animals use to locate their nests. For example, after digger wasps (Philanthus triangulum) leave their nests they circle around the entrance to orient themselves to local landmarks. When the landmarks are moved several centimeters away, the returning wasps land where the nest entrance should be relative to the landmarks and have difficulty finding their nests (Tinbergen 1951).

Finally, some animals may use a cognitive map to navigate. A cognitive map involves a mental map-like representation of the environment. Though controversial and difficult to demonstrate, honey bees show some evidence of using cognitive maps; when they are physically displaced to a new foraging location, they return home via a direct route. That is, they take a shortcut, suggesting that they possess a cognitive map of their territory (Menzel et al. 2005).

Many migrating species navigate over long distances. Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea) travel nearly 80,000 km a year between feeding and mating areas (Egevang et al. 2010). How do Arctic terns and other migrating species navigate such enormous distances? Many species use something similar to global positioning systems that are based on a sun compass or the earth’s magnetic field. A sun compass is the ability to use the sun’s position in the sky to determine direction, accounting for both daily and seasonal changes in the sun’s position (Alerstam et al. 2001). Honey bees appear to use a sun compass when navigating to their foraging sites. Birds, reptiles, amphibians, and molluscs have also been shown to orient themselves based on the earth’s magnetic field (Lohmann & Lohmann 1993). Earth’s magnetic field generally runs in a north-south direction, providing a cue animal can use to orient their bodies during migration. The precise mechanisms enabling such navigation are still under investigation.

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6. Time

Time influences an animal’s environment over periods ranging from milliseconds to decades. Annual cycles, in particular, are important for migration, hibernation, caching, mating, and raising young. Though temperature may influence the timing of these activities, photoperiod provides a more accurate cue and plays a large role in initiating or stopping seasonal behaviors. Photoperiod is so important in regulating behavior such as caching that researchers artificially manipulate the photoperiod for animals in captivity to induce this behavior (Pravosudov et al. 2010).

The day-night cycle also plays a key role in animal behavior. Some species are active during daylight, others at night, and still others only at dawn or dusk. Activity corresponds to diurnal variation in the availability of food sources, temperature requirements, and the presence or absence of major predators. Even without the cues of light and dark (e.g., in an all-light or all-dark environment), animals maintain a circadian rhythm approximately 24 h long (Roberts 1965), which suggests the existence of an internal circadian clock used to regulate daily activities.

Conditions also change over finer time scales, requiring another internal clock that works over seconds and minutes. Timing over the short term is particularly important for foraging. To forage efficiently, animals must be able to estimate time periods. This is particularly true for species that consume resources that refresh over time. For example, long-tailed hermit hummingbirds (Phaethornis superciliosus) forage on nectar, and birds must wait for flowers to refill before they return for another meal. Returning too soon would be a waste of time and energy for the hummingbird; waiting too long might mean losing the nectar to a competitor. So the birds learn to return within a few minutes of the time required for the flower to refill (Gill 1988). Experiments on timing in rats show that they can estimate short time intervals fairly precisely, but as the interval increases, their accuracy decreases (Gibbon 1977).

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Considerable recent research documents many animals’ ability to remember the past, to respond effectively in the present, and to plan for the future. Research also suggests that animals may be able to take into account their current state of knowledge to control their own behavior in an adaptive way. Finally, animals can master numerical and abstract concepts, perform basic arithmetic operations, and even exhibit behaviors which suggest that they possess the roots of analogical reasoning.

Dumb beasts? Hardly! Animals of many different species are sensitive to the rich mosaic of events and relationships that are woven into the causal fabric of the environment. How could it be otherwise? Animals evolved under most of the same constraints and contingencies as the human species. To study animal cognition is to study the mechanisms and functions of cognition without the complexities of language or the biases of anthropomorphism. Doing so not only enriches our understanding of cognition in animals, but it also places human cognition into a more complete evolutionary perspective.

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Ape cognitive abilities:

Current comparative evidence indicates that humans may have specialized cognitive abilities across several domains, including social cognition, mental time travel, and executive functioning. Although chimpanzees and other nonhuman apes share many homologous capacities with humans, they also exhibit important divergences that point to derived features in our lineage (see table below for a summary). This comparison is critical to address the phylogenetic problem of pinpointing which human cognitive traits are derived.

Table below shows summary of empirical evidence for ape cognitive abilities.

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Do animals feel empathy? Does an elephant have consciousness?

These are some of the questions that award-winning environmental writer Carl Safina teases out in his new book, Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel. The author also says that animals can feel empathy, like the humpback whale that rescued a seal.  Ranging far and wide across the world, from the Ambroseli National Park in Kenya to the Pacific Northwest, he shows us why it is important to acknowledge consciousness in animals and how exciting new discoveries about the brain are breaking down barriers between us and other non-human animals.

He says:

Life is very vivid to animals. In many cases they know who they are. They know who their friends are and who their rivals are. They have ambitions for higher status. They compete. Their lives follow the arc of a career, like ours do. We both try to stay alive, get food and shelter, and raise some young for the next generation. Animals are no different from us in that regard and their presence here on Earth is tremendously enriching. It is incredible that there is still a debate over whether animals are conscious and even a debate over whether human beings can know animals are conscious. If you watch mammals or even birds, you will see how they respond to the world. They play. They act frightened when there’s danger. They relax when things are good. It seems illogical for us to think that animals might not be having a conscious mental experience of play, sleep, fear or love.

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Dogs, the author says, know exactly who we are and are often very, very happy, just like this Labrador retriever at Moosehead Lake, Maine seems to be.

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It’s very obvious that animals are conscious to those who observe them. They have to be in order to do the things they do and make the choices that they do, and use the judgments that they use. However, in laboratories the dogma persists: don’t assume that animals think and have emotions–and many scientists insist that they do not. With the public, it’s quite different. Many people simply assume that animals act consciously and base their belief on their own domestic animals or pets. Other people do not want animals to be conscious because it makes it easier for us to do things to animals that would be hard to do if we knew they were unhappy and suffering.

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Elephants play in Damaraland, Namibia. “Researchers spend decades watching these creatures and see individuals,” author Carl Sarafina writes.

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Many people think that empathy is a special emotion only humans show. But many animals express empathy for each other. There are documented stories of elephants finding people who were lost. In one case, an old woman who couldn’t see well, got lost and was found the next day with elephants guarding her. They had encased her in sort of a cage of branches to protect her from hyenas. That’s seems extraordinary to us but it comes naturally to elephants. People have also seen humpback whales help seals being hunted by killer whales. There is a documented account of a humpback sweeping a seal on its back out of the water, away from the killer whales. These things seem extraordinary and new to us because we have only recently documented these incidents. But they have probably been doing these kinds of things for millions of years.

In tests, monkeys have given up the chance of food so that older or weaker members of the clan can eat. Scientists have gathered evidence that elephants sacrifice their wellbeing for the good of the group and grieve for their dead. Mapping of the brains of several different species shows that they share similar neurons to humans that process social information and empathy. “It’s categorically wrong to say that animals don’t have thoughts and emotions, just like it’s wrong to say they are completely the same as us,” said Carl Safina,

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Do animals think?

“Of course they do,” answers Marc Hauser, a Harvard professor of psychology. “How could they not think and manage to survive in the world?” Hauser has been studying animal cognition since 1980, when a female spider monkey reached through the bars of her cage at Florida’s Monkey Jungle and gave him a hug. He was 19 years old at the time. “She looked into my eyes and cooed several times,” he remembers. “The experience got me to thinking about what animals are thinking and how to find out.” He now believes that animals conceive the world in ways similar to humans, especially species like chimpanzees who live a rich social life. His field and laboratory experiments suggest that humans got their mechanisms for perception from animals. “Those mechanisms came free, courtesy of evolution,” he says.

Hauser and his colleagues are trying to determine what sorts of thinking processes are unique to humans and what processes we share with animals. The one that comes immediately to mind is language. “Animals have interesting thoughts, but the only way they can convey them is by grunts, shrieks, and other vocalizations, and by gestures,” Hauser points out. “When humans evolved speech, they liberated the kinds of thoughts nonhumans have. Feedback between language and thinking then boosted human self-awareness and other cognitive functions.”

Can your pet think?

Most pet owners fervently believe that Fido or Fluffy has superior intelligence. One of the markers of intelligence is self-awareness, so here is a quick test to see if the animal has that ability. Position a mirror by your pet’s food dish, so it can see its face and head. Whenever you feed it pat the dog, cat, or whatever on the head. Repeat this routine for three to four days. When you’re ready, put some odorless light or dark powder in your hand and pat it onto your pet’s head. You can use baking soda or carbon black. Make sure you create a clearly visible spot on its head. Watch the animal closely to see if it stares at itself, or tries to rub the spot. If it does, congratulations, your pet has some sense of self.

Monkeys think:

Clever experiments with monkeys and human infants show that they share thinking processes once thought to be in the minds of humans alone. Babies only 3-4 days old can tell the difference between two languages such as Dutch and Japanese. When the infants hear someone saying sentences in Dutch, they express their interest by sucking rapidly on the nipples of pacifiers. After a while they get bored with the Dutch talk and stop sucking enthusiastically. If someone then starts speaking Japanese, they will show increased interest by upping their sucking rate. The babies don’t know what the speakers are talking about, of course, but they can discriminate between languages by the change in rhythms. They don’t respond to languages with similar rhythms, such as Dutch and English or French and Spanish. Also, if you play the same sentences backward, the infants fail to react. “One explanation for this behavior is that they intuitively know that no human vocal tract can produce such sounds,” Hauser explains.

If this is true, monkeys should not be able to make the same distinctions because they don’t know what rhythms and sounds human vocal tracts can produce. But cotton-top tamarin monkeys easily distinguish between Dutch and Japanese. They look at a speaker broadcasting sentences of Dutch, look away when they’re bored, then look back when someone starts speaking Japanese. And they cannot make that distinction when the sentences are spoken backward. “The monkeys have the same perceptual abilities as us,” Hauser concludes. “That means such perception did not evolve with human speech; it existed before humans and speech evolved.”

How high can animal count?

Additional tests by Hauser and other researchers reveal that monkeys can count up to four. The human ability to count to higher numbers apparently came only after we evolved language and developed words to describe quantities like 25 and 1,000. Some human cultures still don’t use large numbers. The Hadza people, hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, for example, have words only for “one,” “two,” and “three”; anything more is “many.” They are aware that a picture with 30 dots displays a larger number than one with 20 dots (as are monkeys), but they have no words for the precise numbers of dots.

The bottleneck between human and nonhuman thinking involves not just words, but the ability to recombine words in an endless variety of new meanings. That appears to be a unique human capability. Chimpanzees have a rich social and conceptual life, Hauser maintains, but they can’t discuss it with each other.

The next step in determining how much thinking ability humans share with other animals will involve scanning the brains of both while they do the same cognitive tasks. Harvard psychologists have already begun to do this in a collaboration with researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester and the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Monkeys may exhibit the same kind of intellectual behavior as humans, but do they both use the same areas of the brain?

“We have a great deal of data that show what areas of the brain are activated when humans respond to various situations,” Hauser points out. “Now we will determine if monkeys and other animals utilize the same brain circuits.” So far, the monkeys are adapting well to experiments at the University of Massachusetts. They move into harnesses in brain scanning instruments, such as MRI machines, without difficulty. Measurements of their stress levels show that after five days of training, marmoset monkeys feel as comfortable as they do in their home cages with their own social group.

For some people, such research will not provide a satisfactory answer to the question: Do animals really think? These people define thinking as having a sense of self, beliefs that go beyond raw perceptions, emotions such as empathy, and the ability to imagine a situation remote in time and place and predict an outcome. “Those capabilities cannot be illuminated by brain scanning,” Hauser admits. “But experiments using other techniques are beginning to shed light on what kinds of perceptual and computation skills animals bring to analyzing the world, and in what ways these skills are different from our own.”

Humans and animals are continually making choices throughout their lives, and these choices are often made in chaotic and dynamic environments. However, behavior analytic research can take place in a tightly-controlled laboratory environment with animals making relatively simpler decisions. Even with the potential limitations of animal research, studies have shown that the decision-making process of animals is very similar to that of humans. Over time, all animals (humans and non-humans alike) weigh the advantages and disadvantages of their choices and behave accordingly.   

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Can animal teach:

Some animals are said to teach. For instance, a cat injures mice, and then brings the injured mice to her kittens, which learn to stalk and kill them. Teaching takes a different form in meerkats, which do not stalk prey, but eat poisonous food. Adults defang scorpions and kill or disable other prey before giving them to the young. They adjust the frequency with which they disable prey to the age of the young, gradually introducing them to live prey.

The actions of the cat and meerkat are adaptations and, like all adaptations, have a single target, in this case, eating or stalking. In fact, eating (or stalking) is virtually the only activity that any animals teach. Because most animals eat ordinary diets, they do not teach.

The fact that adaptations have a single target distinguishes teaching by animals from teaching by humans. Human teaching is not an adaptation. It is a domain-general competence with indeterminately many targets. Further, the targets of teaching differ in every culture. Toilet training and table manners are widely taught in the western countries, whereas among the Kalahari San, walking and sitting are the key activities taught to the young.

Human teaching consists of three distinct actions: observation, judgement, and modification. A teacher observes the novice, judges his actions or products, and modifies them when they fall short of her standards. The human recognizes that the young are incompetent and therefore need to be taught; has the technology with which to teach; and is motivated to teach by deeply rooted aesthetic standards. Each of these actions has a distinct cognitive source.

The recognition that competence develops with age humans owe to their ToM: It enables them to both differentiate the mental conditions of other individuals, and to analyze the factors, such as age, intelligence, experience, etc., that cause the differences.

Humans can teach or modify the other one because they are both language-competent and expert in passive guidance (placing other’s body in desired positions).

The human motivation to teach is largely aesthetic. A parent has a conception of a proper act or product and dislikes the appearance of an improper one. The evidence for such standards is twofold. First, humans “practice,” e.g., swing a golf club repeatedly, flip an omelet, sing a song, write a poem, etc., trying to improve their performance of a chosen activity. Second, humans seek to improve their appearance. The mirror is where they begin their day, combing their hair, applying makeup, etc. That humans have mental representations of preferred actions or appearances is suggested not only by the demands they make on themselves but by the corrections they make of children when teaching them. Teaching, the attempt to correct others, is the social side of the attempt to correct self.

It is no coincidence that humans both practice and teach, whereas other species do neither. A species that practices but does not teach—that corrects itself but does not correct others—will probably never be found. Nor will a species of the opposite kind, one that teaches but does not practice—corrects others but not itself.

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Can animal deceive?

Deception comes in two flavors: false positives and false negatives. A signal that indicates food or a predator, when in fact there is no food or predator, is a false positive (the famous negative version of a false positive is “crying wolf”). Conversely, the failure to give a signal when in fact food or predator is present is a false negative. In nature, false negatives greatly outnumber false positives. For example, unobserved monkeys sometimes fail to signal the presence of food, and when caught are punished by other monkeys. There are, however, virtually no reports that monkeys, or any other species, falsely signal the presence of food or predators.

The plover is famous for leading intruders away from its nest by feigning a broken wing and then, when the intruder is beyond the nest, flying normally. This deception is a perfect example of an adaptation because the plover cannot use it for any other purpose than protecting its nest. The bird’s deception is said to be like human deception because the bird can be taught to restrict its broken-wing display to “serious” intruders, not wasting it on nonserious ones. It is also argued that the plover’s display is “intentional” and therefore equivalent to human deception.

Although there is no clear demonstration of intentionality in the plover, whether, in general, an act is intentional is not difficult to determine. Consider raising the same question for a vervet monkey. When the monkey gives the cry for, say, leopard, is its cry intentional? Suppose the animal that receives the call mistakenly takes countermeasures for snake rather than leopard, does the sender take steps to correct it? If it does nothing to correct its recipient, then the call is merely a reflex. On the other hand, if the sender acts to correct the recipient, e.g., by calling again (putting itself at risk), then the sender’s call was intentional: Its goal in calling was to protect its recipient.

Whether the plover’s act is goal-directed could be determined by arranging two cases, one in which its display leads intruders away and another in which its displays do not succeed in leading intruders away. If, when the displays fail, the bird ceases to make them, the act is intentional. For intentional acts that fail to realize their goal extinguish. However, neither the potential intentionality of the plover’s display nor the fact that the plover can discriminate real intruders from fake ones changes the status of the display. It is an adaptation that serves only one goal. It is not comparable with human deception, a domain-general competence that can serve indeterminately many goals.

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Can animal reason?

Regarding the question of how we ought to treat nonhuman animals, philosopher Jeremy Bentham famously wrote, The question is not, “Can they reason?” nor “Can they talk?” but, “Can they suffer?” Indeed, the capacity for a being to experience pain and suffering is the only morally relevant criterion needed to determine that we should refrain, whenever possible, from inflicting pain and suffering. What makes it wrong, after all, to harm another human? It is not the fact that a human can reason, but that a human can experience pain and suffering. We recognize that these are objectionable states of being and our laws and cultural norms reflect a belief that we should behave in such a way as to minimize, rather than maximize, pain and suffering in others. Similarly, what makes it wrong to kill another human is not human ability to reason, but the fact that humans value their lives and desire to continue existing.

Consider then that neither the wish to be free from suffering nor the wish to continue existing is unique to our species; these interests are shared by all sentient animals, and indeed can be seen as fundamental biological drives. And if my interest in not being harmed or killed makes it wrong to harm or kill me when harming or killing me can be avoided, then an animal’s interest in not being harmed or killed makes it likewise wrong for us to harm or kill animals when doing so can be avoided.

Beyond these considerations, the claim that animals can’t reason “like us” misses the mark. First, it purports a universal equivalence in human reasoning capabilities. But of course, not all humans possess the same level of reasoning, and in many humans the ability to reason is far less developed than in the animals we kill for food. Pigs, for example, are widely acknowledged by scientists and researchers to be more intelligent than three year-old children. Cows enjoy solving puzzles and can figure out how to open locked gates. Chickens are capable of mathematical reasoning and logic skills not seen in children younger than four years old. Baby chicks can perform basic arithmetic, navigate using the sun, and, unlike human babies, understand that an object that moved out of their sight still exists. Chickens also recognize more colors than humans can see, and form meaningful associations with both colors and patterns.

Animals most certainly can and do reason, but even if they didn’t, we’d be no more justified in exploiting or harming them than we would be justified in harming humans with underdeveloped or impaired reasoning skills, including babies and infants, the senile elderly, the developmentally disabled, those suffering permanent brain damage, or anyone else.

Animal can reason:

Lilac (left) is blind in one eye and has limited vision in the other. Daisy understands this and helps her to see by allowing Lilac to lean into her and explore her environment using Daisy as a ‘safe zone’.

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Causal Reasoning in Animals:

Causal reasoning is the process of identifying causality: the relationship between a cause and its effect. Causal reasoning is the ability to identify relationships between causes – events or forces in the environment – and the effects they produce. Humans and some other animals have the ability not only to understand causality, but also to use this information to improve decision making and to make inferences about past and future events. An invariant that guides human reasoning and learning about events is causality.  Causal considerations are integral in how people reason about their environment. Humans use causal cues and their related effects to make decisions efficiently, to make predictions about the future circumstances of our environment and to fully understand mechanisms leading to change.

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Wolfgang Köhler (1917/1963) was interested in the problem-solving abilities of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). In a series of now famous experiments, he was able to demonstrate that chimpanzees are able to combine tools to gain access to otherwise out of-reach food. In another classical experiment, the animals stacked several boxes on top of each other to reach a banana attached to a string several meters above their head. Köhler did not use the term “causal reasoning”, however, and rather spoke of “insight”, although he clearly assumed that the chimpanzees understood causal relationships between objects. Similarly, other scientists who studied animals’ understanding of causal relationships at that time did not refer to causal understanding or reasoning (e.g., Grether  & Maslow, 1937; Klüver, 1933).

Apart from these initial studies, the topic of causal reasoning was largely neglected until Premack and Premack (1994) published their seminal study on causal understanding in chimpanzees. The authors conducted a series of experiments to distinguish between three “levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children,” with causal reasoning regarded as the deepest level, defined as an individual “solving problems in which he sees the outcome of a process but not its cause, and must infer or reconstruct the missing events” (p. 348). At the intermediate level, the subject would need to be able to decompose “intact causal sequences” (p. 348), such as an actor using a tool to manipulate an object, and to label the different components accordingly. At the “most superficial level” (p. 348), an individual would be able to “complete an incomplete representation of a causal action, by selecting the correct alternative” (p. 348). Premack and Premack then set out to test if their chimpanzees would reach the highest level. In the first task, the apes first learned to run down a path to a spot where food was hidden. After they had comprehended this task, the experimenter hid a rubber snake in the hiding spot at random intervals on 15% of the trials, which greatly disturbed the animals. In the test, the subject was able to see another chimpanzee, which had just completed the task, either after having encountered the food, or a snake. At stake was the question of whether the subject would be able to infer from the (positive or negative) emotional state of the other chimpanzee what would be found in the hide. None of the four chimpanzees was able to do this.

In the second task, the chimpanzees first observed how an experimenter hid an apple and a banana under two boxes. The subject was then distracted from the boxes for two minutes before seeing another person eating either an apple or a banana. Here, the question was whether the chimpanzee would infer that the second person had raided one of the boxes and that they should better approach the alternative box to obtain a reward. One of the four test subjects solved this second task instantaneously, while one always chose the container that held the food the other person had been eating. The other two chimpanzees erred on the first trials, but then started to solve the task. Hence, the results of only one chimpanzee suggest that it is within the species’ realm to reach the highest level of causal reasoning.

From these findings, Premack and Premack (1994) concluded that learning may be found in numerous species, but reasoning, at least at the highest level, only in a very few. But possibly, reasoning about the cause of an emotional state may be very different from reasoning about the causal relationships resulting in the eating of fruit. Failures to reason may therefore be due to a lack of understanding of a very specific causal relationship, rather than a lack of the ability to reason per se. Interestingly, in violation of expectancy paradigms, human infants detect some violations of causality at an earlier age than other violations (Baillargeon, 2004); similarly, animals may not understand all causal relationship as causal and thus may not be able to reason about them.

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Evolutionary Patterns:

From an evolutionary view, a goal is to reconstruct the origins of different cognitive abilities. At what point in evolutionary history did the ability for causal reasoning evolve? Did it evolve several times? What are the selection pressures promoting its evolution? So far, only few taxonomic groups have been studied in sufficient detail to allow for some very sketchy outlines of the potential evolution of causal reasoning abilities. The available evidence suggests a convergent evolution of reasoning abilities in birds and mammals (e.g., Emery & Clayton, 2004; Pepperberg et al., 2013; Schloegl et al., 2012; Taylor et al., 2012).

Thompson and Oden (2000) argued that a cognitive divide exists between “paleological” monkeys and “analogical” apes, as only the latter can perceive relations between relations: for instance, if having seen a sample of two identical objects, and subsequently being tasked to identify a pair of objects that have the same relationship, they chose a pair of identical objects (but different from the sample) over a pair of nonidentical objects; monkeys, in contrast, can only form categorizations on the basis of shared physical attributes (e.g., same shape or color). In support of convergent evolution in birds and mammals, hooded crows (Corvus corone cornix) have recently been shown to understand relations between relations in an analogical reasoning task (Smirnova, Zorina, Obozova, & Wasserman, 2014) like the apes did in the previously mentioned example; at the same time, the debate about the cognitive gap between apes and monkeys has been fueled by similar findings in monkeys (e.g., Fagot & Maugard, 2013; Flemming, Thompson, & Fagot, 2013). Still, monkeys seem to fail in a number of tasks that apes solve. For instance, apes master the acoustic version of the “empty cup” task introduced before, even though not all subjects are successful and the task in general is challenging (see Call, 2004). Studies on monkeys, in contrast, typically produced negative results (Heimbauer et al., 2012; Schmitt & Fischer, 2009), or required experience training (Sabbatini & Visalberghi, 2008; but see Maille & Roeder, 2012, for tentative positive evidence in lemurs, which had been explained as an ecological adaptation). Likewise, using weight as a causal predictor seems to be easier for apes than for monkeys (Hanus & Call, 2008, 2011; Klüver, 1933; Schrauf & Call, 2011), even though the tool-using capuchin monkeys seem to distort the picture (Fragaszy, Greenberg, et al., 2010; Visalberghi et al., 2009).  

Another distinction has been drawn between “causal apes” and “social dogs” (Bräuer et al., 2006), arguing that apes are sensitive to causal information, whereas dogs pay more attention to social cues (i.e., pointing, gazing). Dogs’ priority for social information is supposed to be a result of domestication, as dogs may have been selected to pay attention to signals provided by humans (Hare, Brown, Williamson, & Tomasello, 2002; see Hare et al., 2010; Udell, Dorey, & Wynne, 2010; Udell & Wynne, 2010, for a discussion of this domestication hypothesis). In a comparative study with wild boars and domesticated pigs, however, it seemed as if differences might be explained best by individual life histories (Albiach-Serrano et al., 2012). It thus is unclear whether the “social dogs” hypothesis can be expanded to domesticated animals in general.

Two different evolutionary explanations have been proposed for corvids. Taylor and colleagues stressed that New Caledonian crows may possess superior reasoning skills as adaptations to their elaborate tool use (e.g., Taylor et al., 2008; Taylor et al., 2011; Taylor et al., 2012). Others have wondered if the performance in exclusion tasks could be linked to caching behavior (e.g., Mikolasch et al., 2012; Schloegl, 2011), as food-caching species may be more attentive to the presence or absence of rewards in hidden locations (Tornick & Gibson, 2013; but see Shaw, Plotnik, & Clayton, 2013, for a different view).

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A first step in the exploration of causal reasoning in animals is to assess whether they are sensitive to causal relationships. O’Connell and Dunbar (2005) showed chimpanzees and bonobos (Pan paniscus) videos of causally plausible and implausible events. For instance, in one set of videos, a banana was either lifted by a hand or was flying upward before the hand touched it. If the apes had seen the causally plausible event several times until they lost interest (“habituation”), and were then presented with the implausible event, they looked longer at the screen than if they had been shown the videos in reverse order. The authors interpreted this as sensitivity to causal plausibility (see Cacchione & Krist, 2004, for similar findings). Hanus and Call (2011) found that chimpanzees learn discriminations faster if these are based on causal rather than on arbitrary cues; for instance, when searching for food in opaque bottles, they learned to discriminate between lighter and heavier bottles faster than to discriminate between bottles of different colors, suggesting that chimpanzees are tuned to attend to causally relevant cues.

Among monkeys, capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) received the most attention. This species is a highly proficient tool user (Fragaszy, Visalberghi, & Fedigan, 2004) and uses stones as a hammer to crack nuts, which they position on hard surfaces (“anvils”). They are therefore seen as prime candidates for some understanding of causality. Like chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys quickly learn in nut-cracking tasks to attend to the weight of tools and to select heavier stones as hammers (Schrauf, Call, Fuwa, & Hirata, 2012; Schrauf, Huber, & Visalberghi, 2008). Visalberghi, Fragaszy, and colleagues demonstrated that the monkeys also considered several other causally relevant features when selecting tools (i.e., mass of the stone, friability, distance to transport, features of the anvils; Fragaszy, Greenberg, et al., 2010; Fragaszy, Pickering, et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2011; Massaro, Liu, Visalberghi, & Fragaszy, 2012; Visalberghi et al., 2009).

Besides primates, corvids (ravens, crows, magpies, and jays) are famous for their large brains (Emery & Clayton, 2004) and advanced cognitive abilities (e.g., Bugnyar & Heinrich, 2005; Clayton & Dickinson, 1998; Dally, Emery, & Clayton, 2006). Rooks (Corvus frugilegus), for instance, showed indications of surprise and looked longer at pictures of causally implausible spatial relationships (e.g., objects suspended in mid-air above a surface) than at plausible illustrations (Bird & Emery, 2010). New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) belong to the most prolific tool users in the animal kingdom (Hunt, 1996, 2000; Weir, Chappell, & Kacelnik, 2002); like capuchin monkeys (Fragaszy, Greenberg, et al., 2010; Visalberghi et al., 2009) and chimpanzees (Sabbatini et al., 2012), they attend to causally relevant features and select tools of the appropriate, but not necessarily optimal, length (Chappell & Kacelnik, 2002) and diameter (Chappell & Kacelnik, 2004). Similar to chimpanzees (Hanus & Call, 2011), these crows also quickly learned to select causally relevant tools when presented with a novel situation (Taylor et al., 2011; see Jelbert, Taylor, Cheke, Clayton, & Gray, 2014, for similar findings in a different task).

While the aforementioned examples focused mainly on physical causal relationships, some studies investigated the sensitivity to cause–effect relationships in social actions and events. For instance, chimpanzees and bonobos were shown a video in which either a human pushed another person from a chair to obtain a fruit, or one person simply fell off a chair and the fruit moved by itself to the other person (O’Connell & Dunbar, 2005). In another video, they either saw chimpanzees hunting and killing a colobus monkey or they saw the same video played backward. In test trials, the apes looked longer if they had been habituated to the causally plausible video than vice versa, again suggesting an understanding for causal plausibility and surprise upon seeing an implausible event. In a study on free-ranging African elephants (Loxodonta africana), Bates et al. (2008) placed a mix of fresh urine and earth in the path of traveling groups and found that the animals inspected the urine samples longer if they stemmed from a female traveling behind them, indicating that they were surprised to detect the scent of this animal in a causally impossible location.

An indication for an innate preference for “causal agents” comes from a study with chicks (Gallus gallus). Right after hatching, chicks are imprinted on their parents and begin to constantly follow them. In the absence of their parents, chicks can also be imprinted on other individuals or even moving objects. Mascalzoni, Regolin, and Vallortigara (2010) showed freshly hatched chicks a so-called Michotte’s launching event, in which one moving object A touches another object B, which subsequently begins to move. These launching events elicit strong impressions of causality in humans, (i.e., that A causes B to move). Even though both objects had moved identical distances, chicks preferred object A when subsequently presented with a choice between both objects; in other words, they preferred the self-propelled over the not self-propelled object. As these chicks did not have any previous experiences with moving objects, it appeared that the chicks have an innate sensitivity for causal agents.

Taken together, these studies indicate that several species are sensitive to causally relevant features or cues in their environment (e.g., the weight or length of a tool), may be innately tuned to (at least some) of these features, and act as if surprised if causally sound relations are violated (e.g., objects floating in mid-air).

Given that at least some species are sensitive to causally relevant features, one may probe if they are indeed able to make causal inferences, that is, if the animals can use their understanding of (certain) causal relationships to make deductions about unobservable reasons for outcomes they have observed. Within the faculty of reason, differences seem to exist in the levels of complexity of the tasks, as well as the mental processes required to solve them.

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On the functional level, the evidence for causal reasoning in animals is increasing. On the mechanistic level, however, it often remains unclear whether the animals indeed have a deep understanding of the causal relationships or whether they respond to covariations. In other words, do they understand that one event causes the other, or did they learn that these two usually occur together (e.g., Penn, Holyoak, & Povinelli, 2008; Penn & Povinelli, 2007)?  Völter and Call (2012) have shown that great apes learn to solve mechanical problems faster if they can observe the mechanism underlying the problem, but the authors were cautious about interpreting this as evidence for causal understanding. Instead, they argued that the apes might have only learned “what caused the beneficial outcome but not necessarily how it was caused” (p. 935, emphasis theirs). New Caledonian crows were tested in a task in which a reward was placed on a platform at the bottom of a tube. To obtain the reward, the platform had to be collapsed (e.g., by pushing it down; von Bayern et al., 2009; see also Bird & Emery, 2009a). Interestingly, for two birds, the experience of having collapsed the platform themselves by pushing it down with their beak was sufficient to solve the task later by dropping stones into a tube and onto the platform from above. Thus, in this case it seems possible that they may have understood how to cause an effect.

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Penn and Povinelli (2007, p. 97) acknowledged that current comparative evidence “does not fit comfortably into [ . . . ] the traditional associationist” accounts. Nevertheless, they reject the notion of human-like causal reasoning skills in animals. But even if animals were to be able to reason causally, the immediately following question would then be whether they also would have “meta-knowledge about the concept of causality” (Blaisdell & Waldmann, 2012, p. 179), or if that is, as Penn et al. (2008) have suggested, a uniquely human capacity. A related issue is the question of how to extrapolate from individual task performances. If an individual animal could be shown to reason in a human-like fashion in a single study, what would this tell us about general reasoning abilities? Do such general reasoning abilities exist at all? There seems to be considerable doubt, as evidenced by the performance differences between species. Seed and Call (2009) deemed it unlikely that causal understanding would constitute a singular ability; similarly, Taylor et al. (2014) suggested that “causal understanding is not based on a single monolithic, domain-general cognitive mechanism” (p. 5).

So far, most studies have focused on relatively simple, all-or-nothing decisions (i.e., they tested if animals can exclude one wrong option to infer one correct option). In real life, however, one is often forced to base decisions on reasoning about probabilities, but very little is known about animals’ abilities to choose between options by inferring the likelihood of each option being correct. When apes had to choose between two buckets filled with different ratios of highly valued banana pellets and lowly valued carrots, they preferred the bucket from which a banana pellet would be drawn with higher probability (Rakoczy et al., 2014). However, chimpanzees have also been confronted with two sets of cups of varying number, of which some would be baited and others would be not. Then, one cup was drawn from each set, and they could choose between these two cups. Whether the chimpanzees would identify the cup with the higher probability of reward was highly dependent on the ratio of baited to non-baited cups in each set (Hanus & Call, 2014). Finally, when chimpanzees had to choose between two partially occluded tools, they failed to identify the tool with the higher probability of being intact (Seed et al., 2012; see also Mulcahy & Schubiger, 2014, for similar findings with orangutans).

Even though cause–effect reasoning and effect–cause reasoning can both be based on the same causal relationships, research suggests that human subjects are sensitive to directional differences (Waldmann & Hagmayer, 2013); furthermore, the direction may have consequences on the cognitive demands (Fernbach, Darlow, & Sloman, 2011; Waldmann & Hagmayer, 2013). Human children aged 3.5–4.5 years seem to perform better in cause–effect reasoning than in effect–cause reasoning (Hong, Chijun, Xuemei, Shan, & Chongde, 2005). Given that animals may not understand all causal relationships, just as human infants may not develop an understanding for all causal relationships at the same time, it seems plausible to expect different performances in animals depending on the direction of reasoning. However, this prediction has not been investigated so far, and there are no study using the same task to explore both reasoning directions so far.

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Social Learning drives intelligence in animals too.

The human capacity to learn exceeds that of any other animal. Indeed, our massive memories and impressive computing power are the engines of all that makes us different from other animals, rooted mostly, but not entirely, in language. However, the way that humans and animals learn may not be as different as many people think.

We all know that humans do most of their learning socially, that is, we learn from others rather than discovering things ourselves through trial-and-error. Formal schooling is entirely based on social learning. Even so-called self-directed learning and discovery is actually social because when we discover information in a book, someone else put it there. Reading a book may seem like a solitary endeavor, but those are someone else’s words on those pages, communicating to us through time and space using the magic of the written word. The truth is that we do not often derive new knowledge from first principles. Instead, we learn what others have discovered and each generation cumulatively adds to the global knowledge base.

Because animals do not go to school, we often think of their learning as entirely different. When we see a bird building a nest, for example, we assume that birds must have a built-in instinct to build nests and then learn to do it through trial-and-error. That may be right, but there may also be a social component to animal learning.

Carel van Schaik and his colleagues at the University of Zurich recently wrote an article in a special edition of the Spanish Journal of Psychology dedicated to “Cognition and Culture in an Evolutionary Context.” In this article, entitled, “The Ecology of Social Learning in Animals and its Link with Intelligence,” van Shaik makes the argument that many scientists have been under-appreciating the role of social learning in animals.

Paraphrasing, van Schaik writes that field biologists have long tended to conclude that high-level skills of animals were the product of natural selection and thus largely innate, requiring little learning at all. Comparative psychologists, on the other hand, tend to think more about animal learning, but assume that it mostly happens as an individual endeavor. Anthropologists, on the other hand, tend to think more about how animals might learn things socially. In other words, scientists from the three disciplines that do research on animal learning harbor very different ideas about that learning and often talk right past each other.

As van Schaik puts it, “Those who study animals tend to expect strong genetic foundations and little learning, but where it happens, assume individual learning, whereas those who study humans automatically expect cultural processes to underlie our cognitive abilities.”

Fortunately, the question of how animals learn things can be interrogating through careful observation in the field and experiments with captive animals.

It has long been known that most social animals that are reared artificially in captivity will be deficient in many skills that adult animals of that species are generally proficient at. For examples, chimpanzees raised without adult chimpanzees do not know how to build nests or care for young when they become parents themselves. Ring-tailed lemurs raised artificially do not show the “normal” food preferences that wild lemurs display and instead will eat a larger variety of food.

Cross-fostering experiments, in which animals are raised by members of a different species, have also revealed the effects of social learning. For example, Frans de Waal and Denise Johanowicz allowed some young rhesus macaques, which don’t normally engage in social reconciliation following a conflict, to spend five months of their young lives with stump-tailed macaques, which are much more prone to reconciling disputes peacefully. These fostered rhesus macaques learned the behavior of reconciliation and it stuck with them even after they were placed back with other rhesus macaques. Surprisingly, this more conciliatory approach to conflict resolution remained even after other habits they had picked up faded.

Two cross-fostering examples in wild animals, one with cockatoos and one with tits, show that birds learn their foraging behaviors from their parents, rather than having an innate knowledge that is shaped through trial-and-error. For example, Galah cockatoos will forage and eat like Mitchell’s cockatoos when they are raised by Mitchell’s cockatoos and will largely ignore their conspecific fellow Galahs even in adulthood.

In his paper, van Schaik then goes on to describe various modes of learning, including and especially social modes and provides evidence from many bird and mammal species demonstrating that some of the most essential skills for many animals are actually learned socially, rather than individually. For example, while Northwestern Crows may learn to open clamshells on their own, they definitely rely on learning from conspecifics regarding where to find these claims.

The continuing discovery that birds and mammals do a great deal of their learning socially, rather than individually, has important implications for how human intelligence evolved. It is well known that the explosion of innovation and creativity in our lineage began well after our species had adopted our current anatomical form, including brain size, and is largely attributed to the acquisition of language and symbolic thinking around 65,000 years ago. From this point forward, each generation of humans inherited the collected knowledge of the previous generation, which was transmitted socially through language. This steady accumulation of knowledge led to the eventual development of agriculture and everything else flowed from that.

If we consider that our ape ancestors were already learning a great deal from each other, the evolutionary drive toward cognitive capacity was really just a drive for “more of the same.” The great conundrum of language and symbolic thought is that humans had to have evolved the capacity for these skills before they were actually used. You can’t do something until you have the means to do it. When it comes to language and symbolism and culture, it could be that the means to do it was social learning pure and simple. Over the last seven million years (and even going much further back than that, truth be told), the selective pressure was for increasing sociality, social cooperation, and social learning. If we view human evolution as a rising tide of social learning, the emergence of language seems almost inevitable.

Of course, natural selection is involved in shaping anything and everything about us, and of course some animals really do have genetically programmed behaviors that are complex, such as a beaver building a dam, a behavior that appears to be almost completely innate. But we are expecting too much of natural selection to think that all of the complex behaviors we see in animals is the product of pure genetics and “survival of the fittest.” Social learning resolves this conundrum. Animals species didn’t have to sit around and wait for random mutation to give them the innate knowledge of where to find food. They learned from their parents and others. The role of evolution, then, was to continually select for better learners, and better social learners specifically, at least in some lineages. Especially ours. The mutations that made us human with all our impressive abilities are those that made us better social learners. We learned to be human.

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Measuring animal intelligence:

Intelligence is notoriously difficult to measure. For humans, common measures are childhood IQ and SAT scores, metrics that are under constant attack. But this debacle becomes even more apparent when other species are involved. The study of animal intelligence, or cognition, is such a nascent field that most of what has been hypothesized has yet to be replicated in a lab. The biggest challenges to the field’s development are that it relies too heavily on anecdotes, that controlled experiments with large-enough sample sizes are difficult to design, that many consider it irrelevant, and that “intelligence” as a concept has been overly anthropomorphized.

The most famous anecdote is that of Rico the dog. In 2004, German researchers discovered a border collie who could learn the name of an object in one try, had a vocabulary of 200 words, and remembered them all a month later. Rico was extraordinary, renewing public interest in an animal’s language-processing abilities for the first time since the early 1900s, when the public thought Clever Hans the horse could count, make change, and tell time. (He was really just responding to his owner’s body language.) Similarly fascinating individuals exist across species. In 2011, Kandula the elephant couldn’t reach a fruit branch, so he rolled a wooden box over with his trunk and used it as a stool. Beforehand, scientists did not think elephants knew how to use tools. In another instance, Ayumu the chimp repeatedly recalled random sequences of nine digits, even though the numbers had only been displayed for a fraction of a second. The next year, he was pitted against British memory champion Ben Pridmore and emerged victorious.

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When studying animal intelligence, scientists typically analyze a subject’s self-control, self-awareness, and memory. These abilities are integral to processing information and making rational choices—intelligence in its most generalized form. The most popular intelligence-assessment tools among such researchers today are the “pointing test” and the “mirror test.” In the “pointing test,” an animal is trained to expect food in a certain place. The location of the food will then be switched, and a human will point to the new location. If the animal goes directly to the new location, it passes the test, and if it ignores the pointing motion and looks for food where it has been trained to look, it fails. The study assesses self-control and the ability to respond to new information. Human babies start passing the test around their first birthdays—but most animals, even chimps, fail. The ones that pass are typically domesticated mammals. Dogs are especially good at it.

The “mirror test” checks for self-awareness. A disfiguring mark, such as a red dot, is usually applied to the subject’s forehead, and if the subject shows an indication—by touching its face, for example—of recognizing that it’s looking at its own reflection, the animal passes. Recognizing oneself in a mirror is considered to be a sign of cognition, as doing so requires at least a rudimentary concept of identity.

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Unfortunately, when measuring these capacities in animals, it is often difficult to achieve the sample sizes and conditions required for scientific accuracy. A 2013 study found that elephants pass the pointing test about two-thirds of the time. However, the experiment’s sample size was 11, a number that leaves way too much room for error, as each elephant carries a 9 percent weight on the study. After another 2013 study showed that dolphins can remember one another after more than 20 years of separation, National Geographic’s headline was “Dolphins Have Longest Memories in Animal Kingdom.” In this case, the sample size was 43, much too small to be cast as definitive in any other behavioral science.

Along with underwhelming sample sizes, tests for animal intelligence often fail to replicate the animal’s natural ecological context. An extreme example of such a design flaw is that Kandula, the elephant who used a stool, was initially given a stick for the purpose of batting down the food. However, elephants locate food with their sense of smell. Kandula didn’t use the stick because he would’ve had to pick it up with his trunk, meaning he wouldn’t have been able to smell the food. This is analogous to humans with eyes on their hands being told to use silverware.

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The pointer and mirror tests might also be ecologically inconsistent. Irene Pepperberg, an animal psychologist at Harvard who works with parrots, explains, “Mirror tests check whether a subject has self-recognition, but the test can be tricky. We gave the mark-test to one of my parrots. He saw the mark in the mirror, scratched at it for a couple of seconds, the mark didn’t go away, and he walked off. Parrots get gunk on their faces all the time when they feed, so what did the bird’s actions mean? Ditto for the point test: If an animal doesn’t have arms, hands, and fingers, what would pointing really mean?” Therein lies a paradox: Scientists have difficulty accrediting experiments that are not properly controlled, but, with animals, properly controlled studies often cannot account for ecological context because animals would never encounter laboratory conditions in the course of their natural lives. This is why the field still relies mostly on anecdotes.

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It follows that, with the current infrastructure, analyzing animal intelligence is nearly impossible. Perhaps with more funding, more complex studies could be done at a greater scale. Recently the Duke Canine Cognition Center was able to organize a study of 567 animals across 36 species for an assessment similar to the pointer test. The center has also built a network of over a thousand dogs on which they can conduct experiments. Brian Hare, a founder of the center, says his goal is to build a database large-enough to shed light on longstanding questions about behavior, breeding, and genetics. Labs as resource-abundant as Duke’s Canine Cognition Center are rare. Adam Pack, who studies dolphins at the University of Hawaii, explained that researchers rely primarily on funding from the National Science Foundation and that many will set up nonprofit arms to enable donations from family foundations and philanthropic individuals. Universities, too, sometimes sponsor small, species-specific labs for just a few scientists. But, in general, it’s difficult to get funding for robust animal-intelligence experiments because the field is competing for grants with areas of research, like those on cancer and AIDS, that have more possibility to improve human life. Animal intelligence is more like space exploration, a field in which the societal gains from additional knowledge appear to be purely academic.

And even when there’s progress, it’s often discredited. Frans de Waal, a primatologist, explains in a Wall Street Journal essay, “The one historical constant in my field is that each time a claim of human uniqueness bites the dust, other claims quickly take its place.” Members of the animal-intelligence community think non-humans are unfairly written-off as less smart because marks for mental fitness have been overly anthropomorphized.

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With animals, there is an emphasis on disentangling intelligence from mechanization. Intelligence is the ability to process information and make inferences, whereas mechanization is an automatic response to a certain stimulus. An octopus, for example, can change colors to blend into surroundings, something a sniper does by design. Scientists are trying to find out whether octopuses choose to change colors or do so mechanically. But does it matter? Ascribing such importance to design, visualization, and inference is incredibly arbitrary. Within this context, “intelligence” is really an indicator of how similar an animal is to humans.

Another argument from the animal-intelligence community is that the idea of “convergent intelligence” is often overlooked. It is common to believe that the more recently an animal shared an ancestor with humans, the smarter it is. This hypothesis, however, does not always hold. Pigs are very distantly related to humans, as it was over 100 million years ago that the ancestors of hogs and humans diverged. But much of pig and human DNA is identical. Proponents of convergence theory believe that pig and human DNA took different routes to the same solution. True to form, pigs have proven to be astute in very human ways. They can even employ deception, a very advanced cognitive tactic. Pig A will almost instantly follow Pig B if Pig B shows signs of knowing where food is stored, and Pig B will try to throw Pig A off its trail.

Simply put, researchers studying animal cognition believe the concept of intelligence has become caricatured. 

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Section-12

Animal emotions: 

Do elephants feel joy, chimpanzees grief and depression, and dogs happiness and dejection? People disagree about the nature of emotions in nonhuman animal beings, especially concerning the question of whether any animals other than humans can feel emotions (Ekman 1998). Pythagoreans long ago believed that animals experience the same range of emotions as humans (Coates 1998), and current research provides compelling evidence that at least some animals likely feel a full range of emotions, including fear, joy, happiness, shame, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, rage, anger, love, pleasure, compassion, respect, relief, disgust, sadness, despair, and grief (Skutch 1996, Poole 1996, 1998, Panksepp 1998, Archer 1999, Cabanac 1999, Bekoff 2000).

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The expression of emotions in animals raises a number of stimulating and challenging questions to which relatively little systematic empirical research has been devoted, especially among free-ranging animals. Popular accounts (e.g., Masson and McCarthy’s When Elephants Weep, 1995) have raised awareness of animal emotions, especially among nonscientists, and provided scientists with much useful information for further systematic research. Such books have also raised hackles among many scientists for being “too soft”—that is, too anecdotal, misleading, or sloppy (Fraser 1996). However, Burghardt (1997a), despite finding some areas of concern in Masson and McCarthy’s book, wrote: “I predict that in a few years the phenomena described here will be confirmed, qualified, and extended” (p. 23). Fraser (1996) also noted that the book could serve as a useful source for motivating future systematic empirical research.

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Researchers interested in exploring animal passions ask such questions as: Do animals experience emotions? What, if anything, do they feel? Is there a line that clearly separates those species that experience emotions from those that do not? Much current research follows Charles Darwin’s (1872; see also Ekman 1998) lead, set forth in his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Darwin argued that there is continuity between the emotional lives of humans and those of other animals, and that the differences among many animals are in degree rather than in kind. In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin claimed that “the lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery” (p. 448).

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What are emotions?

Emotions can be broadly defined as psychological phenomena that help in behavioral management and control. Yet, some researchers argue that the word “emotion” is so general that it escapes any single definition. Indeed, the lack of agreement on what the word “emotion” means may well have resulted in a lack of progress in learning about them. Likewise, no single theory of emotions captures the complexity of the phenomena called emotions (Griffiths 1997, Panksepp 1998). Panksepp (1998, p. 47) suggests that emotions be defined in terms of their adaptive and integrative functions rather than their general input and output characteristics. It is important to extend our research beyond the underlying physiological mechanisms that mask the richness of the emotional lives of many animals and learn more about how emotions serve them as they go about their daily activities.

Generally, scientists and nonscientists alike seem to agree that emotions are real and that they are extremely important, at least to humans and, perhaps, to some other animals. While there is not much consensus on the nature of animal emotions, there is no shortage of views on the subject. Followers of René Descartes and of B. F. Skinner believe that animals are robots that become conditioned to respond automatically to stimuli to which they are exposed. The view of animals as machines explains so much about what they do that it is easy to understand why many people have adopted it.

However, not everyone accepts that animals are merely automatons, unfeeling creatures of habit (Panksepp 1998). Why then are there competing views on the nature of animal emotions? In part, this is because some people view humans as unique animals, created in the image of God. According to this view, humans are the only rational beings who are able to engage in self-reflection. Within contemporary scientific and philosophical traditions, there still is much debate about which animals are self-reflective.

Rollin (1990) notes that, at the end of the 1800s, animals “lost their minds.” In other words, in attempts to emulate the up-and-coming “hard sciences,” such as physics and chemistry, researchers studying animal behavior came to realize that there was too little in studies of animal emotions and minds that was directly observable, measurable, and verifiable, and chose instead to concentrate on behavior because overt actions could be seen, measured objectively, and verified (see also Dror 1999).

Behaviorists, whose early leaders included John B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, frown on any kind of talk about animal (and in some cases human) emotions or mental states because they consider it unscientific. For behaviorists, following the logical positivists, only observable behavior constitutes legitimate scientific data. In contrast to behaviorists, other researchers in the fields of ethology, neurobiology, endocrinology, psychology, and philosophy have addressed the challenge of learning more about animal emotions and animal minds and believe that it is possible to study animal emotions and minds (including consciousness) objectively (Allen and Bekoff 1997, Bekoff and Allen 1997, Panksepp 1998, Bekoff 2000, Hauser 2000a).

Most researchers now believe that emotions are not simply the result of some bodily state that leads to an action (i.e., that the conscious component of an emotion follows the bodily reactions to a stimulus), as postulated in the late 1800s by William James and Carl Lange (Panksepp 1998). James and Lange argued that fear, for example, results from an awareness of the bodily changes (heart rate, temperature) that were stimulated by a fearful stimulus.

Following Walter Cannon’s criticisms of the James–Lange theory, nowadays researchers believe that there is a mental component that does not have to follow a bodily reaction (Panksepp 1998). Experiments have shown that drugs producing bodily changes like those accompanying an emotional experience—for example, fear—do not produce the same type of conscious experience of fear (Damasio 1994). Also, some emotional reactions occur faster than would be predicted if they depended on a prior bodily change that is communicated via the nervous system to appropriate areas of the brain (Damasio 1994).

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The nature and neural bases of animal passions: Primary and secondary emotions:

It is hard to watch elephants’ remarkable behavior during a family or bond group greeting ceremony, the birth of a new family member, a playful interaction, the mating of a relative, the rescue of a family member, or the arrival of a musth male, and not imagine that they feel very strong emotions which could be best described by words such as joy, happiness, love, feelings of friendship, exuberance, amusement, pleasure, compassion, relief, and respect. (Poole 1998, pp. 90–91)

The emotional states of many animals are easily recognizable. Their faces, their eyes, and the ways in which they carry themselves can be used to make strong inferences about what they are feeling. Changes in muscle tone, posture, gait, facial expression, eye size and gaze, vocalizations, and odors (pheromones), singly and together, indicate emotional responses to certain situations. Even people with little experience observing animals usually agree with one another on what an animal is most likely feeling. Their intuitions are borne out because their characterizations of animal emotional states predict future behavior quite accurately.

Primary emotions, considered to be basic inborn emotions, include generalized rapid, reflex like (“automatic” or hard-wired) fear and fight-or-flight responses to stimuli that represent danger. Animals can perform a primary fear response such as avoiding an object, but they do not have to recognize the object generating this reaction. Loud raucous sounds, certain odors, and objects flying overhead often lead to an inborn avoidance reaction to all such stimuli that indicate “danger.” Natural selection has resulted in innate reactions that are crucial to individual survival. There is little or no room for error when confronted with a dangerous stimulus.

Primary emotions are wired into the evolutionary old limbic system (especially the amygdala), the “emotional” part of the brain, so named by Paul MacLean in 1952 (MacLean 1970, Panksepp 1998). Structures in the limbic system and similar emotional circuits are shared among many different species and provide a neural substrate for primary emotions. In his three-brain-in-one (triune brain) theory, MacLean (1970) suggested that there was the reptilian or primitive brain (possessed by fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals), the limbic or paleomammalian brain (possessed by mammals), and the neocortical or “rational” neomammalian brain (possessed by a few mammals, such as primates), all packaged in the cranium. Each is connected to the other two but each also has its own capacities. While the limbic system seems to be the main area of the brain in which many emotions reside, current research (LeDoux 1996) indicates that all emotions are not necessarily packaged into a single system, and there may be more than one emotional system in the brain.

Secondary emotions are those that are experienced or felt, evaluated, and reflected on. Secondary emotions involve higher brain centers in the cerebral cortex. Although most emotional responses appear to be generated unconsciously, consciousness allows an individual to make connections between feelings and action and allows for variability and flexibility in behavior.

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Emotion and cognition:

Perhaps the most difficult unanswered question about animal emotions concerns how emotions and cognition are linked, how emotions are felt, or reflected on, by humans and other animals. Researchers also do not know which species have the capacity to engage in conscious reflection about emotions and which do not. A combination of evolutionary, comparative, and developmental approaches set forth by Tinbergen and Burghardt, combined with comparative studies of the neurobiological and endocrinological bases of emotions in various animals, including humans, carries much promise for future work concerned with relationships between cognition and individuals’ experiences of various emotions.

Damasio (1999a, 1999b) provides a biological explanation for how emotions might be felt in humans. His explanation might also apply to some animals. Damasio suggests that various brain structures map both the organism and external objects to create what he calls a second-order representation. This mapping of the organism and the object most likely occurs in the thalamus and cingulate cortices. A sense of self in the act of knowing is created, and the individual knows “to whom this is happening.” The “seer” and the “seen,” the “thought” and the “thinker” are one and the same.

Clearly, an understanding of behavior and neurobiology is necessary to understand how emotions and cognition are linked. It is essential that researchers learn as much as possible about animals’ private experiences, feelings, and mental states. The question of whether and how animals’ emotions are experienced presents a challenge for future research.

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Grief:

Never shall I forget watching as, three days after Flo’s death, Flint climbed slowly into a tall tree near the stream. He walked along one of the branches, then stopped and stood motionless, staring down at an empty nest. After about two minutes he turned away and, with the movements of an old man, climbed down, walked a few steps, then lay, wide eyes staring ahead. The nest was one which he and Flo had shared a short while before Flo died…in the presence of his big brother [Figan], [Flint] had seemed to shake off a little of his depression. But then he suddenly left the group and raced back to the place where Flo had died and there sank into ever deeper depression…Flint became increasingly lethargic, refused food and, with his immune system thus weakened, fell sick. The last time I saw him alive, he was hollow-eyed, gaunt and utterly depressed, huddled in the vegetation close to where Flo had died…the last short journey he made, pausing to rest every few feet, was to the very place where Flo’s body had lain. There he stayed for several hours, sometimes staring and staring into the water. He struggled on a little further, then curled up—and never moved again. (Goodall 1990, pp. 196–197)

Many animals display grief at the loss or absence of a close friend or loved one. One vivid description of the expression of grief is offered above—Goodall (1990) observing Flint, an eight and half-year old chimpanzee, withdraw from his group, stop feeding, and finally die after his mother, Flo, died. The Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz observed grief in geese that was similar to grief in young children. He provided the following account of goose grief: “A greylag goose that has lost its partner shows all the symptoms that John Bowlby has described in young human children in his famous book Infant Grief…the eyes sink deep into their sockets, and the individual has an overall drooping experience, literally letting the head hang….” (Lorenz 1991, p. 251).

Other examples of grief are offered in Bekoff (2000). Sea lion mothers, watching their babies being eaten by killer whales, squeal eerily and wail pitifully, lamenting their loss. Dolphins also have been observed struggling to save a dead infant. Elephants have been observed to stand guard over a stillborn baby for days with their head and ears hanging down, quiet and moving slowly as if they are depressed. Orphan elephants who have seen their mothers being killed often wake up screaming. Poole (1998) claims that grief and depression in orphan elephants is a real phenomenon. McConnery (quoted in McRae 2000, p. 86) notes of traumatized orphaned gorillas: “The light in their eyes simply goes out, and they die.” Comparative research in neurobiology, endocrinology, and behavior is needed to learn more about the subjective nature of animal grief.

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Romantic love:

Courtship and mating are two activities in which many animals regularly engage. Many animals seem to fall in love with one another just as humans do. Heinrich (1999) is of the opinion that ravens fall in love. He writes (Heinrich 1999, p. 341): “Since ravens have long-term mates, I suspect that they fall in love like us, simply because some internal reward is required to maintain a long-term pair bond.” In many species, romantic love slowly develops between potential mates. It is as if partners need to prove their worth to the other before they consummate their relationship.

Würsig (2000) has described courtship in southern right whales off Peninsula Valdis, Argentina. While courting, Aphro (female) and Butch (male) continuously touched flippers, began a slow caressing motion with them, rolled towards each other, briefly locked both sets of flippers as in a hug, and then rolled back up, lying side-by-side. They then swam off, side-by-side, touching, surfacing, and diving in unison. Würsig followed Butch and Aphro for about an hour, during which they continued their tight travel. Würsig believes that Aphro and Butch became powerfully attracted to each other, and had at least a feeling of “after-glow” as they swam off. He asks, could this not be leviathan love?

Many things have passed for love in humans, yet we do not deny its existence, nor are we hesitant to say that humans are capable of falling in love. It is unlikely that romantic love (or any emotion) first appeared in humans with no evolutionary precursors in animals. Indeed, there are common brain systems and homologous chemicals underlying love that are shared among humans and animals (Panksepp 1998). The presence of these neural pathways suggests that if humans can feel romantic love, then at least some other animals also experience this emotion.

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Embarrassment:

Some animals seem to feel embarrassment; that is, they hope to cover up some event and the accompanying feeling. Goodall (2000) observed what could be called embarrassment in chimpanzees. When Fifi’s oldest child, Freud, was five and a half years old, his uncle, Fifi’s brother Figan, was the alpha male of the chimpanzee community. Freud always followed Figan; he hero-worshipped the big male. Once, as Fifi groomed Figan, Freud climbed up the thin stem of a wild plantain. When he reached the leafy crown, he began swaying wildly back and forth. Had he been a human child, we would have said he was showing off. Suddenly the stem broke and Freud tumbled into the long grass. He was not hurt. He landed close to Goodall, and as his head emerged from the grass, she saw him look over at Figan—had he noticed? If he had, he paid no attention but went on grooming. Freud very quietly climbed another tree and began to feed.

Hauser (2000b) observed what could be labeled embarrassment in a male rhesus monkey. After copulating, the male strutted away and accidentally fell into a ditch. He stood up and quickly looked around. After sensing that no other monkeys saw him tumble, he marched off, back high, head and tail up, as if nothing had happened. Once again, comparative research in neurobiology, endocrinology, and behavior is needed to learn more about the subjective nature of embarrassment.

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Studying animal emotions:   

The best way to learn about the emotional lives of animals is to spend considerable time carefully studying them—conducting comparative and evolutionary ethological, neurobiological, and endocrinological research—and to resist critics’ claims that anthropomorphism has no place in these efforts. To claim that one cannot understand elephants, dolphins, or other animals because we are not “one of them” leaves us nowhere. It is important to try to learn how animals live in their own worlds, to understand their perspectives (Allen and Bekoff 1997, Hughes 1999). Animals evolved in specific and unique situations and it discounts their lives if we only try to understand them from our own perspective. To be sure, gaining this kind of knowledge is difficult, but it is not impossible. Perhaps so little headway has been made in the study of animal emotions because of a fear of being “nonscientific.”  On the other hand, many scientists were very eager to contribute. They believed that they could be scientific and at the same time use other types of data to learn about animal emotions; that is, that it is permissible for scientists to write about matters of the heart (although at least one prominent biologist has had trouble publishing such material; Heinrich 1999, p. 322).

The way human beings describe and explain the behavior of other animals is limited by the language they use to talk about things in general. By engaging in anthropomorphism—using human terms to explain animals’ emotions or feelings—humans make other animals’ worlds accessible to themselves (Allen and Bekoff 1997, Bekoff and Allen 1997, Crist 1999). But this is not to say that other animals are happy or sad in the same ways in which humans (or even other conspecifics) are happy or sad. However, merely referring acontextually to the firing of different neurons or to the activity of different muscles in the absence of behavioral information and context is insufficiently informative. Using anthropomorphic language does not have to discount the animal’s point of view. Anthropomorphism allows other animals’ behavior and emotions to be accessible to us. Thus, we can be biocentrically anthropomorphic and do rigorous science.

Many people believe that experimental research in such areas as neurobiology constitutes more reliable work and generates more useful (“hard”) data than, say, ethological studies in which animals are “merely” observed. However, research that reduces and minimizes animal behavior and animal emotions to neural firings, muscle movements, and hormonal effects will not likely lead us significantly closer to an understanding of animal emotions. Concluding that we will know most if not all that we can ever learn about animal emotions when we have figured out the neural circuitry or hormonal bases of specific emotions will produce incomplete and perhaps misleading views concerning the true nature of animal and human emotions.

All research involves leaps of faith from available data to the conclusions we draw when trying to understand the complexities of animal emotions, and each has its benefits and shortcomings. Often, studies of the behavior of captive animals and neurobiological research is so controlled as to produce spurious results concerning social behavior and emotions because animals are being studied in artificial and impoverished social and physical environments. The experiments themselves might put individuals in thoroughly unnatural situations. Indeed, some researchers have discovered that many laboratory animals are so stressed from living in captivity that data on emotions and other aspects of behavioral physiology are tainted from the start (Poole 1997).

Field work also can be problematic. It can be too uncontrolled to allow for reliable conclusions to be drawn. It is difficult to follow known individuals, and much of what they do cannot be seen. However, it is possible to fit free-ranging animals with devices that can transmit information on individual identity, heart rate, body temperature, and eye movements as the animals go about their daily activities. This information is helping researchers to learn more about the close relationship between animals’ emotional lives and the behavioral and physiological factors that are correlated with these emotions.

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Do animals and humans experience the same emotions?

The link between humans and animals may be closer than we may have realized. Research by Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) has found that our furry relatives may share many of the same emotions that humans experience in everyday life.

Dr Filippo Aureli, reader in Animal Behaviour and co-director of the Research Centre in Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology at LJMU explains: “My research has shown that emotion is a valid topic for scientific investigation in animals and helps us to understand how animals behave with great flexibility.  For example self directed behaviours, such as scratch -grooming, obviously have a hygiene function, but they also reflect motivational ambivalence or frustration. Recent research has shown that there is an increase in such behaviour in situations of uncertainty, social tension, or impending danger. The same can be shown in humans who may bite their nails or pull at their hair in times of anxiety.”

Animals respond to the environment much as humans do, reacting emotionally to others and even becoming stressed and anxious in times of danger. These emotions have a marked effect on their behaviour but while researchers may never be able to know how animals actually feel, studies have found that there are definite behavioural similarities in emotional expression between animals and humans. Though animals cannot express their feelings linguistically, researchers have found that like humans, their emotions can be expressed through actions. Individual primates behave in different ways depending on the circumstances they find themselves in and the group members they interact with. For example, individuals who spend more time in proximity to one another will generally be friendlier and less aggressive to each other – showing that the animals form close bonds with some group members.   

Dr Aureli explains: “Monkeys and apes behave as if they take into account the quality of social relationships, for example whether they are friends or non-friends. Emotion can mediate the assessment of one’s own relationships and guide animals’ decisions on how to interact with different partners under different circumstances.”

Dr Aureli’s work has also shown that primates behave as if they discriminate between the qualities of relationships of other individuals. For example, following an aggressive interaction between two animals, a monkey may attack individuals related to the antagonist, or invite close associates to support it in overcoming the aggressor. This further relates to human behaviour, where some humans will protect one another and act on their behalf if a friend is threatened or bullied.

Dr Aureli says: “Emotional mediation can also be used to gather information about the relationships between other group members and guide decisions about how to interact in complex situations involving multiple partners. The framework of emotional mediation of social relationships could be particularly useful to explain social interaction when members of a society are not always together.”  He explains that this is what happens in humans living in small villages. Everyone knows one another by sight or name, but the entire community is rarely all together and individuals spend most of their time in smaller sub-groups which meet, merge and divide with different composition. Communities with similar characteristics have been found in chimpanzees and spider monkeys.

Dr Aureli continues: “This situation is particularly challenging for social decision making because updated knowledge of social relationships cannot be maintained as individuals spend extended periods separated from other community members. Emotional experiences upon reunion can provide quick updates about possible changes in social relationships.” Dr Aureli adds: “The study of animal emotions provides powerful tools to better understand the regulation of social relationships in various social systems and the evolution of the human social cognition. “Therefore, the way we usually operate in the social world may not be too different from what other animals do. The more we discover about how animals, especially monkeys and apes, use emotions to make social decisions the more we learn about ourselves and how we operate in the social world.”

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The study of animal emotions shows us about being human:

The Greek philosopher Xenophanes came up with the word “anthropomorphism,” meaning “human form” in the fifth century BC to protest the poetry of Homer, which described gods with human shapes and qualities. Xenophanes joked that if horses could draw their gods, those deities would look equestrian. And ever since then, “anthropomorphism” has been used derisively. Today, the term refers more broadly to a human tendency to attribute our own traits and experiences to other creatures. And many scientists still resist this tendency, arguing that it’s impossible for animals to have inner lives that resemble ours.

Primatologist Frans de Waal has coined a term for the rejection of anthropomorphism, dubbing it “anthropodenial.” In his new book, Mama’s Last Hug, he argues that anthropodenial—discounting the complexity of other animals— persists because we’ve been able to justify a lot of cruel behavior by claiming that animals don’t really feel like we do. Yet scientists are increasingly finding that there’s little distinction between the way animals and humans feel and behave—or, rather, that there are similarities and that animals also have feelings. They have a consciousness. They have cognition. Our brains are similarly structured, with the same neurotransmitters. The differences between a fish and a person’s physicality and environment account for the fact that our inner lives aren’t identical—but just because a fish lives in water and doesn’t seem to grieve like you and me doesn’t mean the fish has no mental life or self-awareness, or sense of finality.

De Waal thinks anthropomorphism is positive. It seems to be a more correct understanding of animals. Of course, we differ in details, but he has spent decades observing the behavior of primates, and it’s taught him quite a bit about humanity in the process. In his latest book, he explores the changing science of animal cognition and the evidence that people and creatures have an awful lot in common, writing:

‘Anthropomorphism is not nearly as bad as people think. With species like great apes, it is in fact logical. Evolutionary theory almost dictates it, given that we know apes as anthropoids, which means ‘human-like’… The simplest, most parsimonious view is that if two related species act similarly under similar circumstances, they must be similarly motivated.’

And we do act much like primates. De Waal tells the story of Kuif, a female chimpanzee who didn’t much care for him at first. Kuif didn’t take to the primatologist until he did her a kindness that changed her life. The chimp had difficulty lactating after birth and lost her babies—when de Waal and his colleagues gave her a baby bottle and allowed her to feed a newborn, she kissed them with gratitude and fed the infant expertly. Kuif was able to save her next baby using the bottle method and became de Waal’s close lifelong friend.

De Waal sees depth in the creatures he’s spent years observing. He’s watched their relationships, the expressions on their faces, their fights and friendships, and come to see that they love, hate, reconcile, relate, play, plan, work, grieve, and rear young a lot like us.

The primatologist sees the individuality and intelligence of the creatures he studies. And he notes that people with pets are often more capable of granting animals their due than scientists because the dog or cat or bird lover simply relates to the animal in their lives and doesn’t have to categorize or quantify or prove anything—they just experience their pets’ depth.

We have no problem acknowledging that humans are emotional creatures, and that our feelings often stem from knowledge. For example, when a loved one dies, we grieve because we know we won’t see them again—the knowledge informs the sense of sadness. But when it comes to animals, scientists have long been reluctant to attribute depth to emotional expression, relegating everything to primal drives instead.

Yet de Waal has observed the grieving rituals of chimpanzees and he sees little difference between their behavior and ours. The chimps touch, wash, and groom bodies of the dead. They mourn. This indicates then that they have a sense of finality—which implies a sense of the future, some knowledge that this companion won’t be around tomorrow. While chimps don’t bury corpses, de Waal argues that it’s because they roam in the wild and so are not conscious of how the dead attract carrion and scavengers if left in the open to decompose.

He points to experiments on dogs awaiting treats in brain scanners that show activity in the same region of the brain, the caudate nucleus, that lights up when businessmen are promised a monetary bonus as more evidence of our many similarities. In de Waal’s view, the more we know about animals, the more it’s apparent that we are animals and that our minds are not unique. “Instead of treating mental processes as a black box, as previous generations of scientists have done, we are now prying open the box to reveal a shared background,” he writes. “Modern neuroscience makes it impossible to maintain a sharp human-animal dualism.”

Amongst some professionals, there’s still resistance to embracing our animal brethren and acknowledging we’re family. De Waal believes it’s because seeing the full range and depth of animal feelings will expose our own animality to us. He notes that we refer to the human drive for power as “leadership” and don’t discuss the fact that we are a hierarchical species and some of us want to dominate, just like some apes want to climb to the top of ape culture.

Frans de Waal believes morality is an evolved trait that is not just reserved for humans. “There are ingredients that we find in other primates, such as empathy, consolation, and a sense of fairness, that led me to believe that morality is not a human construct”, he says. Many other species, such as crows and wolves, also show forms of moral behavior.

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De Waal and an increasing number of animal researchers contend that we are hiding from ourselves when we deny the humanity of animals or the animality of humans, whichever way you prefer to put it. And these scientists are changing the way we understand ourselves and other creatures, shifting the burden of proof on those who refuse to acknowledge similarities to show that there really is a stark divide between the inner lives of animals and our own, rather than vice versa.

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Section-13

Domestication of animals:        

Domesticated animals such as dogs, cats, and cattle are animals that have been selectively bred and genetically adapted over generations to live alongside humans. They are genetically distinct from their wild ancestors or cousins. Animal domestication falls into three main groupings: domestication for companionship (dogs and cats), animals farmed for food (sheep, cows, pigs, turkeys, etc.), and working or draft animals (horses, donkeys, camels).

Animals that make good candidates for domestication typically share certain traits:

-They grow and mature quickly, making them efficient to farm.

-They breed easily in captivity and can undergo multiple periods of fertility in a single year.

-They eat plant-based diets, which makes them inexpensive to feed.

-They’re hardy and easily adapt to changing conditions.

-They live in herds or had ancestors that lived in herds, making them easy for humans to control.

The domestication process:  

Domestication happens through selective breeding. Individuals that exhibit desirable traits are selected to be bred, and these desirable traits are then passed along to future generations. Wolves were the first animal to be domesticated, sometime between 33,000 and 11,000 years ago. After domesticated dogs came the domestication of livestock animals, which coincided with a widespread shift from foraging to farming among many cultures. Because most major acts of domestication began before recorded history, we don’t know much about the exact process behind the generations-long journey from wild animal to domesticated pet or livestock. What is clear is that the ancestors of domesticated animals must have already exhibited traits that made them somehow useful to humans—traits that may have ranged from tasty meat to warm coats to a natural affinity for people.

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A 2017 study found evidence that early dog-like wolves were indeed genetically disposed to be friendly. That friendliness may have triggered the first mutually beneficial relationships between humans and dogs, in which people gave dogs food or shelter in exchange for the animals’ service as guards or hunting companions. Other genetic evidence has been discovered to support a similar “self-domestication” theory for cats. From such early human-animal relationships came many generations of breeding in which people bred animals with the most beneficial traits and discarded the undersized, truculent, or otherwise undesirable creatures.

For thousands of years, humans have learned to domesticate chickens. They can now be found in almost all continents of the world, making them the most common and perhaps most famous birds on the planet with a population of more than 20 billion and counting. They all came from the Red Junglefowl, which were originally found in Southeast Asia. Approximately 10,000 years ago, humans started to tame and domesticate them.

Often, domestic animals, in contrast to their wild counterparts, exhibit a feature known as neoteny—the retention of juvenile traits like soft fur, floppy ears, and bigger heads relative to their body size. One memorable study begun in the Soviet Union in the 1950s found foxes that were bred for domesticable traits began exhibiting neoteny within just a few generations. It remains unclear why this happens, though it does often make domesticated animals “cuter” to humans. People also often intentionally select for these juvenile traits in the course of breeding, giving us the pugs, ragdoll cats, and dwarf rabbits of today. 

Most of the multiple species of animals that we as humans have developed relationships with over the years are domesticated animals including dogs, cats, rabbits, and farm animals. Animals have throughout history been bred for the sole purpose of coexisting and having relationships with humans over time. They in turn have essentially developed the capacity to bond with people. In some instances, though, bonded relationships can occur with wild animals, too. In the case of rescued wild animals, people and wild animals can develop a mutually close relationship, though this often results from some sort of a rescue scenario where the animal was rescued by the human. This is one of the many cases in which it becomes more apparent that the fates of both humans and wild animals are deeply intertwined.    

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Domestic vs. tame: 

Domestication is not the same as taming. A domestic animal is genetically determined to be tolerant of humans. An individual wild animal, or wild animal born in captivity, may be tamed—their behavior can be conditioned so they grow accustomed to living alongside humans—but they are not truly domesticated and remain genetically wild.

Captive Asian elephants, for example, are often misinterpreted as domesticated, because they have been kept by humans for thousands of years. However, the majority have historically been captured from the wild and tamed for use by humans. Although then can breed in captivity, like big cats and other wild animals, they are not selectively bred, largely because of their long reproductive cycle. For this reason, there are no domesticated breeds of Asian elephants: They remain wild animals.

Other animals that have modern wild counterparts, such as rabbits, face the opposite challenge: Domestic rabbits are genetically distinct from wild rabbits, but because the populations coexist, lack of understanding about their differences may lead to the assumption that domestic rabbits can survive in the wild. Unlike other feral animals (domestic animals that live in the wild), domestic rabbits lack predator instincts and therefore cannot survival without human care.

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How are pets different from wild animals?

On one end of the spectrum, we have wild animals – that is, animals that live their entire lives outside the human bubble. They don’t rely on us, and human encounters tend to be detrimental to one party or another. At the other extreme, we are left with domesticated pets, which have, over many generations, grown and changed alongside their human companions, who have selectively bred and chosen the animals who best fit their needs. If only the most human-tolerant members of the population are allowed to mate, certain genetic traits like reduced fear and increased friendliness will become more prevalent in future generations. The classic example of this is dogs being bred from wolves.

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But between wild and domestic, there are at least two shades of gray. First, animals can be tamed, but not domesticated (though some use the terms interchangeably). In these cases, a single wild animal can be adapted to live alongside humans, take their food, and generally benefit from their presence – but the change is entirely behavioral and can occur within a single animal’s lifespan. Genetic changes do not occur, and the rest of the animal’s species remains wild. What’s more, not all domesticated animals are tame: consider chickens or Spanish fighting bulls. Next, we have the inverse of taming, in which a domesticated species is released to the wild and adjusts to fending for itself, results in a feral animal. In both of these cases, behaviors change ahead of genetics – but tamed and feral animals can be precursors of genetic changes in either direction.

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But what do these genetic changes actually entail? The domestication of dogs, bred from their wolf ancestors, is the process that has undergone the most scrutiny. Without going too deeply into the history and philosophy of domestication, it’s thought that dogs were originally domesticated (at least once, if not multiple times) between 10,000 and 33,000 years ago in Asia. Their original purpose was likely to aid in the hunt, but along the way, companionship became a driving factor. And unsurprisingly, when we compare the genomes of modern domesticated dogs to those of wild wolves, there are quite a few differences that have manifested over the years.

As you might expect, many of the differences account for changes in behavior, including alterations in genes controlling brain development and function that increase animals’ tolerance of and even friendliness towards humans. But other changes are less intuitive. For instance, unlike their carnivorous wolf ancestors, dogs eat diets more similar to those of their omnivorous human companions. Consequently, dogs’ genomes have changed over the years to produce more proteins involved in starch and fat metabolism.

These shifts in behavior and diet are two of many characteristics we find in domesticated animals. By no means are these patterns hard and fast rules, and many exceptions exist. But speaking generally and liberally, domesticated animals are more likely to: be smaller or larger than their wild counterparts; undergo multiple periods of fertility within the span of one year (a trait referred to as being polyestrous), unlike wild animals, which often mate seasonally; and have spots or patches in their fur, curly hair, floppy ears, smaller heads, and shorter tails. Many of these last physical characteristics are reminiscent of juvenile versions of domesticated animals’ ancestors.

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In fact, after making many of these observations, a few scientists decided to put the genetics of domestication to the test in late 1950s Soviet Russia with a group of silver foxes. The researchers selectively bred only the friendliest or most aggressive foxes of each generation. Forty years later, the scientists found themselves with domesticated foxes that eagerly approached humans, wagging their short and curly tails, pricking their floppy ears, and allowing their soft, speckled fur to be petted. Their wilder counterparts, on the other hand, remained combative, untamed, and anatomically like their ancestors. The researchers showed domestication was breedable and that it came as a package deal with predictable changes anatomy and physiology. With this kind of directed breeding, domestication can produce companions that are almost unrecognizable as descendants of their wild ancestors.

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What is the “Pet Effect?”

The “Pet Effect” is the rapidly spreading notion that people who have pets live longer and healthier lives. Many people credit their pets with an increase in well-being and health benefits, which include reduced stress, lower levels of cortisol, and higher levels of dopamine and oxytocin, aka the “love hormone.”

There are ways in which Animals improve your Mental Health and Well-being:

While research on human-animal interactions is still a relatively new field, various studies have shown positive health effects of having pets and interacting with animals.

Here’s how animals can help improve your well-being: 

1. Lowering Stress & Anxiety

Living with an animal can lead to a release in oxytocin which can stimulate social bonding, relaxation, and trust. This can happen when spending time with animals or even just through eye contact. Research on mutual gazing between humans and their dogs has shown to increase oxytocin levels in both species. Animals can serve as a constant presence, comforting and supporting humans during times of heightened anxiety, depression, or loneliness. Researchers found that people were less stressed when conducting difficult tasks when their pet was present rather than when a friend or spouse was there.

A 2016 study also found that pets provide a sense of security and routine that provided emotional and social support to people with long-term mental health conditions. And a 2019 study on college students at Washington State University showed that just 10 minutes of interacting with animals can produce a significant reduction in cortisol, a major stress hormone.

Due to their mental health benefits, therapy dogs are often used to help veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder as well as help calm autistic children.

2. Encouraging an Active Lifestyle

Having a dog leads to increased physical activity which has been shown to enhance your mood, alleviate depression symptoms, and help self-esteem. One study found that dog owners who regularly walked their dogs were more physically active and less likely to be obese than non-pet owners. Research published in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine also showed that walking dogs promote engagement in and adherence to regular physical activity. Increased physical fitness improves factors linked to heart health, sympathetic nervous system functioning, blood pressure and blood sugar levels, and cholesterol levels.

3. Decreasing Mortality

Having a pet is believed to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, according to the CDC. This may be linked to the increased physical activity from having a pet but could also be connected to the mental health benefits of pet ownership.

A 2009 study followed 4435 participants over a 13-year period found a significantly lower risk of heart-attack deaths for the cat owners. Compared with cat owners, people who never had a cat were 40% more likely to die of a heart and 30% more likely to die of any cardiovascular disease, including stroke, heart failure, and chronic heart disease. Another study, which looked at 240 married couples, corroborated these benefits of having a pet, finding lower heart rates, and decreased blood pressure among those with pets.

4. Increasing Microbiome Diversity

Epidemiological studies have shown that children who grow up in households with pets, especially dogs, have a lower risk for developing illnesses like asthma or allergies.

Different microorganisms in the human gastrointestinal tract form what is known as the microbiome, which has a major influence on health and disease. Having pets can increase the richness and diversity of the microbiome which can decrease a child’s likelihood of developing allergies (related to their home) by 33%. Pets often carry a diversity of microbes from the outside world into our homes, teaching our bodies from an early age how to respond to certain bacteria. Dog ownership has been shown to raise the levels of 56 different classes of bacterial species in the indoor environment, while cats boosted 24 categories of bacteria. This positive outcome not only comes from having domesticated pets but also any interaction with animals. A 2016 study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that Amish children in Indiana who grew up close to barnyard animals had far lower rates of asthma than Hutterite children, who were raised apart from animals on large mechanized farms in North Dakota.

The benefits that animals can have on humans are not limited to in-person connections. A 2015 study in Computers in Human Behavior found that people who watch cat videos online report less negative emotions (less anxiety, annoyance, and sadness) and more positive feelings (more hope, happiness, and contentment).

Although pet ownership is not a prescription for better health, the research indicates several benefits of living and interacting with animals.

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What are some potential downsides to having a pet?

When pets are unruly, a person may feel guilty or frustrated that they can’t manage the undesirable behavior. Pets also restrict one’s freedom, making it more logistically difficult to travel or take spontaneous outings. There can be heavy financial and emotional costs to sharing one’s life with a companion animal, including coping with their eventual loss.

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Section-14

Relationship between animals and humans:   

During the domestication process, animals have come to develop a profound relationship with humans. Since prehistoric times, humans have succeeded in domesticating only approximately 20 different animal species. Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs were the first species to be domesticated (CluttonBrock, 1995). Compared with other domesticated animals, dogs have developed a special relationship with humans, and can be considered as the only species to have established a niche for themselves in human society.

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Attachment between humans and dogs, 2009 study:

The special relationship that dogs have developed with humans has been studied not only from the social sciences perspective, but also from the perspectives of psychology and human medicine. Recently, in cognitive science, it has been suggested that dogs may have acquired the superior cognitive ability to communicate with humans, particularly using human-like visual cues during evolution, and that emotional bonding has developed between humans and dogs by means of similar social cues. This article discusses the biological aspects of human-dog attachment. Attachment requires the distinction of a specific figure using species-specific social cues and specific responses to the figure, brought about by neuroendocrinological homeostatic functions as well as behavioral aspects. It has been shown that dogs can distinguish a particular human figure (e.g. the owner) and exhibit specific autonomic reactions. Moreover, when dogs gaze at their owners, the latter’s urinary oxytocin levels increase after the interaction. This understanding of the biological aspect of interspecies attachment suggests the possible elements that form the basis of cross-species empathy and the development of evolutionary cognitive abilities that may depend on not merely their genetic dendrogram.

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Psychosocial and Psychophysiological Effects of Human-Animal Interactions: The Possible Role of Oxytocin, a 2012 study:

During the last decade it has become more widely accepted that pet ownership and animal assistance in therapy and education may have a multitude of positive effects on humans. Here, authors review the evidence from 69 original studies on human-animal interactions (HAI) which met their inclusion criteria with regard to sample size, peer-review, and standard scientific research design. Among the well-documented effects of HAI in humans of different ages, with and without special medical, or mental health conditions are benefits for: social attention, social behavior, interpersonal interactions, and mood; stress-related parameters such as cortisol, heart rate, and blood pressure; self-reported fear and anxiety; and mental and physical health, especially cardiovascular diseases. Limited evidence exists for positive effects of HAI on: reduction of stress-related parameters such as epinephrine and norepinephrine; improvement of immune system functioning and pain management; increased trustworthiness of and trust toward other persons; reduced aggression; enhanced empathy and improved learning. Authors propose that the activation of the oxytocin system plays a key role in the majority of these reported psychological and psychophysiological effects of HAI. Oxytocin and HAI effects largely overlap, as documented by research in both, humans and animals, and first studies found that HAI affects the oxytocin system. As a common underlying mechanism, the activation of the oxytocin system does not only provide an explanation, but also allows an integrative view of the different effects of HAI. 

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Pet Face: Mechanisms Underlying Human-Animal Relationships, 2016 study:

Accumulating behavioral and neurophysiological studies support the idea of infantile (cute) faces as highly biologically relevant stimuli rapidly and unconsciously capturing attention and eliciting positive/affectionate behaviors, including willingness to care. It has been hypothesized that the presence of infantile physical and behavioral features in companion (or pet) animals (i.e., dogs and cats) might form the basis of our attraction to these species. Preliminary evidence has indeed shown that the human attentional bias toward the baby schema may extend to animal facial configurations. In this review, the role of facial cues, specifically of infantile traits and facial signals (i.e., eyes gaze) as emotional and communicative signals is highlighted and discussed as regulating the human-animal bond, similarly to what can be observed in the adult-infant interaction context. Particular emphasis is given to the neuroendocrine regulation of the social bond between humans and animals through oxytocin secretion. Instead of considering companion animals as mere baby substitutes for their owners, in this review authors highlight the central role of cats and dogs in human lives. Specifically, authors consider the ability of companion animals to bond with humans as fulfilling the need for attention and emotional intimacy, thus serving similar psychological and adaptive functions as human-human friendships. In this context, facial cuteness is viewed not just as a releaser of care/parental behavior, but, more in general, as a trait motivating social engagement. To conclude, the impact of this information for applied disciplines is briefly described, particularly in consideration of the increasing evidence of the beneficial effects of contacts with animals for human health and wellbeing.

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Here’s an in-depth look at all the reasons why it sometimes feels like we love our dog more than our next-door neighbor.

Empathy is a complex emotion for us humans. In many ways, it seems to be disappearing from society. Because of the constant media barrage of violence, death, and despair, we are becoming increasingly desensitized to the suffering of others. So why is it so easy to generate empathy for suffering animals?

A recent study by criminologist Jack Levin reveals a possible reason that might surprise you.

In this study, the participants were asked to respond to a fake news story about a victim who was assaulted with a baseball bat, leaving him or her unconscious with several broken limbs. While the story was the same, it differed in one crucial detail: the identity of the victim, which was either a one-year-old baby, an adult human, a six-year-old dog, or a puppy.

Respondents showed the same level of empathy for the baby, the puppy, and the adult dog, but significantly less for the adult human. This suggests that our empathy level is unrelated to species. Rather, it has to do with perceived helplessness and vulnerability.

The natural affection we feel for animals can be compared to the affection we feel for our children. We impulsively care for them and desire to help them because they are unable to help themselves easily. Our perception of adult humans is that they can easily speak up for their rights or defend themselves from danger. But that is not true of children and animals, who are completely at the mercy of others for shelter, food, and protection.

Children and animals both demonstrate an innocence that we feel compelled to protect. So in fact, our increased empathy for dogs and cats has nothing to do with a preference for a certain species, and everything to do with our innate human desire to protect and nurture those who are innocent and helpless.

But beyond our impulse to care for the helpless, what else is going on in our relationship with animals?

Unconditional Love:

Unconditional love is known as affection without any limitations, or love without conditions. Mother’s love is said to be the best example for unconditional love. It’s true. We all yearn for it and crave it. Someone who loves us for who we are. Who has zero expectations. Who is always happy to see us, no matter how grumpy we may be feeling today. We crave unconditional love. In human relationships, this precious commodity is almost impossible to find except mother’s love.

But not with pets.

It doesn’t matter if your boss yelled at you, your boyfriend broke up with you, or your car broke down on the Interstate. Your beloved Fido or Morris is there for you. He is rubbing up against you, looking at you with those adoring eyes. Wagging his tail or purring contentedly. Animals touch the most intimate parts of our hearts: our need to nurture and protect, our need for companionship and love. Your dog or cat doesn’t care whether you’re skinny, rich, athletic, or popular. He or she just wants you: your presence, your affection, your voice, and your touch. As a matter of fact, this unconditional love is so important to us that it can change our brain chemistry. Spending time with a pet has been found to lower blood pressure, reduce stress hormones, and release chemicals that trigger relaxation. Overall, pet owners are just healthier (both physically and mentally) than those who don’t own pets.

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We love animals, sure. But do we love all animals equally?

If we analyze our feelings carefully, we find that most of our adoration of animals centers on dogs and cats. We sometimes might feel empathy for certain large wild animals such as elephants, dolphins, or lions. When we read about a lion or an elephant who is hunted and killed in the wild, our response is one of anger, almost as much anger as hearing stories of abuse and neglect of dogs and cats.

But there is a basic irony about these feelings. The routine slaughter of animals for food (cattle, chickens, pigs, etc.) doesn’t faze us nearly as much. How is it that one African lion brutally killed for sport elicits powerful empathy…while the 39 million cows and calves that are killed every year in slaughterhouses leaves us unmoved?

There are several psychological explanations as to why that might be.

First, we must account for the influence of pop culture. Take a few moments to think about how many pet movies you watched as a kid. Lassie. Lady and the Tramp. Scooby-Doo. And many, many more. All of these media portrayals endow dogs and cats with human qualities. They talk to each other, indulge in dreams for the future, and fall in love just like we do. Popular culture has drilled it into us over generations that our pets are just like humans. And this cultural perception is not going to go away any time soon.

Our reverence for dogs and cats over other kinds of animals could also be explained by something called “the collapse of compassion.” This is the psychological principle which tells us that the more tragedy we see, the less we care. It’s the reason that you may not feel any compassion for the millions of people living in extreme poverty, while the story of one child who has to live on the street with no medical care is likely to move you to want to help.

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Our relationship with cats:

Dogs are man’s best friend. They’re sociable, faithful and obedient. Our relationship with cats, on the other hand, is often described as more transactional. Aloof, mysterious and independent, cats are with us only because we feed them. Or maybe not. Recently researchers reported that cats are just as strongly bonded to us as dogs or infants, vindicating cat lovers across the land.

Research into cat behavior has lagged that into dogs. Cats are not social animals, many scientists assumed — and not as easy to work with. But recent studies have begun to plumb the depth of cats’ social lives. “This idea that cats don’t really care about people or respond to them isn’t holding up,” Dr. Vitale said. In a study in 2017, Dr. Vitale and her colleagues found that the majority of cats prefer interacting with a person over eating or playing with a toy. In a 2019 study, the researchers found that cats adjust their behavior according to how much attention a person gives them. Other researchers have found that cats are sensitive to human emotion and mood, and that cats know their names. Scientists had arrived at conflicting findings about whether cats form attachments to their owners, however, so Dr. Vitale and her colleagues designed a study to more explicitly test the hypothesis.

They recruited owners of 79 kittens and 38 adult cats to participate in a “secure base test,” an experiment commonly used to measure bonds that dogs and primates form with caretakers. A similar test is also used for human infants. It is based on the theory that infants form an innate bond with caretakers that manifests as a strong desire to be near that person.

In the experiment, which lasted six minutes, cat and kitten owners entered an unfamiliar room with their animals. After two minutes, the owner left the room, leaving the cat or kitten alone — a potentially stressful experience for the animal. When the owner returned two minutes later, the researchers observed the feline’s response.

About two-thirds of cats and kittens came to greet their owners when they returned, and then went back to exploring the room, periodically returning to their owners. These animals, the researchers concluded, were securely attached to their owners, meaning they viewed them as a safe base in an unfamiliar situation.

“This may be an adaptation of the bond they would have with their parents when they were young,” Dr. Vitale said. This behavior, she added, may mean: “Everything’s O.K. My owner’s back, I feel comforted and reassured, and now I can go back to exploring.”

About 35 percent of cats and kittens displayed insecure attachment: They avoided their owners, or clung to them when they came back into the room. This does not mean that these pets have a bad relationship with their owners, Dr. Vitale said, but rather that they do not see their owners as a source of security and stress relief.

The findings mirror those found in studies of dogs and human children. In humans, 65 percent of infants display secure attachment to their caretakers, as do 58 percent of dogs.

“This result suggests a similarity in sociality in humans and companion animals,” said Atsuko Saito, a behavioral scientist at Sophia University in Tokyo, who was not involved in the new research. “Investigating this phenomenon will help us better understand the evolution of sociality in animals, including us.”

After the first round of tests, the researchers enrolled half the kittens used in the study in a training and socialization course. The other half served as a control group. One day a week for six weeks, kittens played with one another and were trained to sit, stay and do tricks. When the course was complete, the researchers repeated the secure base test with the kittens. They found the same results, meaning the training did not have an effect on kittens’ attachment behavior toward their owners. This indicates that once a cat forms a bond, it seems to remain stable over time, Dr. Vitale said.

In cats — as in infants and dogs — researchers still do not know all of the factors that shape the caretaker relationship, but it’s likely a complex mix of genetics, personality and experience. It is possible that even more cats are securely bonded to their owners than the new study found, said Mikel Delgado, an animal behavior researcher at the University of California, Davis, who was not involved in the research. Unlike dogs and infants, many cats spend nearly all of their time inside, so being in a new environment can be a foreign and frightening experience, she said. For some cats, a fearful response to a stressful situation may take precedence over a secure bond with an owner, so the study results may not fully capture the attachments of some cats. Testing cats’ responses to strangers, rather than to just their owners, might reveal whether cats are truly bonded to a specific person or are sociable toward humans in general, Dr. Delgado added.

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Why do we love pets?

Ours is a pet-loving culture. Researchers spend a lot of time exploring what has become known as “human-animal interactions,” and the pet industry spends a lot of money promoting what it prefers to call the “human-animal bond.” But that concept might have been laughable a century ago, when animals served a more utilitarian role in our lives. And it was “deeply unfashionable” among scholars as recently as the 1980s, as John Bradshaw writes in his new book, “The Animals Among Us: How Pets Make Us Human.” Bradshaw, an honorary research fellow at the University of Bristol in England, would know. He was trained as a biologist — one who began by studying animals, not people, and not their relationship. But he says his work on dog and cat behavior led him to conclude that he would never fully understand those topics without also considering how humans think about their animals. In 1990, he and a small group of other researchers who studied pet ownership coined a term for their field: anthrozoology. Today, university students at a few dozen U.S. universities study the topic he helped pioneer.

In his latest book, Bradshaw argues that our fascination with pets is not because they’re useful, nor even because they’re cute, and certainly not because they’ll make us live longer. Instead, he writes, pet-keeping is an intrinsic part of human nature, one rooted deeply in our own species’ evolution.

One way is that there is this satisfaction — stroking a dog or a cat causes hormones to be released and makes the person doing it feel good. I think you can trace that back to our very ancient history as hairy primates. Grooming one another is the main glue that holds most primate societies together. Now we’ve got other ways of socializing, but somewhere deep in our brains is a need to do this grooming of something that’s hairy, and we can satisfy that by stroking a dog or combing the cat.

Another way is it used to be adaptive — people who were seen to be good with animals were more accepted by other people in their tribe, and there may have even been some selection for brides and grooms based on affinity with animals.

Finally, domestication of animals has been a very important aspect of the emergence of what we call civilization. We had the emergence of a domestic dog, which is useful, a domestic cat, which can be useful because it hunts around houses, and goats and sheep that you can herd and milk. Pet-keeping became an advantage to the societies.

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Animals stepped in to save Human Lives:  

We’re all familiar with heart-warming stories of humans stepping in to help save animals, whether that’s helping a dog stuck in highway traffic or even reaching into a shark’s mouth to remove hooks! We can see when an animal is hurt or struggling and we have an intrinsic desire to help them. Nonhuman animals can exhibit such behavior as well! Sometimes these animals help each other, such as this sweet piglet helping his feline friend during a tough time, and sometimes these animals help us! Here are some stories about animals displaying compassionate, helpful behavior towards humans.

-1.  Whale protects scientist from shark

When a humpback whale began pushing and guiding scientist Nan Hauser in the water, she didn’t know what to think. At first, she was scared and confused, until she realized the whale noticed something she didn’t – a large tiger shark swimming nearby. Upon seeing the shark, Nan understood that the whale was trying to protect her and guide her back to her boat. Nan, who has dedicated her life to protecting whales, had never experienced anything like that before, though she knew that whales sometimes displayed a similar behavior when protecting seals from killer whales. Though she doesn’t know exactly what goes through the minds of these whales, she knows that they have this altruistic desire to help animals of other species.

-2. Dolphins protect man from shark

Like the previous story, this tale involves aquatic animals protecting someone from a potential shark attack. In this case, a pod of dolphins surrounded Adam Walker, a long-distance swimmer, after a great white shark emerged in the water beneath him. These 10 dolphins swam alongside Adam until the shark left the vicinity. Coincidentally, Adam was swimming to raise money for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation nonprofit organization. Seems like he picked the right cause!

-3. Gorilla, Binti Jua, saves a young boy

In 1996, a young boy visiting the Brookfield Zoo with his family fell into the gorilla habitat below. While onlookers watched in fear, Binti Jua, a western lowland gorilla, wandered over to the hurt boy, scooped him in her arms and cradled him until the paramedics arrived. Remarkably, Binti Jua seemed to act out of an intrinsic desire to nurture this injured child.

-4. Lulu the pig saves woman having a heart attack

When Jo Ann Altsman suffered a heart attack in her home, she was lucky to have her faithful companion pig, Lulu there! Pigs are incredibly smart and perceptive animals, so Lulu immediately knew something was wrong. After trying in vain to help Jo Ann up, she ran outside and stood in the road, oinking until finally, one driver stopped to see why this pig was so distressed. Lulu led the man to Jo Ann and thankfully an ambulance was called before it was too late. Doctors stated that if just 15 more minutes passed, Jo Ann would probably not be alive to tell the tale. For this act of courage, Jo Ann rewarded Lulu with a jelly donut.

-5. Sasha the pit bull saves family from a fire

After a fire broke out in this California family’s apartment, Sasha the bit bull alerted them by repeatedly barking until the mother of the house, Nana Chai, awoke. Not only that, but Sasha worked on saving Nana Chai’s baby by carrying her off the bed. Sasha’s heroism was also demonstrated by Baby, a 10-year-old pit bull, who saved his family from a fire twice! Too often, pit bulls get a bad rap for being “aggressive,” but historically, they were known for being “nanny” dogs because of their gentleness around children. Pit bulls like Sasha and Baby show how loyal and brave these dogs can be!

-6. Pearly the parrot saves his family from fire

Around 4 o’clock in the morning, LauraJean Niesel and her fiancé awoke to the sound of their parrot, Pearly causing a ruckus. Evidently, Pearly was trying to alert his family that a fire had engulfed their laundry room! Thanks to this bird’s loud squawks, the family got out safely and called the fire department in time to stop the fire from spreading.

-7. Sea lion saves man after he jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge

Suffering from mental illness led Kevin Hines, who was then just 19 years old, to attempt to take his own life by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Astoundingly, he survived the impact but suffered severe injuries and was desperately trying to stay afloat in the freezing waters. He felt a creature in the water and was scared until he realized this animal was bumping up and helping him swim. Although at the time he did not know what animal helped save his life, he later found out from an onlookers photos that the animal was a sea lion! Kevin Hines now travels the world to educate others on mental health and suicide prevention.

-8. Lions save kidnapped girl

Lions are often known for being majestic but ferocious hunters. However, for a 12-year-old Ethiopian girl, these animals became her saviors after she was kidnapped by a group of four men. With the police on their trail, the kidnappers were on the move, however, their plans were thwarted when they encountered a group of lions who chased them off. These lions then stayed with the young girl until the police arrived. According to one policeman’s account, “They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest.” Some experts believe that the girl’s cries for help sounded like the cries of a lion cub which made the lions sympathetic.

Animals don’t get enough credit for how intelligent, perceptive, and caring they can be! Unfortunately, animals are often seen as commodities or pests. However, these stories demonstrate that animals are complex beings that can display altruistic behavior. Animals help humans in so many ways, so let’s return the kindness by always treating animals with respect!

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Learn from animals:

Animals have their own social rules, codes of conduct and methods of communication. Like humans, not every animal is alike, but there are specific behavioral patterns in certain creatures that are worth noting. Animals have inherent worth and value, just like humans that merits our respect and acknowledgement. Here are some valuable lessons that we can learn from our animal counterparts, which can enhance our lives and the lives of those around us.  

-1. Trust your instincts:

Some people call it listening to your gut, others refer to it as that little voice in your head. Either way, there is definitely something that alerts us about the best course of action to take in almost any situation. The real question is  – how often do we pay attention to important signals about events, circumstances and the people around us? Animals rely solely on their instincts, trusting their senses and reacting to their environment accordingly.

-2. Respect your elders:

Wisdom and knowledge are oftentimes passed down from older people to the younger generation. Those with more years on the planet have amassed a wealth of information, experience and acumen that is worth making the time to listen to and learn from. Elephants know this to be true and their matriarchs remain the leaders of African elephant tribes till they pass away. In the wild, survival relies on the ability of older generations to impart their knowledge to younger generations. Elephant herds with older matriarchs have higher survival rates because the elder elephants can recognize the signs of drought or other oncoming natural disasters. Learning from the wisdom of the past is important for humans too, especially in an age where technology and media runs rampant. Moving forward and advancing towards innovation is a wonderful thing, but we should also learn to respect the wisdom of those who came before us.

-3. Reach your goals and preserve:

Whether you have a big exam coming up or you’re looking to make the leap and switch careers, goals can seem lofty and hard to attain. Chin up! Salmon swim thousands of miles upstream just to make it back to their birthplace so that they can properly spawn their next generation – enduring extreme physical odds.

-4. Live sustainably:

The planet is full of natural resources and it is up to us to make sure that we are conscious of our carbon footprint – keeping track of how much we purchase and throw away. We can take a cue from octopi who are some of the thriftiest invertebrates out there building shelters out of discarded debris – modern day repurposing if you will.

-5. Play fair:

Playing fair is a skill that we’re taught when we’re young and includes learning how to share and take turns. These skills are the building blocks of positive human interaction and remind us to consider others – even when we are having fun. Canids, which include wolves, jackals, foxes and domestic dogs, have a distinct code of play that embodies playing by the rules, clear communication, apologizing when necessary and being sincere.

-6. Patience:

Humans value time about as much as we value money, but rarely stop to think that both of these things only exist because we agree they do. The natural world does not run on your strict schedule, but according the natural rhythms and cues of the planet. There is no rushing an animal to do anything they aren’t ready to do … if you’ve even stood in the rain for hours waiting for your dog to do their business … you know.

-7. Listen carefully:

Animal’s hearing abilities far surpass that of humans. While we might have evolved away from using our hearing to survive on the day to day, we tend to overlook the importance of this ability. Animals sit and listen. 

-8. Live in the present moment:

While animals may be able to anticipate their future needs, they don’t worry about the future as fervently as humans do. People waste so much time obsessed with following “what will happen next” that we completely forget to enjoy the now. Take a tip from your cat, just sit and soak it all in every now and them. Humans often bounce around from one thought or place to the next without fully immersing themselves in what’s happening around them. Other species, on the other hand, don’t have much else to think about other than searching for food, water, shelter from the elements, and their next mate. Take a deer, for example – they peacefully flow from one activity to another, searching for berries, fresh water, or just enjoying their surroundings. If you get the chance to observe this graceful creature in action, you will surely forget about everything except the present moment.

-9. Love unconditionally:

When people think of animals that show unconditional love, dogs usually come to mind. These loving, cuddly animals never withhold their desire to offer support and understanding to their fellow human friends, and even if you get mad at them, they will still be there for you. Dogs are called man’s best friend for a reason, because of their undying loyalty, faithfulness, and respect for human beings. We can learn a lot about how to treat one another based on how our furry canine friends treat us.

-10. Follow your own path in life:

Horses tend to live pretty independently, and often stray from the pack when they get an itch to explore on their own. While they have a majestic, fanciful appearance, they also have a fierce, stubborn side that takes them into uncharted territory and allows them to pave their own path. Be like the horse and run freely into the wind without thinking of what the consequences might be – just let your heart take the wheel and drive you where you need to go.

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Section-15

Anthropomorphism, zoomorphism and human-animal hybrid:  

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Anthropomorphism:

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human characteristics, emotions, and behaviors to animals or other non-human things (including objects, plants, and supernatural beings). Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits to a non-human thing. Anthropomorphism is often used in stories and art. It can mean making the thing shaped like a human. The story of the “Three Little Pigs” has a wolf and pigs who talk and act like humans. Mickey Mouse also talks and acts like a human. These are examples of a type of anthropomorphism called “furry”. The novel The Call of the Wild also uses anthropomorphism. The main character is a dog named Buck. Many other characters are dogs and wolves. In the story, the animals think and act more like humans than real dogs do. Some famous examples of anthropomorphism include Winnie the Pooh, the Little Engine that Could, and Simba from the movie The Lion King.

Some additional key details about anthropomorphism:

-A character is anthropomorphic if they are not human but behave like a human.

-Anthropomorphism can occur in many kinds of stories, but it is especially common in folktales, fantasy, and children’s stories.

-Anthropomorphism is related to, but distinct from personification, in which things are described figuratively (rather than literally) as having human characteristics.

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Here are some other important facts about anthropomorphism:

-Anything physical can be anthropomorphized. While animals are perhaps the most commonly anthropomorphized creatures, anthropomorphism can be used to turn other kinds of objects and beings into characters with human-like qualities, too. For example, the French fairytale and Disney film, The Beauty and the Beast, is full of anthropomorphic furniture like clocks and wardrobes that walk and talk.

-The degree to which anthropomorphic characters act like humans can also vary. For example, in Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, a tree cares for a boy over the course of its life in the same way a human would, and although the tree is limited in the ways it can express its love for the boy—it can’t walk or talk, for example, because it’s a tree—it is nevertheless anthropomorphic because it feels human emotions.

-Humans and anthropomorphic characters can exist side-by-side. Just because a story uses anthropomorphism to bring non-human things to life doesn’t mean those stories won’t have human characters, as well. Some stories, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the film Ratatouille, use anthropomorphism to create non-human characters who behave in human ways, and who interact with humans in the world of the story. In other stories, anthropomorphic characters stand in for humans. For example, in the picture book and children’s television show Arthur, the title character is an aardvark who lives in a world entirely populated by anthropomorphic animals. Some of Arthur’s friends are anthropomorphic dogs, rabbits, and so on—but the audience is meant to understand that in the world of the story, these animals are people.

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Anthropomorphism vs. Personification:

Anthropomorphism is easy to confuse with a similar literary device called personification, but they’re actually quite different. Here’s a quick rundown of personification:

Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, “The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent to their plans.” Describing the rain as “indifferent” is an example of personification, because rain can’t be “indifferent,” nor can it feel any other human emotion. However, saying that the rain feels indifferent poetically emphasizes the cruel timing of the rain. Personification can help writers to create more vivid descriptions, to make readers see the world in new ways, and to more powerfully capture the human experience of the world (since people really do often interpret the non-human entities of the world as having human traits).

And here are the key differences between the two terms:

In anthropomorphism, the human qualities assigned to non-human things are not just figurative ways of describing them, as they are in personification. Rather, in anthropomorphism the non-human entities actually do human things like talking, falling in love, wiggling their eyebrows, and generally behaving like people behave.

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How deep is Anthropomorphism?

Anthropomorphism has been a part of the human experience since the earliest cultures developed. When people began telling stories and passing along history, they cultivated animal metaphors and characters that had human traits. This goes as deep as the personification of well-known terms like ‘Mother Nature’ and ‘Father Time’.

Anthropomorphism can be traced back over 30,000 years ago to sculptures involving human-animal figures. Many ancient myths also involved deities that had human emotions, appearances, and behavioral traits. Take the Greek God Zeus as an example; he is depicted in many sculptures and statues as an attractive human man. Some of the myths involving Zeus describe him as having affairs with women and jealousy towards his wife Hera, both of which are imperfect human traits that were constructed to make him seem more human-like. This is just one of the many early depictions of anthropomorphism.

As humans matured from mythology into modern learning, we then began applying anthropomorphism to our literary works. The 19th century was full of stories such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Jungle Book, which both portrayed animal characters with human emotions and traits. In the 20th century, this progressed into works that all but removed humans completely. We see this in books like Animal Farm and Winnie-the-Pooh, and many Disney movies, which have the main characters as animals.

We can see anthropomorphism today in almost every household in this country and the trend is growing. It might be a dog that you dress up for Halloween or a cat that you consider as your child. This is evidenced too in the billon-dollar pet industry where outfits for dogs and cats are sold, and it is now common in cities and urban areas to see dogs in baby strollers. Pets have been companions for most of our history, but only recently have we begun replacing human interactions for the imaginary dialog animals have to offer.

These things in and of themselves are not bad, but we need to step back and understand why we are projecting these traits on our pets and other animals and the impact.

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Why do writers use Anthropomorphism?

Here are a few of the main reasons why writers use anthropomorphism to bring their characters to life:

1. It helps create vivid, imaginative characters that readers can relate to because they are more human. (It’s not always easy to relate to inanimate objects, for example.)
2. It suggests that certain human characteristics are universal—shared by all creatures.
3. It allows writers to imagine and tell different stories than they would be able to tell about humans. Finding Nemo, for instance, is a story that could only have been told about fish—but there would be no story to tell if the sea creature characters didn’t think, act, and feel like humans.
4. It can be used to add a symbolic dimension to a character, and thereby make a story more allegorical. In Animal Farm, for example, the pigs represent the ruling class because pigs are associated with greed.

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Anthropomorphism may be beneficial to the welfare of animals.

A 2012 study by Butterfield et al. found that utilizing anthropomorphic language when describing dogs created a greater willingness to help them in situations of distress. Previous studies have shown that individuals who attribute human characteristics to animals are less willing to eat them, and that the degree to which individuals perceive minds in other animals predicts the moral concern afforded to them. It is possible that anthropomorphism leads humans to like non-humans more when they have apparent human qualities, since perceived similarity has been shown to increase prosocial behavior toward other humans.

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Counterview:

Anthropomorphism may be a threat to welfare of animals.

1. Anthropomorphism places unrealistic and unfair Expectations on Animals:

When anthropomorphism is directed towards animals, it gives humans an unrealistic model for those animals to live up to. Just as we should not expect a human child to act like a dog, we should not expect a dog to act like a human child, as they are not equivalent to the other. Expecting a pet, or any other animal to live up to the standards of human traits can cause a wide array of problems, which can include:

Behavioral Problems:

Many behavioral problems directly stem from anthropomorphism and unrealistic expectations for pets and even livestock. Owners expect them to “know better,” “feel guilty,” and never to express their natural instincts. “He never bites, he won’t bite,” and “she won’t kick or spook,” are examples of this. Behavioral problems and lack of training are the number one reason small animals are surrendered to shelters and large animals, like horses, are abandoned.

Health Problems:

Anthropomorphism has led many animal owners to overfeed their pets. It has also led them to provide animals food items and diets that are not healthy for them. Overweight pets are becoming a significant issue in veterinary medicine. Digestive problems from feeding animals human food can cause a multitude of issues including diabetes, pancreatitis, diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, malnourishment, liver damage, and even death. Another very concerning issue is a relatively new movement that involves feeding pets vegan diets. Instead of recognizing animals as different species from humans, vegan diets are forced on pets. This is not due to the pet’s nutritional needs, but the pet owner’s ideological beliefs. These vegan pet food diets base their protein sources from plants, which is something that a pets’ digestive system was not evolved to handle. For example, feeding a vegan diet to a cat can be lethal.

Veterinary Visit Problems:

It is not uncommon for veterinarians to make recommendations regarding handling and training. These recommendations are usually made to help with behavioral problems that can be dangerous in a veterinary clinic setting. If an owner does not follow these recommendations, it can result in harm to the veterinarian, their staff, other clients in the office, and even the pet itself. Anthropomorphism can affect how a pet owner views these recommendations by thinking: “he knows better,” “I don’t want someone telling me what to do,” and “she wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

Pet Owner Problems:

If anthropomorphism is taken to the extreme and becomes the norm, society may agree that animals deserve habeas corpus (a civil right given to persons that are imprisoned). It is possible that owners could then be removed from making decisions about what they believe is best for their animal.

Along with habeas corpus, another matter that is being pushed is changing the term “owner” to “guardian” in regards to animals. The term “guardian” insinuates that the animal is not property and has some form of personhood. This could lead to an increase in malpractice insurance for veterinarians since professional liability insurance currently only covers pets as property. Covering a pet that has “personhood” may include covering the pain and suffering that is often issued in human cases of malpractice. The price for such insurance coverage would be exponentially higher than current rates. This cost will be passed on to the clients and would make providing veterinary care to animals even more expensive. This increased expense, in turn, will either create financial barriers to pet ownership or discourage owners from seeking veterinary care for their animals. Either way, the animals lose.

2. Anthropomorphism has led to Crimes and Domestic Terrorism:

What we don’t often realize is how anthropomorphism shifts into devious and sometimes illegal behavior. There are animal rights groups, along with their group members who are now on the FBI’s list for domestic terrorism. In the name of animal rights, fueled by extreme anthropomorphism, crimes have been committed such as: breaking into research facilities to save ‘enslaved’ dogs, stealing animals, exposing animals to infectious diseases, and fire-bombing multiple types of animal-based businesses. Such behavior includes continued and ongoing harassment of businesses, consumers, farmers, ranchers, and animal owners. This type of negative behavior comes from extreme anthropomorphism, which leads to the idea that animals have the same consciousness and emotional understanding that humans do.

3. Anthropomorphism can lead to an inaccurate understanding of biological processes.

An unconscious belief that bears, horses and dolphins possess human desires and thoughts wrapped up in odd costumes can be detrimental for children, some psychologists have argued. Patricia Ganea, a psychologist at Toronto University, ran a series of experiments on three- to five-year-olds in which they were given information about animals in straight factual form and then in a more fantastical anthropomorphized way. She found that the children were likely to attribute human characteristics to other animals and were less likely to retain factual information about them when told they lived their lives as furry humans. ‘Anthropomorphism can lead to an inaccurate understanding of biological processes’ Ganea said. Attributing human-like intentions and beliefs is a “very natural way to explain certain animal behaviors” and can be useful in generating empathy for mistreated animals. But she adds there is a downside. “It can also lead to inappropriate behaviors towards wild animals, such as trying to adopt a wild animal as a ‘pet’ or misinterpreting the actions of a wild animal.” Common depictions of animals in children’s entertainment are likely to amplify this message, Ganea said.

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Why do we anthropomorphize?

In a new report in Current Directions in Psychological Science, psychological scientists Adam Waytz from Harvard University and Nicholas Epley and John T. Cacioppo from the University of Chicago examine the psychology of anthropomorphism.

The term anthropomorphism was coined by the Greek philosopher Xenophanes when describing the similarity between religious believers and their gods — that is, Greek gods were depicted having light skin and blue eyes while African gods had dark skin and brown eyes.

Neuroscience research has shown that similar brain regions are involved when we think about the behavior of both humans and of nonhuman entities, suggesting that anthropomorphism may be using similar processes as those used for thinking about other people.

Human brains are tuned to try to understand other human’s intentions, thoughts and feelings. This concept is called Theory of Mind. Specific regions of the brain contain populations of ‘mirror’ neurons, which display the same activity when we’re performing an action as when we observe others performing an action. People with deficits in the regions where these mirror neurons are located correspond to deficits in empathy and Theory of Mind. Unsurprisingly, these are the same regions of the brain that are active when a person is anthropomorphizing.

Predicting the actions of animals and inanimate objects employs the same brain regions as predicting the behavior of another human. Though we can consciously differentiate between human and non-human, the same mechanisms in our brain are activated when we are observing actions of both.

Anthropomorphism carries many important implications. For example, thinking of a nonhuman entity in human ways renders it worthy of moral care and consideration. In addition, anthropomorphized entities become responsible for their own actions — that is, they become deserving of punishment and reward.

Although we like to anthropomorphize, we do not assign human qualities to each and every single object we encounter. What accounts for this selectivity? One factor is similarity. An entity is more likely to be anthropomorphized if it appears to have many traits similar to those of humans (for example, through humanlike movements or physical features such as a face).

Various motivations may also influence anthropomorphism. For example, lacking social connections with other people might motivate lonely individuals to seek out connections from nonhuman items. Anthropomorphism helps us to simplify and make more sense of complicated entities.

The authors observe that, according to the World Meteorological Organization, “the naming of hurricanes and storms — simplifies and facilitates effective communication to enhance public preparedness, media reporting, and the efficient exchange of information.”

Dehumanization refers to the removal of human-like traits from a human when humans are represented as nonhuman objects or animals or even worse. There are numerous historical examples of dehumanization including the Nazis’ persecution of Jews during the Holocaust and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These examples also suggest that those engaging in dehumanization are usually part of a cohesive group acting against outsiders — that is, individuals who feel socially connected may have an increased tendency toward dehumanization.

The authors note, “Social connection may have benefits for a person’s own health and well-being but may have unfortunate consequences for intergroup relations by enabling dehumanization.” The authors conclude that few of us “have difficulty identifying other humans in a biological sense, but it is much more complicated to identify them in a psychological sense.”

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Zoomorphism:

Anthropomorphism involves the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to animals or deities, while zoomorphism does the reverse by giving animal qualities to humans. Dehumanization refers to the removal of human-like traits from a human while zoomorphism refers to the attribution of animal-like qualities onto a human. Dehumanization has negative connotation e.g. Nazi treatment of Jews; while zoomorphism has positive connotation e.g. spider man.

The word zoomorphism derives from the Greek ζωον (zōon), meaning “animal”, and μορφη (morphē), meaning “shape” or “form”. In the context of art, zoomorphism could describe art that imagines humans as non-human animals. It can also be defined as art that portrays one species of animal like another species of animal or art that uses animals as a visual motif, sometimes referred to as “animal style.” In ancient Egyptian religion, deities were depicted in animal form which is an example of zoomorphism in not only art but in a religious context. It is also similar to the term therianthropy; which is the ability to shape shift into animal form, except that with zoomorphism the animal form is applied to a physical object. It means to attribute animal forms or animal characteristics to other animals, or things other than an animal; similar to but broader than anthropomorphism. Contrary to anthropomorphism, which views animal or non-animal behavior in human terms, zoomorphism is the tendency of viewing human behavior in terms of the behavior of animals. It is also used in literature to portray the act of humans or objects with animalistic behavior or features. The use of zoomorphism served as a decorative element to objects that are typically quite simple in shape and design.

Common Examples of Zoomorphism:

Many superheroes are examples of zoomorphism because their superpower is that of an animal. Here are just a few examples:

-Spiderman

-Ant Man

-Batman

-Catwoman

-Black Panther

There are also many common idiomatic phrases in English which are examples of zoomorphism. Here is a short list:

-She was barking up the wrong tree by questioning him.

-He was champing at the bit at the beginning of the negotiations.

-The trade deal ruffled some feathers in the company.

 

There are also many different common features of everyday life which take on animal characteristics. Here are a few examples of zoomorphism in common things:

-The feet of bathtubs and tables carved to look like lions’ feet

-Robotic pets modeled on animals

-Building and cities created in the form of animals, such as the Elephant Hotel on Coney Island, or the city of Juba in South Sudan meant to be built in the form of a rhinoceros.

Significance of Zoomorphism in Literature:

Zoomorphism has held an important place in many different fields such as mythology, folklore, religion, classical literature, and modern genre fiction such as science fiction, fantasy, and comic books. Many gods were represented in animal form in several different religions such as the deity Ganesha, the elephant-headed god in Hinduism, or the Holy Spirit in Christianity represented with a dove. In classical literature, the sphinx played an important role in the play Oedipus the King by Sophocles, as he posed the riddle that Oedipus solved successfully.

Function of Zoomorphism:

Zoomorphism is a literary technique. Examples of zoomorphism are often found in short stories (used to effectively provide detailed descriptions about the characters in stories). Records show that it has been used as a literary device since the times of the ancient Romans and Greeks. It is a very helpful tool for the effective description of different characters. The purpose of using this technique is to create a figurative language and provide a comparison.

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Human–animal hybrid:  

The terms human–animal hybrid and animal–human hybrid refers to an entity that incorporates elements from both humans and animals.  For thousands of years, these hybrids have been one of the most common themes in storytelling about animals throughout the world. The lack of a strong divide between humanity and animal nature in multiple traditional and ancient cultures has provided the underlying historical context for the popularity of tales where humans and animals have mingling relationships, such as in which one turns into the other or in which some mixed being goes through a journey. Interspecies friendships within the animal kingdom, as well as between humans and their pets, additionally provides an underlying root for the popularity of such beings. In various mythologies throughout history, many particularly famous hybrids have existed, including as a part of Egyptian and Indian spirituality. The entities have also been characters in fictional media more recently in history such as in H. G. Wells’ work The Island of Doctor Moreau, adapted into the popular 1932 film Island of Lost Souls. In legendary terms, the hybrids have played varying roles from that of trickster and/or villain to serving as divine heroes in very different contexts, depending on the given culture.

The significance of human-animal hybridization lies precisely in its merger of human characteristics with animal (sometimes monstrous) traits. Hybrids portray humanity’s conflicted or divided nature. For example, the centaur, which has the face, arms, and trunk of a human with the body of a horse, depicts the unbridled and wild tendencies within humans. The sphinx, which in its Greek form has the face of a woman and the body of a lion with wings, represents the cunning, trickster side of humans. Sophocles’ Oedipus narratives highlight this trait when the sphinx of Thebes poses a riddle that appears unsolvable but is solved by Oedipus. The manticore has the head of a human with three rows of shark-like teeth, a body of a lion, and a tail with venomous spines similar to porcupine quills or a scorpion-like tail. The manticore portrays the bestial and vicious nature of humans.

When looked at scientifically, outside of a fictional and/or mythical context, the real-life creation of human-animal hybrids has served as a subject of legal, moral, and technological debate in the context of recent advances in genetic engineering. Defined by the magazine H+ as “genetic alterations that are blendings of animal and human forms”, such hybrids may be referred by other names occasionally such as “para-humans”. They may additionally may be called “humanized animals”. Technically speaking, they are also related to “cybrids” (cytoplasmic hybrids), with “cybrid” cells featuring foreign human nuclei inside of them being a topic of interest. Possibly, a real-world human-animal hybrid may be an entity formed from either a human egg fertilized by a nonhuman sperm or a nonhuman egg fertilized by a human sperm. While at first being a concept in the likes of legends and thought experiments, the first stable human-animal chimeras (not hybrids but related) to actually exist were first created by Shanghai Second Medical University scientists in 2003, the result of having fused human cells with rabbit eggs. As well, a U.S. patent has notably been granted for a mouse chimera with a human immune system. In terms of scientific ethics, restrictions on the creation of human–animal hybrids have proved a controversial matter in multiple countries.

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Human-Pig Hybrid created in the Lab:

Scientists hope the chimera embryos represent key steps toward life-saving lab-grown organs. That’s now one step closer to reality, an international team of researchers led by the Salk Institute reports in the journal Cell. The team created what’s known scientifically as a chimera: an organism that contains cells from two different species.

In the past, human-animal chimeras have been beyond reach. Such experiments are currently ineligible for public funding in the United States (so far, the Salk team has relied on private donors for the chimera project). Public opinion, too, has hampered the creation of organisms that are part human, part animal.

But for lead study author Jun Wu of the Salk Institute, we need only look to mythical chimeras—like the human-bird hybrids we know as angels—for a different perspective. “In ancient civilizations, chimeras were associated with God,” he says, and our ancestors thought “the chimeric form can guard humans.” In a sense, that’s what the team hopes human-animal hybrids will one day do.

There are two ways to make a chimera. The first is to introduce the organs of one animal into another—a risky proposition, because the host’s immune system may cause the organ to be rejected. The other method is to begin at the embryonic level, introducing one animal’s cells into the embryo of another and letting them grow together into a hybrid.

Pigs have a notable similarity to humans. Though they take less time to gestate, their organs look a lot like ours. Not that these similarities made the task any easier. The team discovered that, in order to introduce human cells into the pigs without killing them, they had to get the timing just right.  “We tried three different types of human cells, essentially representing three different times” in the developmental process, explains Jun Wu, a Salk Institute scientist and the paper’s first author. Through trial and error, they learned that naïve pluripotent cells—stem cells with unlimited potential—didn’t survive as well as ones that had developed a bit more. When those just-right human cells were injected into the pig embryos, the embryos survived. Then they were put into adult pigs, which carried the embryos for between three and four weeks before they were removed and analyzed. In all, the team created 186 later-stage chimeric embryos that survived, says Wu, and “we estimate [each had] about one in 100,000 human cells.” That’s a low percentage—and it could present a problem for the method in the long run, says Ke Cheng, a stem cell expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. The human tissue appears to slow the growth of the embryo, notes Cheng, and organs grown from such embryos as they develop now would likely be rejected by humans, since they would contain so much pig tissue.

The next big step, says Cheng, is to figure out whether it’s possible to increase the number of human cells the embryos can tolerate. The current method is a start, but it still isn’t clear if that hurdle can be overcome. Belmonte agrees, noting that it could take years to use the process to create functioning human organs. The technique could be put to use much sooner as a way to study human embryo development and understand disease. And those real-time insights could be just as valuable as the ability to grow an organ.

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Japan approves first human-animal embryo experiments:

A Japanese stem-cell scientist is the first to receive government support to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals since a ban on the practice was overturned earlier this year. Hiromitsu Nakauchi, who leads teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University in California, plans to grow human cells in mouse and rat embryos and then transplant those embryos into surrogate animals. Nakauchi’s ultimate goal is to produce animals with organs made of human cells that can, eventually, be transplanted into people.

Human–animal hybrid embryos have been made in countries such as the United States, but never brought to term. Although the country allows this kind of research, the National Institutes of Health has had a moratorium on funding such work since 2015. Nakauchi’s experiments are the first to be approved under Japan’s new rules, by a committee of experts in the science ministry. Nakauchi says he plans to proceed slowly, and will not attempt to bring any hybrid embryos to term for some time. Initially, he plans to grow hybrid mouse embryos until 14.5 days, when the animal’s organs are mostly formed and it is almost to term. He will do the same experiments in rats, growing the hybrids to near term, about 15.5 days. Later, Nakauchi plans to apply for government approval to grow hybrid embryos in pigs for up to 70 days. “It is good to proceed stepwise with caution, which will make it possible to have a dialogue with the public, which is feeling anxious and has concerns,” says science-policy researcher Tetsuya Ishii of Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan.

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Section-16

Animal ethics, animal rights and use of animals in research: 

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Animal Ethics:   

What place should non-human animals have in an acceptable moral system? These animals exist on the borderline of our moral concepts; the result is that we sometimes find ourselves according them a strong moral status, while at other times denying them any kind of moral status at all. For example, public outrage is strong when knowledge of “puppy mills” is made available; the thought here is that dogs deserve much more consideration than the operators of such places give them. However, when it is pointed out that the conditions in a factory farm are as bad as, if not much worse than, the conditions in a puppy mill, the usual response is that those affected are “just animals” after all, and do not merit our concern.  Philosophical thinking on the moral standing of animals is diverse and can be generally grouped into three general categories: Indirect theories, direct but unequal theories, and moral equality theories.

1. Indirect theories deny animals moral status or equal consideration with humans due to a lack of consciousness, reason, or autonomy. Ultimately denying moral status to animals, these theories may still require not harming animals, but only because doing so causes harm to a human being’s morality. Arguments in this category have been formulated by philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Carruthers, and various religious theories.
2. Direct but unequal theories accord some moral consideration to animals, but deny them a fuller moral status due to their inability to respect another agent’s rights or display moral reciprocity within a community of equal agents. Arguments in this category consider the sentience of the animal as sufficient reason not to cause direct harm to animals. However, where the interests of animals and humans conflict, the special properties of being human such as rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness accord higher consideration to the interests of human beings.
3. Moral equality theories extend equal consideration and moral status to animals by refuting the supposed moral relevance of the aforementioned special properties of human beings. Arguing by analogy, moral equality theories often extend the concept of rights to animals on the grounds that they have similar physiological and mental capacities as infants or disabled human beings. Arguments in this category have been formulated by philosophers such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan.  

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Some philosophers have presumed that humans are the only creatures capable of moral sentiments and behavior, and that empirical data on animal behavior is irrelevant for ethics. Kant (1798) and modern Kantians like Korsgaard (2006) argue that animals lack autonomy and therefore cannot be moral agents. It is also argued that animals cannot be moral agents because they don’t have moral emotions or moral senses (Hauser 2000; 2006). Similar point about uniqueness of human morality can also be found in Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics (1864) where he proposes that morality is an exclusively human invention for the control of evil tendencies. On such views, nothing like morality could be found in nonhuman species. 

On the other hand, some philosophers and scientists  (e.g. Bekoff 2004, Bekoff & Pierce 2009, Flack and de Waal 2000, de Wall 2006, de Waal 2009, Gruen 2002, Guzeldere and Nahmias 2002) believe that, given evolutionary theory, we should expect a cognitive and emotional continuity between humans and other animals such that other species also have something like a moral sense. On the continuity view, the psychological capacities required for morality are not either/or capacities, so we should expect to find such capacities or their precursors in many species.  Some continuity theorists argue that since there is continuity between human and non-human minds, there also has to be continuity between those that have no moral agency and those that are full-blown moral agents.  For example, Frans de Waal argues that there are two necessary conditions for morality, namely empathy and reciprocity, and we see ancestral or primitive varieties of such capacities in many species (de Waal 2006).  In dolphins, elephants, and apes, de Waal argues, we see more sophisticated versions of such capacities in terms of targeted helping, consolation, cooperation, and a sense of fairness.  

Other continuity theorists argue that some animals have their own morality, rather than the precursors of human morality (Bekoff & Pierce 2009).  Bekoff and Pierce take morality to be “a suite of other-regarding behaviors that cultivate and regulate complex interactions within social groups”, and they think that different species have morality to a different degree, based on the complexity of their behavior, social organization, and cognitive flexibility (Bekoff & Pierce 2009, 82).  Morality is species-relative on their view not because different behavioral capacities are involved, but because different species (and different groups within species) have different norms. They claim that regardless of the species, to have any degree of morality one must have empathy, altruism, cooperation and perhaps a sense of fairness.

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Why should Animals have Rights? 

Animal rights activism is based on the idea that animals are sentient and that speciesism is wrong, the former of which is scientifically backed — an international panel of neuroscientists declared in 2012 that non-human animals have consciousness — and the latter is still hotly contested among humanitarians.

Animal rights activists argue that because animals are sentient, the only reason humans are treated differently is speciesism, which is an arbitrary distinction based on the incorrect belief that humans are the only species deserving of moral consideration. Speciesism, like racism and sexism, is wrong because of animals popular in the meat industry like cows, pigs and chickens suffer when confined, tortured and slaughtered and there is no reason to morally distinguish between humans and non-human animals. The reason that people have rights is to prevent unjust suffering. Similarly, the reason that animal rights activists want animals to have rights is to prevent them from suffering unjustly. We have animal cruelty statutes to prevent some animal suffering, although U.S law prohibits only the most egregious, extraordinary animal cruelty. These laws do nothing to prevent most forms of animal exploitation, including fur, veal, and foie gras.

No one is asking for animals to have the same rights as humans, but in an animal rights activist’s ideal world, animals would have the right to live free of human use and exploitation — a vegan world where animals are no longer used for food, clothing or entertainment.

While there is some debate as to what basic human rights are, most people recognize that other humans have certain fundamental rights. According to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights include “the right to life, liberty and security of person..an adequate standard of living…to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution…to own property…freedom of opinion and expression…to education…of thought, conscience and religion; and the right to freedom from torture and degrading treatment, among others.”

These rights are different from animal rights because we have the power to ensure that other humans have access to food and housing, are free from torture, and can express themselves. On the other hand, it’s not in our power to ensure that every bird has a nest or that every squirrel has an acorn. Part of animal rights is leaving the animals alone to live their lives, without encroaching on their world or their lives.

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Torture of animal:

When the science of behavioural profiling began to emerge in the 1970s, one of the most consistent findings reported by the FBI was that childhood animal cruelty was a common behaviour among serial murderers and rapists. Paul Rogers from Gloucestershire was jailed for 16 weeks after he admitted that he had microwaved his pet rabbit. Rogers – a man with a history of psychiatric problems – claimed he carried out the act because he was angry at not being prescribed some medication that he said he needed.

But what typically possesses anyone to inflict such acts of intentional animal torture and cruelty (IATC)?

There are many types of IATC including individuals that do it: as a religious ritual sacrifice; as an ‘artistic’ sacrifice (e.g. killing animals in films such as the controversial Cannibal Holocaust); because they have psychological disorders (such as anti-social/psychopathic personality disorders and engage in deliberate acts of zoosadism), and/or because they have sexually paraphilic disorders (such as crush fetishism in which small animals are crushed for sexual pleasure). Additionally, there is some research showing that in some circumstances, IATC is sometimes used to coerce, control and intimidate women and/or children to be silent about domestic abuse within the home.

When the science of behavioural profiling began to emerge in the 1970s, one of the most consistent findings reported by the FBI profiling unit was that childhood IATC appeared to be a common behaviour among serial murderers and rapists – those with psychopathic traits characterized by impulsivity, selfishness, and lack of remorse. Many notorious serial killers – such as Jeffrey Dahmer – began by torturing and killing animals in their childhood. Dahmer also collected animal roadkill, dissected the remains, and masturbated over the animals he had cut up. Other killers known to have engaged in childhood IATC include child murderer Mary Bell, who throttled pigeons, Jamie Bulger’s murderer Robert Thompson, who was cruel to household pets, and Moors murderer Ian Brady, who abused animals.

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Animal torture and cruelty is one of the three adolescent behaviours in what is often referred to the ‘Homicidal Triad’, the other two being persistent bedwetting and obsessive fire-setting. Some criminologists and psychologists believe that the combination of two or more of these three behaviours increases the risk of homicidal behaviour in adult life. However, scientific evidence for this has been mixed. There has also been research into some of the contributory factors as to why a minority of children engage in IATC. Research has shown that the behaviours in the ‘Homicidal Triad’ (including IATC) are often associated with parental abuse, parental brutality (and witnessing domestic violence), and/or parental neglect.

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A number of criminological studies have shown that around a third to a half of all sexual murderers have abused animals during childhood and/or adolescence. However, most research has reported that one of the most important ‘warning signs’ and risk factors (specifically relating to the propensity for sex offending), is animal cruelty if accompanied by a sexual interest in animals. Other researchers have speculated that the zoosadistic acts among male adolescents may be connected to problems of puberty and proving virility.

Another ‘triad’ of psychological factors that have been associated with IATC are three specific characteristics of personality – Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (the so-called ‘Dark Triad’). A 2013 study carried out by Dr. Phillip Kavanagh and his colleagues examined the relationship between the three Dark Triad personality traits and attitudes towards animal abuse and self-reported acts of animal cruelty. The study found that the psychopathy trait was related to intentionally hurting or torturing animals, as was also a composite measure of all three Dark Triad traits.

There is no easy solution to childhood IATC. Given that most children learn anti-social behaviour from those around them, the best way to prevent it is teaching by example. Here, parents are the key. Pro-social behaviour by parents and other role models towards animals, such as rescuing spiders in the bath, feeding birds, treating pets as a member of the family, has the potential to make a positive lasting impression on children.

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Animals on trial:

In the late Middle Ages, animals could be prosecuted for certain crimes. A practice which, even in current context, makes more sense than you might think.

In the fall of 1457, in Savigny, France, a young mother was sentenced to death. Several townspeople had witnessed her heinous crime, the murder of a five-year-old boy. Together with six accomplices; her own children, she was caught red-handed. The mother was sentenced to be hanged by her hind feet from a “gallows tree”. Her children were acquitted due to lack of evidence. Although their snouts had been covered in blood, none of the witnesses had actually seen the piglets participate in the murder. Although many elements of this story can be considered macabre by the modern observer – the infanticide, the hanging – the most bizarre is the murderer’s species: she’s a pig. Back in the Middle Ages, however, animal trials were taken very seriously. In the presence of a judge, two prosecutors and two attorneys, misbehaving animals were convicted for their crimes. A phenomenon that cannot simply be dismissed as stupid and ignorant, scholars argue. Animals, just like humans, were considered to have some sort of moral agency – the ability to make fair choices and distinguish right from wrong.

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Two different kinds of medieval animal trials existed in the Late Middle Ages. Which of the two was to be applied depended on the crime and the defendant’s species.  When an animal caused public nuisance (for example rats spreading diseases, or insects destroying crops) the trial was held by an ecclesiastical court.  In these cases, a few members of the offending species were summoned to appear in court on a certain date. The judge would then command them and their families to leave the area within a number of days. If the pests refused to move, they were excommunicated from the Church.

The other type of trial was used whenever an individual animal (most of the time a four-legged one) had caused physical injury or death, such as the Savigny pig. These cases were heard in front of a secular court. Punishments imposed by these courts were of the physical kind, ranging from the animal being buried alive to it being hanged. Torture was also possible. Animals that were put to death were under no circumstances eaten afterwards.

Historians who researched this extravagant practice have come up with different possible explanations for its existence, taking into consideration the zeitgeist of the late Middle Ages.  During this period of economic depression and major epidemics, it is likely that there was a growing need for the restoration of justice. People were threatened by enemies that they could not control – the Black Death had already done much damage – and were relying on authorities (both the Church and the State) to maintain law and order, even if the delinquents weren’t human. Furthermore, Roman Law was established during that time, introducing torture and other forms of physical punishment which then replaced financial penalties.

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Use of animals in research:   

Scientists use animals to learn more about health problems that affect both humans and animals, and to assure the safety of new medical treatments. Some of these problems involve processes that can only be studied in a living organism. Scientists study animals when there is no alternative and it is impractical or unethical to study humans.

Animals are good research subjects for a variety of reasons. They are biologically similar to humans and susceptible to many of the same health problems. Also, they have short life-cycles so they can easily be studied throughout their whole life-span or across several generations. In addition, scientists can control the environment around the animal (diet, temperature, lighting, etc.), which would be difficult to do with people. However, the most important reason why animals are used is that it would be wrong to deliberately expose human beings to health risks in order to observe the course of a disease.

Animals are needed in research to develop drugs and medical procedures to treat diseases. Scientists may discover such drugs and procedures using research methods that do not involve animals. If the new therapy seems promising, it is then tested in animals to see whether it seems to be safe and effective. If the results of the animal studies are favorable, human volunteers are asked to take part in a clinical trial. The animal studies are done first to give medical researchers a better idea of what benefits and complications they are likely to see in humans.

Each year, more than 100 million animals—including mice, rats, frogs, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, monkeys, fish, and birds—are killed in U.S. laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing. Before their deaths, some are forced to inhale toxic fumes, others are immobilized in restraint devices for hours, some have holes drilled into their skulls, and others have their skin burned off or their spinal cords crushed. In addition to the torment of the actual experiments, animals in laboratories are deprived of everything that is natural and important to them—they are confined to barren cages, socially isolated, and psychologically traumatized. The thinking, feeling animals who are used in experiments are treated like nothing more than disposable laboratory equipment.

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Nobel Prizes and animal research:

Of the 108 Nobel Prizes awarded for Physiology or Medicine, 96 were directly dependent on animal research. Animal research underpinned the very first Nobel Prize to be awarded for Physiology or Medicine to Emil von Behring in 1901 for developing serum therapy against diphtheria, as it did the most recent awarded in 2016.

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Mouse CV:

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Animal research: Wasteful and Unreliable:

In an article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that medical treatments developed in animals rarely translated to humans and warned that “patients and physicians should remain cautious about extrapolating the finding of prominent animal research to the care of human disease … poor replication of even high-quality animal studies should be expected by those who conduct clinical research.”

Diseases that are artificially induced in animals in a laboratory, whether they be mice or monkeys, are never identical to those that occur naturally in human beings. And because animal species differ from one another biologically in many significant ways, it becomes even more unlikely that animal experiments will yield results that will be correctly interpreted and applied to the human condition in a meaningful way. For example, according to former National Cancer Institute Director Dr. Richard Klausner, “We have cured mice of cancer for decades, and it simply didn’t work in humans.” This conclusion was echoed by former National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni, who acknowledged that experimenting on animals has been a boondoggle. “We have moved away from studying human disease in humans,” he said. “We all drank the Kool-Aid on that one, me included. … The problem is that it hasn’t worked, and it’s time we stopped dancing around the problem. … We need to refocus and adapt new methodologies for use in humans to understand disease biology in humans.”

The data is sobering: Although at least 85 HIV/AIDS vaccines have been successful in nonhuman primate studies, as of 2015, everyone has failed to protect humans. In one case, an AIDS vaccine that was shown to be effective in monkeys failed in human clinical trials because it did not prevent people from developing AIDS, and some believe that it made them more susceptible to the disease.  The National Institutes of Health has stated, “Therapeutic development is a costly, complex and time-consuming process. The average length of time from target discovery to approval of a new drug is about 14 years. The failure rate during this process exceeds 95 percent, and the cost per successful drug can be $1 billion or more.”

Research published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that universities commonly exaggerate findings from animal experiments conducted in their laboratories and “often promote research that has uncertain relevance to human health and do not provide key facts or acknowledge important limitations.”

A high-profile study published in the prestigious BMJ documenting the ineffectiveness and waste of experimentation on animals concluded that “if research conducted on animals continues to be unable to reasonably predict what can be expected in humans, the public’s continuing endorsement and funding of preclinical animal research seems misplaced.”

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Why can’t alternative methods replace animals in research?

Research with human volunteers, sophisticated computational methods, and in vitro studies based on human cells and tissues are critical to the advancement of medicine. Cutting-edge non-animal research methods are available and have been shown time and again to be more accurate than crude animal experiments.  Whenever possible, researchers do use non-animal models for research. Computer models, tissue and cell cultures, and a number of other non-animal related research methods are used today in biomedical research.  Computer models are used to screen and determine the toxic level of a substance in the beginning of an experiment and tissue and cell cultures have become valuable additions to the array of research tools and techniques.  However, animal testing remains a necessity. For example, blindness cannot be studied in bacteria and it is not possible to study the effects of high blood pressure in tissue cultures. The living system is extremely complex.  The nervous system, blood and brain chemistry, gland and organ secretions, and immunological responses are all interrelated, making it impossible to explore, explain, or predict the course of diseases or the effects of possible treatments without observing and testing the entire living system of an animal.  In the meantime, scientists continue to look for ways to reduce the number of animals needed to obtain valid results, refine experimental techniques, and replace animals with other research methods whenever feasible.

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Section-17

Animals behaving like humans:  

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In 1972, researchers witnessed an astonishing event involving wolves. A limping individual headed towards an abandoned den. His shoulder bore a deep wound. The next day, the researcher saw a big black male entering the den and regurgitating a big chunk of meat to the wounded animal and left. This maneuver repeated for several days till the wounded individual could rejoin the pack. This was real altruism, and ethologists say that we have to look for the origin of the human sentiments.

Observations made on both howler monkeys or chimpanzees revealed how females of the group gather around a female who has just given birth to examine the newborn, trying to touch it or take it in their arms.

Chimps’ behavior is a mirror of our own: from the organized hunting of the males to their hand gestures, which are exactly like the human ones, from bagging, greeting or hugging to shaking hands or even kissing the hand? And all these in the same situations in which people use them.

Animals too have greeting behaviors. Their greeting has the role of establishing the sex and/or the rank of the greeted individual. When two dogs meet, they sniff each other’s snout and genitalia, rather to detect the rank of the other. The one which accepts the first to be sniffed is letting itself be dominated. If the dogs already know each other, they lick each other’s snout. But if they approach each other with the tail tensed (right, a little raised), this means that the hierarchy is not established yet and a fight can occur.

The offspring of the animals play in a way that is very similar to that of humans. Lion cubs play with the tails of the adults, or the dolphin offspring play with shells, which they throw with their fins and reject with their fluke. The play fights in the case of the animal offspring have the role of establishing a hierarchy, which once established can be forever. When wolf offspring reach ‘adolescence’, their rank is already established in the pack, and fights for the rank disappear. At the beginning of spring, all lion males are extremely irritable and the fights are frequent. After this period, the birth season follows. When the cubs have 10 weeks, the mothers bring them into the pride and one leads her offspring to an elder male, which probably is the father. All males, young and old, gather, sniff, touch and exam the offspring after which they go. Immediately after that, all the irritability and the fights inside the pride are gone.

Like in humans, the birth of a new generation creates new rapports. We could not say if the lions love their offspring, but certainly the cubs have a sedative, calming effect in the family, whose bounds are strengthened.

Can they really analyze a problem and resolve it? Apparently, they do. Primates especially excel at it. Researchers used to feed Japanese macaques by throwing over pebble soy and wheat seeds. In 1956, a young female took a punch of seeds mingled with sand and shells and dropped it in the water, probably by carelessness. The seed remained at the surface, the rest went to the bottom, so she ate the clean seeds. From then on, she repeated the operation daily. The macaques nearby started to gradually imitate her and today, the habit is spread in the entire group of macaques, being transmitted from parents to offspring: already a cultural trait. In chimps, these cultural traits in different populations are also associated with the use of tools, like the termite fishing by straw of the chimps from Gombe National Park (Tanzania) or palmnut cracking using stones on Ivory Coast chimps.

Dog owners probably don’t think scientists needed to perform an experiment to determine if dogs feel jealousy, but now there’s published evidence for this canine emotion. Not all of the dogs in the study showed signs of jealousy, but a majority did.

It seems that animals even “understand” death. It is known that elephants mourn for days the corpse of a beloved individual. In chimps, the body of a death individual is usually surrounded by the other members of the groups, who start moaning together the deceased in a violent, acute tone, almost as people lament the loss of a friend during his/her burial.

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Researchers performed an experiment with male Rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) individuals to observe what they would give up their juice for.  Juice is very valuable to these monkeys and they will know if some has been removed or not.  The researchers gave the monkeys the option of having a normal sized glass of juice or a smaller sized glass of juice but the opportunity to get a glimpse of a picture of members of their troop.  It was found that these monkeys would give up juice to look at primarily two different images, pictures of powerful males, and pictures of the perineum of female monkeys. Researchers believe the fitness of the individuals improves by knowing what the leaders of their troop are doing as well as what females are sexually receptive, even though it means giving up some of their juice. The researchers believe gossip magazines could be so popular stemming from this behavior as many humans are slightly obsessed with the lives of many celebrities.

Another example involving Rhesus macaque is a rather fascinating one, which may not be beneficial to the monkeys but makes up for it with entertainment.  Duke neurobiologist Michael Platt performed a series of experiments with these monkeys involving a “safe” light and a “risk” light on a computer monitor.  If the monkey was looking at the safe light, it would receive the same amount of juice each trial, but if they were looking at the risk light they were given either more or less juice than the amount given for the safe light but these amount would average the same as the safe light over time. The monkeys preferred the gambling lifestyle, so the researchers began to lower the average amount of juice given for the risk light so it was lower than the safe light. Didn’t matter. The monkeys kept gambling and according to Platt, it seemed as though the monkeys got a high when getting a big reward.

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Studies show that many animals experience feelings similar to humans, and behave like humans:

-1. Squirrel

A study by researchers from the University of Alberta and McGill University revealed that squirrels will adopt babies that lost their mother as their own.

-2. Elephant

In harmless environments, if an elephant loses its loved one it mourns them for years. Studies also show that they express joy, compassion, self-awareness, play and stress in ways similar to humans. If they visit a place, they and their loved ones would spend time at animal stops and sometimes remain silent for a moment.

Speaking Elephant:

Koshik, an elephant at the Everland Zoo in South Korea, can speak Korean aloud. Ashley Stoeger and Daniel Mietchen have recorded his vocalizations.  Humans do reign supreme in the arena of language (as far as we know), but even elephants can figure out how to make the same sounds we do. According to researchers, this Asian elephant living in a South Korean zoo has learned to use its trunk and throat to mimic human words. The elephant can say “hello,” “good,” “no,” “sit down” and “lie down,” all in Korean, of course. The elephant doesn’t appear to know what these words mean. Scientists think he may have picked up the sounds because he was the only elephant at the zoo from when he was 5 to when he turned 12, leaving him to bond with humans instead.

-3. Rat

Scientists at the University of Richmond taught rats how to drive tiny little cars made out of a plastic food container and retrofitted with an aluminum bar and three copper bars for steering wheels. They then taught the rats how to navigate the car and were surprised with the results. Not only did the rats manage to learn, but they were extremely good when properly trained. The rats used their tiny little paws to control the direction of the car by gripping the left, middle, or right copper bar. The scientists had to bribe them with Froot Loops each time they touched and moved the car forward.

-4. Pigeon

Pigeons serve their country:

Pigeons’ speed and navigational skills made them prized military messengers in World Wars I and II and the most decorated animals in military history. Thirty-two messenger pigeons have received the Dickin Medal, a British award that honors the gallantry or devotion of animals in war. At the moment, pigeons are resting on their laurels. They’ve fallen out of military favor and are no longer used—for now.

Gamble Like a Pigeon:

Gamblers in Vegas have something in common with pigeons on the sidewalk, and it’s not just a fascination with shiny objects. In fact, pigeons make gambles just like humans, making choices that leave them with less money in the long run for the elusive promise of a big payout. When given a choice, pigeons will push a button that gives them a big, rare payout rather than one that offers a small reward at regular intervals. This questionable decision may stem from the surprise and excitement of the big reward, according to a study published in 2010 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Human gamblers may be similarly lured in by the idea of major loot, no matter how long the odds.

-5. Dog

They too enjoy listening to music. In a recent study, researchers found that slower tempos, simpler patterns and lower frequencies discharge the canine nervous system. In the study, shelter dogs were found to be more relaxed and quieter when they were listening to classical music. The study also found that they exhibited more barking when heavy metal was playing. Scientists have observed that in order to ensure that they can still find someone to play with, male puppies will sometimes throw their toys and allow their female companion to “win” on occasion, in order to keep them interested and willing to play.

Dogs drive cars:

Three New Zealand dogs recently navigated a specially modified Mini Cooper around a racetrack at about 20 mph. (Engineers raised the gearshift and pedals and added handles to the steering wheel.) The stunt was an effort by the Auckland Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to show off canine intelligence and boost adoptions from animal shelters. After months of practice and, we’re guessing, many bags of treats, Monty, a giant schnauzer, Porter, a bearded collie mix, and Ginny, a bearded collie–whippet mix, followed trainers’ commands to put the car into gear, press the accelerator, and steer with their paws. Since a video of the test-drive appeared online in December 2012, all three dogs have been adopted.

-6. Cow:

While working on her PhD at Northampton University, Krista McLennan discovered that cows have best friends and become stressed if they are separated. Krista believes her discovery could help improve milk yield. Her study found that when the cows were with their best friends, the cortisol levels were at the lowest. When they were isolated and were kept with a stranger cow, it was high.

-7. Chimp.

A study published in 2017, in the journal Nature Communications, found that chimpanzees have empathetic personalities. When one of them is sad or distressed, neighboring chimpanzees will spontaneously approach and comfort them. This behavior, known as consolation is the best-documented marker of empathetic-concern in nonhuman animals.

-8. Cat

According to scientists, the “meow” language in cats is a way for them to communicate with humans— and not among themselves. Adult cats don’t meow at other cats and instead use facial expressions, scent, body language or touch to convey the message. The meow is human-directed communication, which scientists strongly believe was created just for the purpose of interacting with us.

Cat guides blind dog:

After Terfel, an eight-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever in North Wales, U.K., developed cataracts in 2012, he began to bump into walls and furniture. Soon enough, the once-energetic dog was spending most of his time in his dog bed, unable to find his way around. On a whim, Terfel’s owner Judy Godfrey-Brown let a stray cat, whom she named Pwditat, into her home. The feline made a beeline for the blind dog and began using its paws and head to herd Terfel into the garden. Now the unlikely friends sleep together, and Pwditat helps Terfel find his way everywhere.

A cat honors its owner:    

A sprig of acacia, paper towels, and a plastic cup are just a few of the gifts that Toldo, a devoted three-year-old gray-and-white cat, has placed on his former owner Iozzelli Renzo’s grave in Montagnana, Italy, every day since the man died in September 2011. Renzo adopted Toldo from a shelter when the cat was three months old, and the two formed an inseparable bond. After Renzo passed away, Toldo followed the coffin to the cemetery, and now “stands guard” at the grave for hours at a time, says Renzo’s family.

-9. Crow

When thinking of animals that use tools, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is chimpanzees, but crows have also been proven to make and use tools to their advantage. The act of using tools was originally thought to be a skill that only humans had, until intelligent animals like elephants, sea otters, dolphins, octopuses, degu (chinchilla-like rodents that have been observed using rakes to get food), and the previously mentioned chimpanzees proved them wrong. Recently, scientists have found that crows, specifically New Caledonian crows, will use tools like sticks and wire to reach food, and, they learn from techniques that don’t work and improve upon them to make them more effective.

-10. Bonobo

The physical resemblance between bonobos and humans is unmistakable. There is a lot of attention to detail when it comes to the similarities between humans and bonobos. Not only do bonobos have fingerprints, but their fingerprints, like humans, are unique to that individual. Another example of the close relations to humans is that bonobos have a hand preference of the right or left hand. Like humans, most bonobos are right-handed, but some have been spotted using their left hand for most activities.

-11. Swan

In nature, pairs of swans have been observed mating for life, which is another thing that only humans were thought to do. The only reason a pair of swans will break up is if one of them has been killed or captured/put in a place where it’s impossible to communicate with.

-12. Guinea pig

While the idea of rodents living in a house may cause many people to feel a bit uneasy, apparently this relationship serves these little fellows quite well, specifically in the formation of greater intelligence. According to a recent study in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, pet rodents are smarter than their wild counterparts, likely due to living with humans. In the study, domesticated and wild guinea pigs were placed in a water maze, with the domesticated animals ultimately performing better and showing superior problem-solving abilities, likely as a result of having to make previous adaptations to man-made environments. This finding is especially surprising when considering previous research noting that domestication reduced rather than increased the brain sizes of domesticated guinea pigs and other rodents.

-13. Horse

Just as some rodents have surprising intelligence, the same can be said about horses, which display amazing long-term memory skills and incredible loyalties. A recent study in the journal Animal Behavior found that horses which had pleasurable experiences (specifically those marked by positive reinforcement) with familiar humans such as their trainers were more likely to remember and display greater affection towards those people after months of separation. Furthermore, such horses were more likely to warm up to and be affectionate with (i.e. sniff and lick) unfamiliar people. According to the study’s researchers, such behavior reveals that horses are able to develop positive memories of humans and hints at the wonderful intelligence of these majestic creatures.

Horses are picky eaters:

Horses have an even keener sense of taste and smell than humans do, say equine scientists. When horses wrinkle their noses and flare their nostrils, they’re activating their vomeronasal organ, which allows them to sense smells we can’t detect. Horses also have taste buds on the back of their tongues and the roofs of their mouths, which might explain why they reject stale water and meticulously move around meadows, grazing on only the tastiest herbs, experts say.

-14. Bear

Bear does yoga:

Santra, a female bear at Finland’s Ahtari Zoo, entertained visitors with a 15-minute “yoga” routine following a nap. Sitting upright, Santra used her front paws to grab her right back paw, then her left, stretching her legs as if doing a One-Legged Split. Next, she demonstrated the Open-Leg Seated Balance Pose with near-perfect form, pulling up both hind legs while keeping her balance. Meta Penca, who happened to be at the zoo and snapped photos of Santra’s performance, said the bear “looked focused and calm.” Don’t miss these other smart animal species that are true geniuses.

-15. Lion

Lions care about their hair:

According to Peyton M. West, PhD, an evolution and animal behavior expert, female lions actively court males that are more heavily and lushly maned, especially at night, which is reserved for socializing and grooming. Of course, today such bald discrimination is frowned upon by men and women, but the big cats are content to be old-fashioned. When fights break out among members of the pride, lions with flowing tresses get preferential treatment.

-16. Whale

Whale says thanks:

Each winter for nearly 20 years, Great Whale Conservancy codirector Michael Fishbach has traveled with other research scientists to the Sea of Cortez off Mexico’s west coast to study blue and humpback whales. In 2011, he and his team spotted a humpback whale trapped in a fishing net and spent an hour freeing it. Afterward, in an hour-long display of thanks, the whale swam near their boat and leaped into the air about 40 times.

-17. Panda

Pandas like to cavort:

Is there anything cuter than a baby panda, except maybe a human baby? Even the word panda is cute. In fact, cubs sometimes behave like human babies: They sleep in the same positions and value their thumbs (pandas use theirs for holding the bamboo they munch on all day). Pandas are shy by nature and they cover their face with a paw or ducking its head when confronted by a stranger. They’re also playful. And although they grow into solitary adults who roam alone and mate just once a year, they also like to snuggle. If given the chance, they’ll sleep side by side with domestic animals. Just like us!

-18. Monkey:

Monkeys do math:

In an experiment conducted by Keith Chen at Yale, capuchins demonstrated an understanding of pricing and budgeting, as well as a desire to avoid losses when required to buy food with tokens. Makes sense—this one looks like it’s checking its stock portfolio on a smartphone.

-19. Mouse

The Facial Expressions of a Mouse:

Figure above shows a white mouse used in science research laboratory.

Do you make weird faces when you’re in pain? So do mice. In 2010, researchers at McGill University and the University of British Columbia in Canada found that mice subjected to moderate pain “grimace,” just like humans. The researchers said the results could be used to eliminate unnecessary suffering for lab animals by letting researchers know when something hurts the rodents.

There’s actually a “mouse grimace scale” that measures several features such as ear and whisker positions and eye squinting to estimate a distress level for a lab mouse.

Figure below shows “Mouse Grimace Scale”

Researchers have discovered that lab mice react differently to pain, depending on whether men or women are present during a grimace measurement. When men are around, mice seem to suppress their distress. (But it should be noted that it’s not just men causing this effect. Items of fabric that have the residual scent of men or male animals also produce similar results.)

-20. Katydid

Ears Like a Katydid:

Copiphora gorgonensis, a South American katydid found to have remarkably human-like ears in a study released in the journal Science. Humans have complex ears to translate sound waves into mechanical vibrations our brains can process. So, as it turns out, do katydids. According to research published in the journal Science, katydid ears are arranged very similarly to human ears, with eardrums, lever systems to amplify vibrations, and a fluid-filled vesicle where sensory cells wait to convey information to the nervous system. Katydid ears are a bit simpler than ours, but they can also hear far above the human range.

-21. Dolphin

The Sleep-Talk of a Dolphin:

Dolphins may sleep-talk in whale song, according to French researchers who’ve recorded the marine mammals making the non-native sounds late at night. The five dolphins, which live in a marine park in France, have heard whale songs only in recordings played during the day around their aquarium. But at night, the dolphins seem to mimic the recordings during rest periods, a possible form of sleep-talking. And you thought your nocturnal mumblings were weird.

-22. Octopus

The House-Building Skill of an Octopus:

The veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) uses coconut shell halves to build a shelter. The veined octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) can make mobile shelters out of coconut shells. When the animal wants to move, all it has to do is stack the shells like bowls, grasp them with stiff legs, and waddle away along the ocean floor to a new location.

-23. Brittle star

The Movements of a Brittle Star:

The brittle star doesn’t turn as most animals do. It simply designates another of its five limbs as its new front and continues moving forward.  It’d be hard to imagine an organism less like a human than a brittle star, a starfish-like creature that doesn’t even have a central nervous system. And yet these five-armed wonders move with coordination that mirrors human locomotion. Brittle stars have radial symmetry, meaning their bodies can be split into matching halves by drawing imaginary lines through their arms and central axis. Humans and other mammals, in comparison, have bilateral symmetry: You can split us in half one way, with a line drawn straight through our bodies. Most of the time, animals with radial symmetry move little or move up and down, like a jellyfish that propels itself through the water. Brittle stars, however, move forward, perpendicular to their body axis — a skill usually reserved for the bilaterally symmetrical.  

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Adolescent elephants exhibit behaviours similar to human teens:

Peer pressure, bad judgment and high-risk actions: adolescent animals and teenage humans face the same kind of coming-of-age challenges, reveals a new book.

Figure below shows behavior of teen elephants:  

Adolescent animals and teen humans sometimes exhibit what may seem like nutty, exasperating behaviour, but is actually a valuable learning experience. There are no reported sightings of surly teenage elephants reluctantly sitting down at the family dinner table, trusty ear buds in place, occasionally trumpeting monosyllabic answers. But adolescent elephants do exhibit other behaviours many parents of human teens would recognises, says Cynthia Moss, a researcher who has studied and written books about elephants in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park for nearly five decades. “They’re naive, they have a lot to learn and they make mistakes,” Moss says. This is particularly true for males, she says. They raid crops. They get speared. They die. “It’s just like young human males who drive too fast, and the insurance companies know very well to make them pay higher insurance rates.”

These sorts of low-judgment, high-risk actions, and many other youthful traits that traverse species, are explored in Wildhood: The Epic Journey From Adolescence to Adulthood in Humans and Other Animals, a book by Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, and Kathryn Bowers, a science journalist.

They make clear that, in a fundamental sense, adolescent animals and teen humans encounter the same sorts of challenges – and that what may strike elders of any species as nutty, exasperating behaviour is not only inevitable for most creatures in that stage of development but truly valuable.

Other scientists who have studied adolescents – human and non-human – echo their findings. Those elephants that charge right into harm’s way? Their behaviour is wholly in keeping with the adolescent modus operandi. Human “adolescents frequently put themselves in danger deliberately,” Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers write, adding: “Adolescent risk-taking is seen throughout the animal world.”

The result, unsurprisingly, is that adolescence can be pretty dangerous for animals, ranging from fish to birds to mammals. For the youths that have big bodies but little life experience, there’s a “spike in mortality . . . they are easy prey,” says Natterson-Horowitz.

One reason is that they engage in behaviours that are risky but beneficial, Bowers says. An example is a practice called “predator inspection”, or approaching predators rather than fleeing. The trade-off for the danger of proximity is that adolescent animals watch, smell and learn, accumulating all kinds of information that can keep them safer as adults. “The idea that adolescents are hard-wired to take these risks can put a new spin on the knuckleheaded antics of our own human teens,” Bowers says. Teens seem driven to chase novelty and test boundaries in their own version of predator inspection, she says, chalking up as many experiences as they can – the good, the bad, the ugly – before they leave the nest. Before anyone leaves any nest (“dispersal,” in scientific parlance), however, there’s considerable time spent roving in battalions – marked by peak levels of peer pressure – and flirting with disaster. Indeed, scientists have documented and observed that adolescents of all stripes are more inclined to make perilous moves while with peers.

Laurence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, worked on two related studies – one involving mice, half of which were adolescents, drinking ethanol-spiked water, and another in which human teens played a video game that reproduced driving conditions. The results were strikingly similar.

“We found that in the presence of peers, adolescent mice drank more than they do when they’re alone,” says Steinberg, who has published several books on adolescence. “But we didn’t find any such peer effects in adults, which is identical to the kinds of things we were finding in human experiments.” Steinberg says the teenagers in the simulated driving study also took more risks when others were around, regardless of whether they interacted with their peers. Just knowing there were other teens watching appeared to prompt the one behind the wheel to act more carelessly. Psychology professor Laurence Steinberg says the desire to socialize with a peer group is common across multiple species, not just humans. These findings dovetail with what Steinberg says is another multispecies adolescent hallmark: the desire to socialize. “For the most part, human adolescents like to be with other adolescents. Juveniles in other species like to be with other juveniles. If I say that teenagers are social animals, I think the word ‘animal’ is just as important in that sentence as the word ‘social’.”

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Human Attributes found in Animals:   

As humans, we are not the fastest or the strongest animal. Even our senses are outmatched by many creatures. Birds see better than us, dogs smell better, and many animals have senses that we do not have at all. Sharks feel magnetic fields, turtles sense electricity, and bees see ultra-violet radiation. Elephants can sense a lack of salt in their bodies in much the same way that we feel thirsty. The humble tortoise can outlive us by a hundred years or more. Basic medicine is used by woolly spider monkeys who eat certain plants for birth control and parrots who eat specific clays to cure poison. Here are some human attributes found in animals:

1. Culture

Culture encompasses all behaviors and activities which are not genetically driven and which are found throughout a local population. The arts and humanities, religions, shared attitudes and practices are all facets of culture. The wonderfully wide variety of human cultures around the world is of great interest in itself; however, not all culture is human. For an activity to be deemed cultural, it must not be directly caused by genetics, it must be passed from one individual to another throughout a population, it must be remembered and not forgotten instantly after it has occurred, and it must be passed down through generations. Many primates have their own cultures and traditions, such as the rain dances some chimpanzee groups perform at the beginning of storms. In 1963, a single Japanese macaque monkey discovered the comfort of bathing in a natural hot spring, and since then the practice has spread completely throughout the troop and is still observed today.

2. Emotions

Humans experience a wide spectrum of emotions. From anger to grief to frustration to euphoria, we live our lives moving from one emotion to the next. Anyone who has kept a large pet, such as a dog or a cat, will be aware that these creatures experience fear, desire, panic, affection, embarrassment, and many other feelings. Dolphin mothers whose infants have died display all the trappings of grief, and bored octopuses will eventually begin to exhibit depression. Curiosity can be seen in reptiles and jealousy of parental attention between siblings is seen in great apes. Wild apes will adopt other orphaned apes, and captive apes will take pets for interest. Altruism has been shown by gorillas in two unrelated situations where, both times, a young child fell into their zoo enclosure. Each time, a gorilla patted and soothed the child and helped return him to the human zoo keepers. Chimpanzees similarly comfort each other after attacks. Emotions are far from an exclusively human experience.

3. Language

Language is used to communicate needs, wants, and ideas. Different groups have developed their own languages, and languages change and evolve over time. Humans use a wide range of languages, not all verbal. The Bubi people in Equatorial Guinea speak largely with hand gestures, similar to Sign Languages spoken by deaf communities. On La Gomera of the Canary Islands, whistled language is used. Certain animals use language too. Primates, whales, birds, and squid have been shown to use distinct words to identify objects, actions, and individual names, and chimpanzees even use syntax and grammar. As a case study, Washoe the chimpanzee was raised as a deaf human child. She learnt over 350 American Sign Language words and could combine them to form new words and sentences. In the wild, chimpanzees normally only use about 70 signs. Washoe often signed conversations with her toy dolls. One touching example, showing that she could associate abstract ideas like emotion to novel situations, was when her human instructor explained a long absence by signing “my baby died.” Washoe looked down for a while, then signed “cry” and touched her cheek.

4. Humour

Humour is a staple of life for many people. Often difficult to define, there are many strains of humor, providing amusement and often resulting in laughter. The ridiculous, the unexpected, or the juxtaposed can elicit such a feeling. Chimpanzees, like humans, are no stranger to laughter. They often tickle each other and give unmistakable laughs as a result. However, although humor often provokes laughter, laughter does not imply humor. Even rats have been shown to be able to laugh. Nevertheless, chimpanzees too can find situations humorous. Several great apes in captivity have been observed to laugh at situations removed from themselves such as seeing a clumsy fellow ape embarrass itself.

5. Tool Use

One of the defining characteristics of humans is the ability to use tools. We have created great cities, refined farming, secured the passing on of cultural knowledge through writing, and even gone to the moon. For many years, humans were defined as the only tool-using animal. We now know this is not the case. All great apes, crows and ravens, dolphins, elephants, and even octopuses are verified tool users. Often this tool use is cultural, that is, the tools used and their manner of use will vary from one population to the next within a species. Chimpanzees use stones as hammers and anvils and fashion spears for hunting, gorillas will use walking sticks, ravens make their own toys, gulls will use bait to fish with, dolphins use shells to catch fish in and eat from, octopuses will use coconut shells as a shelter, and elephants make water vessels to drink from.

6. Memory

Humans are able to mentally capture their sensory information at a particular time and store it away for later use. That is, humans can remember things. We use memories to determine the best course of action in situations we have encountered before, such as remembering which foods taste nicest and thus picking the best one when given a choice. Animals, too, have memories, as any pet owner will tell you. Domesticated creatures can be taught to remember commands, and even goldfish have been shown to have memories lasting months. Chimpanzees remember images and numbers better than university students, and crows remember shapes better than adult humans also. Some jays and squirrels have superb spatial memories, allowing them to remember months later where they buried thousands of seeds across areas of dozens of square kilometers. Cats have short-term memories at least ten times longer than those of humans. Interestingly, pigeons seem to base superstitions on their memories. If a pigeon is doing something like turning around when it is given food two or three times, it will remember what it was doing and begin to spin obsessively in the hopes of obtaining more food.

7. Self-Awareness

A jellyfish, most will agree, is not strongly aware of itself as a definitively separate being. It has no thoughts, if any, beyond its basic drives. Self-awareness was considered a human domain for many years, but we now know better. One simple illustrative test is the mirror test: seeing if an animal can recognize itself in a mirror. A self-aware animal will realize that the movements of its reflection match its own, and deduce that the reflection is an image of itself. The animal often has a mark on its face, and if it realizes that the reflection is it itself, it will reach towards its face to feel or remove the mark. Human children do not pass this test until the age of 18 months. Animals which pass this self-awareness test, and a variety of other such tests, are all great apes, some gibbons, elephants, magpies, and some whales.

8. Intelligence

Humans are homo sapiens, the wise man. We can think and reason to our great advantage. There are, of course, many different kinds of intelligence and ways of using them. There exist many definitions of intelligence, but generally it is thought to be the ability to think, reason, plan, assess, and learn. However, humans are not the only animals with intellect, nor are they the best in all its categories. Pigeons easily outdo humans with both visual searching and geometric recognition. Ants estimate huge numbers very accurately to determine the numbers of enemy ants from past encounters, and elephants use arithmetic. Crows show great causal reasoning; they can observe a new and complicated mechanism and mentally deduce how to deal with it correctly rather than relying on the more time-consuming trial and error. They can unlock doors and find hidden objects based on a single period of observation, outperforming many humans.

9. Farming

Farming is the basis of modern human civilization. Believed to have been begun nearly ten thousand years ago, it allowed humans to settle in one place rather than live nomadically as they followed herds of animals for food. This in turn allowed them more time in which they could develop writing, mathematics, the wheel, farming implements, and other necessities of farming on a large scale. This spread around the world rapidly. However, ants had already been farming for millions of years. They capture, herd, raise, and care for the health of groups of caterpillars kept in a special chamber of their nests so that they may use their sugary excretions as a food source, much like we use cows. Termites cultivate fungi to eat which are so specialized they grow nowhere else on Earth.

10. Building

If nothing else, humans are fantastic builders. The cities, roads, and factories that adorn our planet are a testament to that fact. What other animal could build skyscrapers, towering hundreds of metros above them? Or highways and roads stretching for thousands of kilometers? Some animals build too. Certain birds and apes build sophisticated nests, rabbits dig warrens to live in, and ants will even prune and cultivate trees to grow in a way which suits them as a home. The greatest builders, however, are Nigerian termites. They build fantastically huge mounds with internal ventilation, heating, and cooling systems through specially designed tunnels so that the termites living inside enjoy a pleasant climate at all times. They even have self-contained nurseries, gardens, cellars, chimneys, expressways, and sanitation systems. A termite is less than half a centimeter long yet its mound is 4m tall. For comparison, that is like a group of humans making a building over 1.5km tall.

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Section-18

Humans behaving like animals:  

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We behave like animals because we are animals. Humans do animal things and animals do human things because we share traits carried from our common ancestors. We are better at certain things than animals and they are better than us at certain things. Every species is unique and one of the things unique about humans is our arrogance in making up ideas about what is “natural” and what isn’t and believing we are above and superior to animals. We’re different but that does not mean that we are morally and ethically superior.

Anand Mahindra, Chairman of the Mahindra Group shared a photo on Twitter highlighting the menace humans create everywhere they go. Disposal of single-use plastic and how it is adversely affecting the fauna, even the marine ecosystem, is being widely discussed across the world. The photo was that of a unique signboard placed inside a forest that read: “In the forests and mountains, animals do not leave trash, humans do. Please behave like animals.”

One Twitter user also pointed out the location of the signboard saying he had seen it at Edakkal Caves in Kerala’s Wayanad.

Environmental issues are a key link in the chain of global problems. The ever-increasing impact of human activity destroys the Earth’s ecosystems, and with it, the physical conditions of its existence.

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Animal metaphors:

Comparing humans to animals is vexed but irresistible. We are animals, but animals who like to believe we are not merely animals. When we do liken people to other creatures – when sports fans use racial slurs or Donald Trump calls Syrian President Bashar al-Assad an “animal” – fur often flies. People draw animal comparisons using countless expressions, many of which convey positive sentiments. Cute, diminutive animals provide pet names for children or lovers. Valued animals symbolize desirable human traits: brave people are lion-hearted and perceptive ones eagle-eyed. People identify with the totemic animals of their football clubs.

Other animal metaphors are more neutral, offering a sort of zoological shorthand for the full range of human attributes. Calling someone a sheep implies they are conformist, whereas calling them a chicken or mouse suggests fearfulness and timidity. Calling someone a cow or toad speaks to their physical rather than psychological characteristics.

This shorthand varies across cultures and languages. In the West owls are wise, but in India they represent foolishness. Calling someone a shark in the English-speaking world implies they are dishonest and rapacious, but in Persian it refers to a man with little or no beard.

Many animal metaphors are straightforwardly offensive rather than simply representing a particular trait. Calling someone a pig, rat, ape, monkey, dog, maggot or leech carries a derogatory meaning and a strong emotional and moral charge. Some offensive animal metaphors are degrading whereas others are disgusting. It is no accident that these two distinct kinds of metaphor feature in some of history’s most appalling conflicts. Dehumanizing ape metaphors were commonly applied to Indigenous people during colonial wars and conquests. Disgust-based metaphors picturing people as vermin and cockroaches dominated the imagery of the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.

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Are violent humans animals?   

Each time there’s a violent incident involving human animals (“humans”) there are far too many snippets in various media and other outlets claiming something like, “They’re just animals.” The use of the word “animals” always refers to nonhuman animals and this is a radically misleading and dismissive claim. Biologically, it is so: humans are animals. However, the humans involved are not behaving like nonhuman animals (“animals”) and ample and detailed data show this to be so. An excellent example of an incorrect reference to the behavior of nonhumans can be found here, where it is stated, “Humans are supposed to have evolved and be civilized with high intelligence—that is what separates humans from animals. These men are behaving like animals.” Another can be found here, where it is claimed, “Rape is not just a women’s issue. It’s about men who stop behaving like human beings & start behaving like animals.” So, Jacob Koshy is correct, “If animals could protest, they would sue us humans for slander.”  

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The horrific and tragic murders in Charleston, South Carolina, along with violent gang rapes in India, come to mind, and the alleged shooter and rapists, while human animals, did not behave like nonhuman animals, so fast and superficial statements such as “They’re just animals” are vacuous.

While nonhumans do on occasion fight, harm, and kill one another in same-species social interactions, these sorts of encounters are extremely rare when compared to more positive social interactions and they often occur in unique social situations and ecological conditions. To wit, consider what world renowned primatologist Jane Goodall wrote about violence in wild chimpanzees in her landmark book The Chimpanzees of Gombe: ” . . . it is easy to get the impression that chimpanzees are more aggressive than they really are. In actuality, peaceful interactions are far more frequent than aggressive ones; mild threatening gestures are more common than vigorous ones; threats per se occur much more often than fights; and serious, wounding fights are very rare compared to brief, relatively mild ones” (p. 357). The same is true for many carnivores, a point made by the late ethologist R. F. Ewer in her book called The Carnivores. In our long term field studies of coyotes, violent interactions were extremely rare.

Dr. Goodall has also noted that chimpanzees “have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse, because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil.” Furthermore, because there’s only one known chimpanzee war, a point made by Duke University’s Joseph Feldblum who, with a number of colleagues, analyzed this unique event, claiming we inherited our widespread destructive behavior from “them”—other animals—is not a credible conclusion.

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Along these lines, Robert W. Sussman, an anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis, and his colleagues Paul A. Garber and Jim Cheverud, reported in 2005 in an essay called “Importance of cooperation and affiliation in the evolution of primate sociality” in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology that for many nonhuman primates, more than 90 percent of their social interactions are affiliative rather than competitive or divisive. The abstract for this very important essays reads: “The idea that competition and aggression are central to an understanding of the origins of group-living and sociality among human and nonhuman primates is the dominant theory in primatology today. Using this paradigm, researchers have focused their attention on competitive and aggressive behaviors, and have tended to overlook the importance of cooperative and affiliative behaviors. However, cooperative and affiliative behaviors are considerably more common than agonistic behaviors in all primate species. The current paradigm often fails to explain the context, function, and social tactics underlying affiliative and agonistic behavior. Here, we present data on a basic question of primate sociality: how much time do diurnal, group-living primates spend in social behavior, and how much of this time is affiliative and agonistic? These data are derived from a survey of 81 studies, including 28 genera and 60 species. We find that group-living prosimians, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, and apes usually devote less than 10% of their activity budget to active social interactions. Further, rates of agonistic behaviors are extremely low, normally less than 1% of the activity budget. If the cost to the actors of affiliative behavior is low even if the rewards are low or extremely variable, we should expect affiliation and cooperation to be frequent. This is especially true under conditions in which individuals benefit from the collective environment of living in stable social groups.”

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Let’s not blame our violent ways on other animals. Do animals fight with and otherwise abuse one another? Yes. Do they routinely engage in cruel, violent, warlike behaviors? Not at all — they’re extremely rare. Thus, we can learn a lot about who we really are from paying attention to what we are learning about the social behavior of other animals, and harness our own innate goodness to make the world a better place for all beings.

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Humans behave like Sheep in a herd:

Researchers at Leeds University, led by Prof Jens Krause, performed a series of experiments where volunteers were told to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions on where to walk. The scientists discovered that people end up blindly following one or two people who appear to know where they’re going. The published results showed that it only takes 5% of what the scientists called “informed individuals” to influence the direction of a crowd of around 200 people. The remaining 95% follow without even realizing it.

“There are strong parallels with animal grouping behavior,” says Prof Krause, who reported his study with John Dyer in the Animal Behavior Journal. “We’ve all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd but what’s interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren’t allowed to talk or gesture to one another… In most cases the participants didn’t realize they were being led by others.”

In our society, we value the gifted individuals that strive for something greater. We all love an inspiring story of a man who made it against all odds and did something extraordinary. Yes, we get spurred in the moment to take action too, thinking ” I want to do that too”. But how many of us actually keep going after the initial months of no results and constant feedback from others saying we made the wrong choice? Or how many people get tricked into a cult or business because of group pressure and manufactured positivity to influence you to take the plunge? If human beings were such an intelligent independent being they would see through all the scams and use their common sense.

The truth is that we are not as intelligent and independent as we would like to think we are. Yes we have potential and there’s the few anomalies. However, the majority of humans are like sheep and act according to their herd. This is the reality of our society. From uptown classy people to the downtown hipsters. They are basically the same. A herd. They are fundamentally no different, and if anyone argues that there are differences, then they are merely quibbling over semantics.

Humans are herd animals. That’s why they are so predictable. That’s why big corporate businesses can make billions upon billions of dollars, selling the same stuff over and over again. Yet many of us are unaware of this.

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Do humans behave like animals in corporate?

Sometime back, a question was asked in a meeting as how corporate is described or compared to a jungle and how the behaviour/actions of the employees are equated largely to animals? Is the above justification is made based on some assumptions or has any scientific credence to it? The fact is that, there are several living creatures in ‘human form’ and in ‘human appearance’ only existing in many corporates.

How biology has defined man and animal separately or how man is differentiated from animal? According biology, animals are less intelligent/evolved than humans or in other words, humans are very intelligent/well evolved. Since animals are less intelligent, they are driven predominantly by two instincts viz., food gathering (fulfilling the basic need) and ensuring protection (seeking security). Besides this, biology could not find any other major purpose for the animals in general. But for man, besides food gathering, he also has many other objectives to justify while living, as he is more evolved.

To achieve the above two basic instincts viz., fulfilling the food needs and security needs, animals behave in different ways such predators, prey etc. Keep focusing and working around and for the above purpose from birth to death only makes the animals to remain as animals as per the above definition.

The question is how corporate ecosystem can be correlated to a jungle and its people as animals? If one willingly dwells deep into the anatomy of human behaviour in corporate world, would understand that the key objective that drives people in corporate is no way different from the driving force of animals in the jungle. Survival and how to survive continuously in the corporate is the mammoth challenge many employees are facing every day in many corporate.

In corporate, large number of people struggle for their basic needs (to retain the job and ensuring job security). The struggle for existence of people in corporate is very high and the people in corporate would venture into many mischiefs just to safeguard their job. Every actions of the man in industry have its bottom line as security and need. They exhibit performance just for the above cause, they try to acquire knowledge just for the above sake, they fight, snatch or even kill (ensure the removal of others) just to achieve the above purpose.

When man in corporate behave exactly like an animal in a jungle in spirit and letter, is it wrong to draw a comparison and a similarity between man vs. animal?

The purpose is not to belittle or malign the man in corporate, but to make him understand and empower him to be different from animal. Being born as a man (human being), it is worth living as human being and also expected of him/her to live like a human being. Be conscious and conscientious of your actions whatever the need be.

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Are black people animals?

‘It’s like we’re seen as animals’: black men say on their vulnerability:

Some white people believe that black people act like animals, they are ignorant, rude, and impatient. In America, black men have historically been depicted as aggressive, hypersexual and violent – to be controlled, to be exploited, to be tamed. The result of that construct and the accompanying racist fear and forced subjugation it justifies has been counterintuitive: black men in America are in fact deeply fragile and constantly at risk. A psychology study from 2014 authored by Phillip Goff at the University of California found that black children were consistently perceived by police officers as older and less innocent than their white peers.  “We found evidence that overestimating age and culpability based on racial differences was linked to dehumanizing stereotypes,” Goff said of the study. “Stereotypes always undermine the experience of an individual, or of being in a group,” Saunders, the psychology professor, says.

I quote myself from my article ‘science against racism’:

The term race refers to groups of people who have differences and similarities in biological traits deemed by society to be socially significant, meaning that people treat other people differently because of them. There is no scientific evidence of biological race in humans. The use of word “race” biologically is a confession of ignorance or evil intent. The Human Genome Project, which mapped out the complete human genetic code, proved that race could not be identified in our genes. In fact, all human beings on this planet belong to one species, Homo Sapiens; and there are no sub-species or races. Race is not based on biology, but race is rather an idea that we ascribe to biology. The human species is 99.9 percent the same genetically according to human genome project. The remaining 0.1% of variation accounts both for differences that are visible, such as eye, skin and hair color, and those that are not seen, such as disease-risk. Only 0.01% of genes account for a human’s external appearance.    

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Discover your animal personality:   

Is your personality more like that of a cockroach or an elephant?  Are you a wolf personality, intimidating yet misunderstood? Or do you have the characteristics of a fox, a canine with a different survival strategy? You might have the attributes of a lion or tiger personality, or you may not be a carnivore at all. In fact, herbivorous personalities like deer, bison and sheep are far more numerous in the human zoo. If you’re extroverted and flirty you might be one of seven bird personalities, or perhaps an aquatic mammal like a dolphin or otter.

Animals have their own unique personalities, several recent studies have found, with many species showing certain characteristics more than others. As a result, some animals more closely mirror human personality traits, and even then, the match up depends on the particular person. Macho men, for example, have quite a lot in common with this male jumping spider. Machismo is usually connected to high testosterone levels. Lena Grinsted of Aarhus University’s Department of Bioscience says that for spiders, the key behavior-related hormones appear to be octopamine and serotonin. Macho male spiders and tough females could very well be pumped up on a certain hormone, just as humans often are.

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Are you a strong silent type? If so, you have this trait in common with many sparrows. Michael Beecher of the University of Washington and colleagues studied the birds and found that some are more effusive than others, at least when it comes to defending territories. The strong silent types defend their turf, but they don’t make a show of their intentions beforehand. “The strong silent types are just as assertive as the signaling types; they just don’t advertise their aggressive intentions,” Beecher says. “You want to distinguish strong silent types from true wimps that don’t signal and won’t attack.”

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If you are more the shy type, you could commiserate with these three mouse lemurs, peering cautiously from their nesting tube at the Duke Lemur Center. Researchers there have found that mouse lemurs are definitely full of personality. At the center, mouse lemur Pesto is very chatty, researcher Sarah Zehr says. “Asparagus gets beat up by the girls,” she continued. “Wasabi is mean as sin, and her favorite flavor is human fingers.” The three shy ones are too skittish to be so grouchy.

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If you consider yourself to be an empathetic person, then your animal personality match could be an Asian elephant. A study in the journal PeerJ found that when an Asian elephant detects that another is stressed out, it uses its trunk to gently caress the suffering elephant and emits a sweet-sounding chirp. “I’ve never heard that vocalization when elephants are alone,” lead author Joshua Plotnik CEO of Think Elephants International and a lecturer at Mahidol University says. “It may be a signal like, ‘Shshhh, it’s okay,’ the sort of sounds a human adult might make to reassure a baby.”

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Some humans can wrap others around their fingers, while cats wrap themselves both literally and figuratively around their humans — especially women. Cats attach to humans, and particularly women, as social partners, and it’s not just for the sake of obtaining food, according to a study published in the journal Behavioral Processes. Cats sometimes even become a furry “child” in nurturing homes, crying out in a similar pitch and tone as a human baby would cry. Most owners know that if breakfast is late, the feline may make its presence known, usually in an affectionate way. Cats know what they want, and they often know how to get it too.

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Not all dogs are neurotic, but many are. The same holds true for humans. In fact, research published in the journal Interaction Studies found that neurotic men and neurotic dogs appear to be magnets for each other, with dogs of such owners making a beeline for their human partner and staying close together afterwards. The two might become co-dependent, but neither usually complains about it.

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Abraham Lincoln famously said that democracy is, “government of the people, by the people and for the people,” but the word “people” in that declaration easily could be replaced with other organisms, such as cockroaches. These sturdy insects govern themselves in a very simple democracy where each insect has equal standing and group consultations precede decisions that affect the entire group, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. If politics is your passion, you might have more in common with cockroaches than you might think.

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Some animals — including humans — tolerate challenges better than others. Gigi Allianic, spokesperson for Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo, looked at how various species cope with rain. Orangutans wrap burlap bags around themselves, squirrels and mice huddle, while other animals simply retreat. Grizzly bears, on the other hand, usually remain out in the open and try to put up with the wet conditions. They “will often do that,” she said, “even though they can go into an enclosure,” Allianic said.

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Goldfish are so intelligent that they not only listen to music, but they can also distinguish one composer from another. A study, published in the journal Behavioral Processes, involved playing two pieces of classical music near goldfish in a tank. The pieces were Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Johann Sebastian Bach and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. The goldfish had no trouble distinguishing the two composers. If you are brainy and musically inclined, goldfish might be your best personality match.

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Peacocks are sexy, and they seem to know it. Male peacocks sing, strut their stuff, and dance in front of often blasé females who look a bit full of themselves too. The elaborate show draws attention, but not always from the right viewers. All of the dancing and prancing could alert potential predators that an easy meal is near. Wild peacocks make quick snacks for jackals, tigers and hawks in their native habitat in South Asia. “In a sense, they’re advertising that they’re distracted and vulnerable. It would be wise for a predator to capitalize on that,” Duke University biologist Jessica Yorzinski says. Many humans let down their guard for love too.

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Why do People’s personalities resemble Animals?

Have you ever noticed that people tend to assume animal personalities? We talk of someone being a bear of a man or someone acting like a dog. People we don’t care for are weasels, sloths, or vultures. Why is there such a strong correlation between human and animal behavior? Are these connections coincidental, or is there a simpler explanation? A clue lies in nature’s need for diversity.

In a process known as parallel evolution, unrelated animal species, separated by vast distances, exhibit the same behavioral and physical characteristics. Isolated from the mainland for thousands of years, the extinct Tasmanian wolf, or thylacine, evolved numerous features similar to the North American wolf. Although it was a marsupial, its doglike body, coughing bark, and canine hunting behavior closely parallel that of wolf society, even though they have markedly different ancestries.

The fact is, an ecosystem without a robust number of species cannot successfully maintain itself. The food web requires the interaction of predators, prey, burrowing creatures, arboreal animals, and insects to remain stable, which is why every ecosystem has approximately 50 types of similar species that take advantage of the various food niches. A similar process has taken place in human society. Our species dominates the planet and is an ecosystem unto itself. The variety of attributes that provide stability in the animal world — aggression, passivity, stealth, skittishness, etc. — serve the same functions in our own society. It is no coincidence, therefore, that we mimic these animal behaviors to better survive in a complex and competitive world.

Relationships between Animal Personalities:

For an ecosystem to remain stable, it must contain a wide diversity of species. It is also important that the ratio of these species is balanced, since an overabundance of predators could wreak havoc on the ecosystem. If predators were not present at all, then prey animals would overpopulate the environment causing overgrazing and disease. Interestingly, the ratio between predators and prey in nature seems to be mirrored in our own society. Larger animal personalities like elephants, giraffes, and gorillas cannot be supported in large numbers since their bulky personalities put a disproportional stress on the social environment. Conversely, smaller personalities like mice, otters, beavers, and sheep are found in great numbers throughout the concrete jungle.

The ratio of predators to prey in human society is maintained through a process of social pressure. Consider the artificial environment of prisons. In these overcrowded inhospitable conditions, someone who was previously a combative warthog might be unable to survive in a society dominated by crocodiles and lions. By backing away from his assertive stance and manifesting the more gregarious personality of a herbivore, this prisoner can seek the protection of the herd in order to survive. Carnivorous personalities are territorial and require more personal space than their herbivorous counterparts.

Courtship Rituals:

From the subtle and coy techniques of the mouse and cottontail personalities, to the aggressive displays of the lion and wolf, every species employs a unique mating strategy. These sorts of behaviors come naturally to us and a visit to a public park quickly reveals our animal personalities in action. Young girls walk by, often arm in arm, pretending not to notice the watching boys displaying their own mating behavior. Some boys adopt masculine stances, lounging around with their legs apart, calling aggressively to the females. Others will feign disinterest and use subtle body language and eye contact to stake their claims.

A male wolf personality might pursue a female sable by first surrounding himself with friends for moral support and then carefully and indirectly approaching the female. If comfortable with these advances, the female will display her interest by moving slowly away from the pack—taking care not to withdraw too far. As the male continues his hunt, she will turn and cautiously engage the group. This stalking approach is not for the male weasel. To seduce a female warthog personality he must first gain the trust of this cantankerous lady by hiding his true intentions with a small gift or an offer of friendship. If successfully swayed by these advances, the female warthog soon finds herself lured into an uncomfortably unbalanced relationship with the wily weasel.

The rules that govern our mating behaviors are instinctive and deeply rooted. In a number of mammalian species, when males reach middle age they respond to a biological realization that they are no longer in their prime. Aging silverback gorillas can no longer compete physically or sexually with the upcoming group of younger males, and in a biological panic, their reproductive urges trigger them to make one last fling at mating with younger, more fertile females. In humans, this manifests itself when a middle-aged man suddenly feels the urge to display his wealth by buying a fancy sports car, begins ignoring his wife, and starts a workout routine. This middle-life crisis is simply one example of our response to animal programming.

Animal Magnetism:

Fortunately, we humans have the ability to control our own behaviors and are not complete slaves to these drives. Still, it is useful to understand our passions in the light of these powerful animal urges. When a wildcat and a fox get together, they have superficial connections with a common range and nocturnal spirit. However, as a canine, the fox is a natural competitor of the cat and its natural friendliness grates against the cat’s tendency to maintain its distance. Over time these tensions conspire to destroy the relationship. Likewise, if a mouse personality married a cat, power conflicts or spousal abuse would quickly destroy the union.

So, all animal personalities should avoid forming close relationships with their species’ natural predator. However, this does not mean that all herbivorous personalities must avoid predators. The meek cottontail rabbit might even strike up a friendship with a powerful lion, since lions are disinclined to waste energy chasing elusive, low-calorie rabbits. Although marriage is out of the question, these friendships can be quite enduring. In exchange for companionship and loyalty, the predator provides resources and protection for the cottontail. Animal personalities tend to relate to species that share their ranges. The water personality of the dolphin has much in common with the aquatic sea lion and the pastoral nature of the sheep makes for a compatible mate with the grazing deer. Conversely, animal personalities that live in markedly different environments tend to avoid each other. Birds choose to remain out of reach of the land mammal personalities and the unencumbered lives of the sea dwellers make them awkward mates for complex land creatures. On the other hand, the semi-aquatic beaver is capable of forming relationships with both water-going and land-based animal personalities.

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What’s Your Animal Personality Type?

-1. Owl

They are analytical and thoughtful individuals who prefer to work alone and who are often ill at ease in social situations. They are impatient with hierarchies and politics and would prefer that leaders prove their worth with merit, rather than with charisma and influence. Although they are not particularly social, they do have razor sharp wit (and claws), and are often surprised to learn that people do enjoy their company.

-2. Fox

Dramatic, charismatic, and influential –they seek the best in life and want to share it with their friends. They are active, spontaneous, fun, and foxy. They are the most adept of any of the personality types at influencing and manipulating people, and they make great salesman and can be wonderful friends if you’re looking for a good time.

-3. Sloth

Peaceful and easygoing, they take things at their own pace and live moment to moment. They are considerate, pleasant, caring, and mellow. Their values are important to them, but they are not ones who particularly care about defending or debating their views publicly. Don’t call them lazy — maybe they are just more relaxed than the rest of us.

-4. Lion

Independent and logical thinkers who are also persuasive leaders, they are business-minded and ambitious. They refuse to allow any subjective emotion to enter into their decision-making process, and as a result they can be seen as callous and cold. But these fierce individuals tend to be highly effective, successful, and incredibly powerful. They are truly the kings of the proverbial jungle.

-5. Deer

They are quiet, observant, and thoughtful. They are interested in maintaining order and harmony, avoiding fast-moving cars, and respecting everyone’s feelings. They are often described by the few people who know them deeply as being incredibly sensitive and trustworthy.

-6. Octopus

They are independent types, wildly intelligent and creative — but rather un-interested in what anyone else is doing. They are often considered the most independent of all the personality types, and they work best when given freedom. They are acutely aware of their own intelligence, as well as what they don’t know, and their passion often lies in conceptualizing ideas and processing complex theories.

-7. Cat

They are an interesting study in contrasts: they are naturally quiet and analytic, often drawn to the field of engineering or trying to figure out how boxes work. But they are also explorers who can easily become bored with a single routine. They are often closet daredevils drawn to racing, bungee jumping, or jumping off of high countertops. They are “live and let live” types who are not particularly concerned with rules or regulations and would prefer that others not concern themselves with their behavior either.

-8. Otter

They live in the moment and want to experience life at 100 mph. They are incredibly playful, generous, and optimistic. They love being social and having new experiences. Classroom learning is not their strong suit even though they are intelligent and creative — they would prefer to simply “go with the flow” and have a great time.

-9. Wolf

They are value-driven individuals who tend to remain mysterious and complex even after you’ve become close to one. They are often creative and inspired individuals. They are good at perceiving emotions and are sensitive to the feelings of others, but they are not very prone to revealing much of themselves until they trust someone completely. That said, they are intensely interested in the well-being of others and are often seen as protectors as well as natural leaders.

-10. Dolphin

Creative and contagiously happy, they have boundless energy and an appetite for learning about new things and meeting new people. They bring joy to others and are keenly perceptive to the needs of those around them. They are vivacious and popular enthusiasts. They tend to get bored easily, and they are always ready for the latest and the greatest in friends, relationships, experiences, and ocean jumping.

-11. Honey Bee

They are civic-minded workers who strive to improve society and like to be part of organizations and governments. They are often conservative and they are strong believers in the letter of the law, and the importance of procedures. They are practical and straight-forward, and have little use for “expanding their mind” or having new experiences. They are, however, outgoing, and they have no problem with clearly communicating their needs and desires to others.

-12. Beaver

They are logical and word-working conservative types. They enjoy organization and regulation, and have a reputation for being serious individuals who take a practical approach to everything. They are dependable and thorough, sensible and earnest. Like a beaver hard at work on its dam, they are known for being incredibly dedicated workers who will do whatever is needed to get the job done. On the negative side, they have good intentions but can sometimes have a difficult time understanding the emotional needs of others.

-13. Dog

They are social butterflies who are cheerleaders and supporters of a wide variety of friends and acquaintances. They hate bullying and they love to greet their loved ones with a face lick and a tail wag. They feel good when the people around them feel good, and they tend to adapt to the group that they are in very quickly, even adopting the values of whoever they are surrounded by. They are loyal and expect loyalty from others — think of them as the living embodiment of a “team player.”

-14. Meerkat

They are deeply ethical and idealistic, loyal to their family and closest friends, and guided by their desire to live a life according to their values. They are curious about those around them, but will not accept threats to the security of their adorable babies or their morals.

-15. Parrot

They prize intelligence and competence over all other things (both in themselves and in others). They are often described as witty, clever, cerebral, and resourceful. They are verbally inclined and they often have a perverse sense of humor. ENTPs like to analyze every side of an issue and are creative thinkers and workers. They sometimes chatter.

-16. Elephant

They are genuine and authentic, and they care deeply about those around them. They are the kind of individuals who bring out the best in those around them, and they are serious about loyalty and responsibility to their families, friends, and co-workers. They are generous and they love to bring joy to others, but they are also sensitive and easily hurt. They are often blind to the flaws of those they love and they are incredibly trusting and full of love.

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Clinical lycanthropy:

Clinical lycanthropy is defined as a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform into, has transformed into, or is, an animal. Its name is associated with the mythical condition of lycanthropy, a supernatural affliction in which humans are said to physically shapeshift into wolves. It is purported to be a rare disorder. It has been associated with the altered states of mind that accompany psychosis (the mental state that typically involves delusions and hallucinations) with the transformation only seeming to happen in the mind and behavior of the affected person.

A study on lycanthropy from the McLean Hospital reported on a series of cases and proposed some diagnostic criteria by which lycanthropy could be recognized:

-A patient reports in a moment of lucidity or reminiscence that they sometimes feel as an animal or have felt like one.

-A patient behaves in a manner that resembles animal behavior, for example howling, growling, or crawling.

According to these criteria, either a delusional belief in current or past transformation or behavior that suggests a person thinks of themselves as transformed is considered evidence of clinical lycanthropy. The authors note that, although the condition seems to be an expression of psychosis, there is no specific diagnosis of mental or neurological illness associated with its behavioral consequences.

It also seems that lycanthropy is not specific to an experience of human-to-wolf transformation; a wide variety of creatures have been reported as part of the shape-shifting experience. A review of the medical literature from early 2004 lists over thirty published cases of lycanthropy, only the minority of which have wolf or dog themes. Canines are certainly not uncommon, although the experience of being transformed into a hyena, cat, horse, bird or tiger has been reported on more than one occasion. Transformation into frogs, and even bees, has been reported in some instances. In Japan, transformation into foxes and dogs was usual. A 1989 case study described how one individual reported a serial transformation, experiencing a change from human to dog, to horse, and then finally cat, before returning to the reality of human existence after treatment. There are also reports of people who experienced transformation into an animal only listed as “unspecified”.

There is a case study of a psychiatric patient who had both clinical lycanthropy and Cotard delusion. The term ophidianthropy refers to the delusion that one has been transformed into a snake. Two case studies have been reported.

Related disorders:

In rare cases, individuals may believe that other people have transformed into animals. This has been termed “lycanthropic intermetamorphosis” and “lycanthropy spectrum”. A 2009 study reported that, after the consumption of the drug MDMA (Ecstasy), a man displayed symptoms of paranoid psychosis by claiming that his relatives had changed into various animals such as a boar, a donkey and a horse.  

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Section-19

Plant behaves like animal:

Characteristics of Plants & Animals:   

Plants and animals are both living things, but at first glance, they seem very different. Animals tend to move around, while plants stay rooted in one place. Animals eat their food, while plants convert sunlight into the energy they need. Despite these differences, scientists argue that plants and animals are more similar than they are different. Some living things even blur the line between the plant and animal kingdoms. Plants and animals both have cells that contain DNA, yet the structure of their cells differs. Animal cells absorb nutrients from food, while plant cells use plastids to create energy from sunlight.

Both plant and animal cells carry DNA – genetic material that is passed down from one generation to another. Because of DNA, plants and animals can pass on their genes over time and adapt to the environment around them via natural selection. Plant and animal cells both divide. Cell division is how individual animals and plants grow and replace parts of themselves. Human children reach adult height because of cell division, and grass grows for the same reason. Both plant and animal cells absorb nutrients and convert those nutrients into usable energy. Animal cells absorb nutrients from food, while plant cells absorb energy from sunlight via a process called photosynthesis.

Plant and animal cells have their differences, however. Plant cells are surrounded by a stiff cell wall, which helps keep plants rigid and upright, while animal cells are surrounded by a thin, permeable membrane that permits the absorption of outside substances. Plant and animal cells also contain differing organelles – inner-cellular structures. Some animal cells have cilia, the hair like protrusions that help the cell move around. Plant cells do not have cilia, although most plant cells contain plastids. These organelles, which animal cells lack, contain pigment or food and are necessary for photosynthesis.

Plant and Animal Senses:

Human beings have five senses: sight, scent, taste, touch and hearing. In fact, all living things, including plants, have senses, but without eyes, noses, tongues, skin or ears, can plants even sense the world around them? The answer is yes. All living things can sense the world around them, although they do so in different ways.

Most animals have fairly complex central nervous systems. Vertebrates – animals with a brain and spinal cord, such as human beings – have especially developed senses. Even invertebrates usually possess all or most of the five basic senses. Animals’ bodies interpret light, chemical signals, pressure and sound waves to understand what is going on around it.

Plants sense their environment in other ways. Instead of sensory organs, they use a combination of hormones and sensory ions to take in information. Plants can sense light, which is important since sunlight is a plant’s main source of energy. Plants slowly move over time to lean toward sunlight. Plants can also sense when the sun goes down. Scientists have found that certain plant species open pores on their leaves during the day to take in maximum sunlight, but close the pores at night to prevent moisture loss.

Scientists have recently discovered that plants can even communicate with one another. About 90 percent of plants have mutually beneficial relationships with fungus, which spreads out underground in large webs. These webs can link the roots of several plants together, allowing the plants to send signals and nutrients back and forth. Plants may send beneficial carbon to their neighbors via the “fungal” network or even toxic chemicals if new, competing plants begin to sprout.

Plant or Animal?

Usually, it is easy to tell a plant from an animal simply by looking. Animals move around and find their food. Plants are immobile and create their food. However, some creatures blur the line between plant and animal. These creatures possess characteristics that make classifying them as plants or animals difficult.

For example, coral reefs are colorful, underwater gardens located in warm ocean waters. The coral itself appears rooted in place, entirely immobile. In shades of green, pink and yellow, with round or petal-like shapes, coral resembles flowers. In almost every way, coral looks and behaves like a plant. However, coral is an animal that gathers its own food. Coral reefs are created by millions of tiny coral polyps clustered together, excreting an exoskeleton base to which they cling.

Venus flytraps, easily identified as plants by their green leafy appearance, exhibit behavior that is usually reserved for animals. These plants have “mouths” that clamp shut when insects land inside. The Venus flytrap even lines its mouth pad with a sweet-smelling substance to draw flies and other bugs. Whether this counts as hunting is up for debate, but there is no doubt that Venus flytraps move and eat food in addition to creating energy from sunlight via photosynthesis. Almost no other plants do this.

With thick “stems,” bright colors and waving “petals,” sea anemones look like beautiful ocean flowers swaying with the tide. At first glance, they appear to be plants, but these creatures are animals, and over periods of days or weeks, they can travel short distances.

Plants and animals have many differences, but many similarities as well. Some animals are so similar to plants and vice versa that they can be difficult to classify at first sight. All living creatures, plants and animals alike, share a common ancestor, which means that we are all related, in spite of the differences in our cells and senses.

Do Plants behave like Animals?

Part of the traditional division of organisms into the plant and animal kingdoms has been the notion that animals actively behave while plants passively exist. New research is proving, however, that plants are far more engaged with their own survival than we have previously thought. While “intelligence” may overstate the ability of plants to sense and react to their environment though changes in their own biology, many scientists have adopted the term “plant perception” to describe this behavior.

Examples of stimuli to which plants react include changes in temperature, chemical environment, light exposure, moisture levels, oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration, parasitic infestation, bacterial infection, and touch. One of the most familiar examples of plant perception is the response of the Venus Flytrap to the touch of an insect’s legs—snapping its “jaws” shut around its prey before slowly digesting it. Scientists now understand that the carnivorous Venus Flytrap is not such an anomaly of the plant world, and that many other species display behavior which can be just as dramatic—only much, much slower.

An example of very familiar plant behavior is the winding, climbing growth of ivy or vines toward the sun. Known as thigmotropism—literally “movement by touch”—this behavior is driven by the growth of tendrils that coil around objects like trees, buildings and trellises. As certain tendril cells touch the object, they produce a growth hormone that is transferred to non-touching cells, encouraging their relatively accelerated growth, and thus bending the tendril further around the object. Motion capture photography has allowed scientists to speed up such behavior to the point where it is easily perceived by humans as an flailing and gripping attempt of tentacle-like tendrils.

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Section-20

Why do robots look like animals and humans?

Boston Dynamic’s dog-like SpotMini robot went on sale in 2019. This cute and uncannily realistic canine-bot is just one of many robots that are inspired by the natural world. Human engineers increasingly look to living systems for clues to a good design, whether it be emulating an insect brain’s ability to navigate or building robots with bacterial stomachs that produce electricity.

SpotMini lean backwards on birdlike legs, counterbalance the weight of the heavy door and smoothly pull it open. The action is taken with a kind of animal grace, and for a moment its artificial origin seems to fade away. But why do we robot engineers base so many of our designs on animals? Is a dog-like robot the only sensible way to accomplish the tasks that SpotMini has been built to achieve, or are we just taking a shortcut and stealing from the natural world? The answer is of course, both. To understand this we must think about how nature’s design came about, and also about what we want our robots to do.

The modular and symmetrical body that most animals have is a remarkable feat of natural design. It was this layout that enabled, during “the Cambrian explosion” 500 million years ago, the vast diversity of complex animal forms we see today. The evolutionary benefit of bilateral bodies has given animals with this form adaptive advantages over most rival configurations. Traits such as balance and a sense of front and back are inherent aspects of the design. Legs with hips and knees are a relatively small extension that massively increase range and capability. These attributes give animals precise control and they are the foundations of a general intelligence, allowing creatures to navigate and explore new environments and difficult terrain. That’s why nearly every animal today conforms to the plan.

Nature’s other great unifier is her efficiency. Every adaptation that could improve a species’ use of energy was explored, and wasteful variants swiftly out-competed by a thriftier cousin. We can see it in the poise of a cat’s jump and the precision of a fish’s dart, even in the rhythm and bounce of our own walking. Animals are remarkably efficient, and adaptable to new situations and conditions. Robot designers want their creations to be similarly capable. After all, the fundamental constraints that nature has been working with over millions of years still apply, whatever the purpose is of the robots we create.

Biomimetics is the field dedicated to imitating aspects of nature to better understand, and potentially solve, complex human issues. It’s the reason why so many engineers and researchers are creating robot models of animals. Biomimetic robots take inspirations from the designs perfected by nature over millions of years of evolution.

But unlike most animals, we want our robots to be effective not just in the natural environment, but also within the human domain. This means that we create robots suited for a world designed by humans. Humans are animals, and we operate according to the properties of our bodies. The prehistoric world shaped us. Natural selection favoured our limbs, eyes, hands and even our sense of direction over long-extinct competitors. Today, the world we’ve constructed reflects this history. People rarely stop and think about it, but our evolutionary heritage is actually encoded in our doors and staircases, our signs and signals, our cameras and our microphones, our cupboards and our corridors. We have designed these objects around our own physical characteristics. The closer a body is to a human’s, the better it will navigate and manipulate a human world.

Dr Ben Goertzel, who developed the AI software for Sophia, a social humanoid robot made by Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, believes robots should look like humans to help “break down suspicions and reservations people might have” about interacting with them.

The clear parallels between robots and living things in physical design and behaviour invite us to wonder why these machines should be so lifelike. We should remember that, as we try to build machines that operate in our worlds of culture and prehistoric survival, we impose on them the same constraints that those worlds imposed on us. These constraints leave engineers surfing in nature’s wake, marveling at her creativity and efficiency. And, as we demand more of our machines in the human world, it shouldn’t be surprising that they often begin to look more and more like ourselves. Whether we make a conscious choice to copy nature, or try to design an effective machine from first principles, the results are likely to be the same. Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery but in the case of robotics, it is a deep and respectful acknowledgement that nature’s way is hard to beat in any circumstance.

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Moral of the story:  

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1. Every species on the planet has some features/traits that it shares with other species, and some that make it stand out.

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2. Species can share a trait for two reasons: either the species are closely related and they have inherited the trait from their common ancestor, or the shared trait is an adaptation to similar evolutionary pressures. Different species share a set of common traits because they were inherited from a common ancestor. For example, humans share many traits with our nearest relatives, the great apes i.e. bonobos, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans. This evolutionary process is called homology. In contrast is the process of convergent evolution, in which different species independently adapt similar features. For example, humans and birds are both bipedal, but not because we shared a common two-legged ancestor. Humans and birds adapted to walking on two legs for different reasons at different points in time. This evolutionary process is called analogous adaptation.

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3. Chimpanzees and humans share a common ancestor. Chimpanzees are genetically closest to humans, and in fact, chimpanzees share about 96% of our DNA. Chimpanzees, more than any other living creature, have helped us to understand that there is no sharp line between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. The DNA evidence leaves us with one of the greatest surprises in biology: the wall between human, on the one hand, and ape or animal, on the other, has been breached. The human evolutionary tree is embedded within the great apes. Very surprisingly domesticated cattle share about 80% of their DNA with humans and bananas share about 60% DNA with humans!

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4. Humans (Homo sapiens) are highly intelligent primates that have become the dominant species on Earth. They together with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans are part of the family Hominidae (the great apes, or hominids). Humans are terrestrial animals, characterized by their erect posture and bipedal locomotion; high manual dexterity and heavy tool use compared to other animals; open-ended and complex language use compared to other animal communications; larger, more complex brains than other primates; and highly advanced and organized societies.

The combination of biology and culture is what makes us what we are and do what we do. Biology guides our responses to stimuli, based on thousands of generations of ancestors surviving because of their responses. Our culture dictates restrictions on and alterations in how we carry out our biological responses. Neither biology nor culture stands without the other. For some people, this is a contradiction — either nature (biology) controls people, or nurture (culture) does. But in fact, we filter everything through both to determine how we react to stimuli. Gene–culture coevolution explains how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution. Genes and culture continually interact in a feedback loop, changes in genes can lead to changes in culture which can then influence genetic selection, and vice versa.  

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5. In the past, justification for human primacy over animals came from religions that stated that humans are superior to animals because they have an immortal soul, and that God commanded humans to rule over animals. Aristotle believed that plants and animals were made for the sake of humans. However, the Theory of Evolution and modern physiology have pushed back against those beliefs, showing that there is an evolutionary continuum between animals and humans and that there are no fundamental differences between the physiology of the humans and other mammals. Darwin theorized that we are distinguished from animals only in degree, not in kind. Humans are animals too. On the basis of evolutionary theory, we should expect a cognitive, behavioral and emotional continuity between humans and other animals.

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6. Human uses of animals include both practical uses, such as the production of food and clothing, and symbolic uses, such as in art, literature, mythology, and religion. Some of the animals provide us with food (meat, milk, or eggs), others fiber (wool, hair, feathers/down) and some serve as companions, transportation or aid with work. Understanding the cultural role of animals is essential to understanding the relationships people have with them.

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7. All animals are eukaryotic, multicellular organisms, and almost all animals have a complex tissue structure with differentiated and specialized tissues. Most animals are motile, at least during certain life stages. All animals require a source of food and are, therefore, heterotrophic: ingesting other living or dead organisms. The majority of animals undergo sexual reproduction.  

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8. The genes that determine animal structure are called “homeotic genes.” They contain DNA sequences called homeoboxes, with specific sequences referred to as Hox genes. This family of genes is responsible for determining the general body plan: the number of body segments of an animal, the number and placement of appendages, and animal head-tail directionality. Hox genes are homologous in the animal kingdom: the genetic sequences and their positions on chromosomes are remarkably similar across most animals (e.g., worms, flies, mice, humans) because of their presence in a common ancestor. That is why many animals, from the very simple to the complex, share similar embryonic morphology and development. A human embryo and a frog embryo, at a certain stage of embryonic development, appear remarkably similar.      

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9. Animal behavior includes all the ways animals interact with other organisms and the physical environment. Behavior is anything an animal does involving action and/or a response to a stimulus. Blinking, eating, walking, flying, vocalizing and huddling are all examples of behaviors. Lloyd Morgan’s canon says that accept the simplest explanation for animal behavior rather than a more complex cognitive process. Some behaviors are innate, or genetically hardwired, while others are learned, or developed through experience. In many cases, behaviors have both an innate component and a learned component. Behavior is shaped by natural selection. Natural selection is involved in shaping anything and everything about us, and some animals really do have genetically programmed behaviors that are complex, such as a beaver building a dam, a behavior that appears to be almost completely innate. Many behaviors directly increase an organism’s fitness, that is, they help it survive and reproduce. The behaviours of animals, like their anatomical structures, are adaptations that exist because they have, over evolutionary time (that is, throughout the formation of new species and the evolution of their special characteristics), helped their bearers to survive and reproduce.

But we are expecting too much of natural selection to think that all of the complex behaviors we see in animals is the product of pure genetics and “survival of the fittest.” Social learning resolves this conundrum. Animal species didn’t have to sit around and wait for random mutation to give them the innate knowledge of where to find food. They learned from their parents and others. Some of the most essential skills found in many animals are actually learned socially, rather than learned individually by trial and error or acquired innately.   

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10. One purpose of studying animal behaviors is to gain insights into developmental and evolutionary processes. Another purpose of studying animal behavior is the hope that some of these observations may be generalized to human populations. Historically, animal studies have been used to suggest whether certain medications/ vaccines might be safe and appropriate for humans, whether certain surgical procedures might work in humans, and whether certain learning approaches might be useful in classrooms. Pavlov’s studies of classical conditioning in dogs and Skinner’s studies of operant conditioning in rats are seen as providing insights into human psychology. Konrad Lorenz and Harry Harlow are just two of the best-known researchers into the effects of maternal deprivation and their studies on animals found that maternally deprived infants suffered irreversible social and emotional damage. Many psychologists have argued that human infants also have a critical attachment period and that they too suffer permanent long-term damage if they are separated from their attachment figure.  

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11. The studies of the behavior of captive animals and neurobiological research often produce spurious results concerning social behavior and emotions because animals are being studied in artificial and impoverished social and physical environments. The experiments themselves might put individuals in thoroughly unnatural situations. Indeed, some researchers have discovered that many laboratory animals are so stressed from living in captivity that data on emotions and other aspects of behavioral physiology are tainted from the start. It has long been known that most social animals that are reared artificially in captivity will be deficient in many skills that adult animals of that species are generally proficient at. For examples, chimpanzees raised without adult chimpanzees do not know how to build nests or care for young when they become parents themselves. Ring-tailed lemurs raised artificially do not show the “normal” food preferences that wild lemurs display and instead will eat a larger variety of food. Even properly controlled studies on animas often cannot account for ecological context because animals would never encounter laboratory conditions in the course of their natural lives. Also, animals are continually making choices throughout their lives, and these choices are often made in chaotic and dynamic environments; but behavior analytic research can take place in a tightly-controlled laboratory environment with animals making relatively simpler decisions.

On the other hand, field work also can be problematic. It can be too uncontrolled to allow for reliable conclusions to be drawn. It is difficult to follow known individuals, and much of what they do cannot be seen. However, it is possible to fit free-ranging animals with devices that can transmit information on individual identity, heart rate, body temperature, and eye movements as the animals go about their daily activities. This information is helping researchers to learn more about animal behavior and emotions.

Last but not least is that it’s difficult to get funding for animal behavioral experiments because the field is competing for grants with areas of research like those on cancer, AIDS and now Covid-19 that have more possibility to improve human life.      

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12. Animal personality is consistent or repeatable variation in behaviour across time and contexts, attributable to the combined influences of genetic effects and environmental effects that permanently affect the phenotype of an individual. Animal personality can be identified in a broad array of species, ranging from squid, crickets, and lizards, to trout, geese, and orangutans; and shows considerable cross-species generality for some dimensions. There are striking behavioural differences among individuals of the same species of animals. These variations can dramatically, and often predictably, influence how individuals interact with their environment, and can affect the outcome of biotic interactions such as predation, competition, parasitism, cooperation and mate choice. Understanding animal personality in the context of epidemiology may help to inform captive breeding, reintroductions, and the conservation of endangered species, as well as potentially shedding light on disease transmission in humans.

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13. The same evolutionary forces of cooperation and competition have shaped both humans and animals. Identical emotional and instinctual drives govern our actions. By acknowledging this shared programming, the human experience no longer seems unique. Animals fall in love, establish rules for fair play, exchange valued goods and services, hold “funerals” for fallen comrades, deploy sex as a weapon, and communicate with one another using rich vocabularies. Animals also get jealous and violent or greedy and callous and develop irrational phobias and prejudices, just like us. Monkeys address inequality, wolves miss each other, elephants grieve for their dead, and prairie dogs name the humans they encounter. Although language appears to be a trait that only humans possess, most of the component parts of language are shared with other species. Human and animal behavior is not as different as once believed.

However, animals are mostly driven by instincts. Although we humans also have instincts, we are mostly driven by reason. Animals have it pre-programmed in their minds from birth on what to do in many situations as they designed to do specific things. Many animals can stand and walk just minutes after birth. Most animals from birth know what foods to eat and how to eat them. They know how to reproduce, where to migrate, and more. Even a baby turtle comes out of its shell and immediately knows to swim towards the ocean. The animal society stay on the same level despite the advance of thousands of years as it is based upon instinct. A feature that distinguishes humans from most animals is that we are not born with an extensive repertoire of behavioral programs that would enable us to survive on our own. To compensate for this, we have an unmatched ability to learn, i.e., to consciously acquire such programs by imitation or exploration. Once consciously acquired and sufficiently exercised, these programs can become automated to the extent that their execution happens beyond the realms of our awareness. In human society the manifestation and modification of general traits occur on a cultural basis as opposed to animals where it occurs physiologically. Culture completely shapes the way we think, feel, perceive and behave. Although there are documented cases of transmission of learned information across generations in animals, producing what we could call an animal culture, no animal is as shaped by culture as we are.  In other words, animals have predominant instinctual behavior and less of learned behavior while humans have predominantly learned behavior and less of instinctual behavior.     

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14. Current research provides compelling evidence that at least some animals likely feel a full range of emotions, including fear, joy, happiness, shame, embarrassment, resentment, jealousy, rage, anger, love, pleasure, compassion, respect, relief, disgust, sadness, despair, and grief.

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15. In the game of life, survival is only part of the battle. One must also succeed in attracting a suitable mate as mating leads to propagation of species. Animals use a broad range of strategies to advertise themselves in the mating market. In some instances, visual cues highlight a morphological feature, for example, the peacock’s tail. Auditory courtship displays are common across many types of animal, including birds (song), frogs (vocalization), monkeys (calls), whales (song) and crocodiles (bellowing). Heterosexual humans exhibit traits and behaviours that are at times analogous to those expressed by animals. Specifically, humans use sex-specific products as sexual signals (e.g. men show off their luxury sports cars and women beautify themselves).

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16. Chimpanzees share nearly 96 % of our DNA. In fact, chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. But the similarities we share go beyond our genetic makeup. There are many ways in which chimpanzees and humans are the same! Chimpanzees laugh when tickled. Chimpanzees spend many hours playing social games, that is, those which are not played alone but with other chimpanzees. Chimpanzees have meta-cognition, that is, they are able to reflect on their own thoughts and mental processes. They have numerical memory scan. They are fair and moral. They cultivate friendship. They are gourmands. They wage war. Chimpanzees see and experience the world much as we do. Their sense of sight, smell, hearing and touch are very similar to our own. Chimpanzees use tools. Chimpanzees not only communicate like humans through body language, they also demonstrate a range of emotions including joy, sadness, fear and even empathy.

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17. The existence of socially transmitted behavioural variation between groups or subgroups of the same species in non-humans, reminiscent of human culture, is now well accepted. Reports of cultural transmission in non-humans, including in Japanese macaques, great tits and chimpanzees have launched a strong debate on the nature of culture in animals and how it compares to humans. A cultural species displays patterns of behaviour (or ‘traditions’) acquired in part through socially aided learning processes. Current day human-induced rapid environmental changes can, despite their usually devastating effects on wild animals, also foster behavioural variation, and thus potentially also cultural change among animals.

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18. It was argued that consciousness in mammals arises in the neocortex, and therefore cannot arise in non-mammal animals which lack a neocortex. However, consciousness in animals can arise from homologous subcortical brain networks. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses have consciousness (self-awareness). But to say that animals have a biological basis for consciousness is not the same as saying they actually think or feel similar to humans.

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19. Peer pressure, bad judgment and high-risk actions: adolescent animals and teenage humans face the same kind of coming-of-age challenges. Just as human adolescents frequently put themselves in danger deliberately, adolescent risk-taking is seen throughout the animal world.

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20. While animals do on occasion fight, harm, and kill one another in same-species social interactions, these sorts of encounters are extremely rare when compared to more positive social interactions and they often occur in unique social situations and ecological conditions. In many nonhuman primates, more than 90 percent of their social interactions are affiliative rather than competitive or divisive. Remember, only humans are capable of truly calculated evil. Childhood animal cruelty is a common behaviour among serial murderers and rapists especially those with psychopathic traits characterized by impulsivity, selfishness, and lack of remorse.

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21. The most common traits that sets us fundamentally apart from the rest are in the domains of language, mental time travel, theory of mind, intelligence, culture, and morality. In each domain, various nonhuman species have competences, but human ability is special in some respects—and they have much in common. In all six domains there are two major features that set us apart: our open-ended ability to imagine and reflect on different situations, and our deep-seated drive to link our scenario-building minds together. Our imaginations and the urge to connect our minds i.e. nested scenario building and the drive to link our scenario-building minds turned ape qualities into human qualities. They created powerful feedback loops that dynamically changed much of the human condition. They carried us where other animals could not go. It seems to be primarily these two attributes that carried our ancestors across the gap, turning animal communication into open-ended human language, memory into mental time travel, social cognition into theory of mind, problem solving into abstract reasoning, social traditions into cumulative culture, and empathy into morality.

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22. Our extraordinary powers do not derive from our muscles and bones, but from our collective wit. Together, our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies through which we have changed the face of the Earth, while even our closest animal relatives live quietly in their dwindling forests. We have a fundamental urge to link our minds together. This allows us to take advantage of others’ experiences, reflections and imaginings to prudently guide our own behaviour. The advanced function most clearly associated with the reorganization of the human brain is complex social cognition. No less than language, it distinguishes humans from animals. We link our nested scenario-building minds into larger networks of knowledge. This in turn helps us to accumulate information through many generations.

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23. Research in numerical processing shows that animals possess the evolutionary precursors to advanced mathematical abilities: animals can identify and name quantities, compare and discriminate different quantities, and even manipulate those quantities to perform simple additive operations. Many researchers believe that successful and elaborate food caching suggests that animals plan for the future. Higher-level cognition was once believed to be the unique province of human beings; but we now know that chimpanzees, baboons, and pigeons show similar intellectual abilities, at least in their basic form.

From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that cognitive human abilities also appear in other species. After all, the whole point of natural selection is that small variations among existing organisms can eventually give rise to new species. Our hands and hips and those of our primate relatives gradually diverged from the hands and hips of common ancestors. It’s not that we miraculously grew hands and hips and other animals didn’t. So why would we alone possess some distinctive cognitive skill that no other species has in any form?

We do not need spiritual or creationist explanations to grasp that the difference between human beings and other animals is fundamental rather than one of degrees as emergence of uniquely powerful human abilities can be explained by evolution. There must have been some gene mutation or set of mutations tens of thousands of years ago that endowed us with the unique ability to participate in a collective cognition. The evolution of the human brain at the genetic level is the foundation upon which cultural evolution has been built. A small difference in our innate abilities led to a unique connection between human minds — allowing us to learn through imitation and collaboration — leading to cumulative cultural evolution and the transformation of the human mind. The evolution of the human genetic makeup is merely the precondition for the emergence of distinctly human cultural abilities. We need to look to cultural evolution, rather than genetic evolution, to explain the vast gulf that exists between the capabilities and achievements of humans and those of other animals.

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24. Nonhuman animals such as apes have material mental powers. That means powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite. Nonhuman animals have a mental capacity to perceive and respond to particulars, which are specific material objects such as other animals, food, obstacles, and predators. Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals; but in addition, entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings can think abstractly while nonhuman animals cannot.

Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. Human rationality is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is based on ability to think abstractly. It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. Systems of taxonomy that emphasize physical and genetic similarities, ignore the fact that human beings are partly immaterial beings who are capable of abstract thought.

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25. Animals have “laser beam” intelligence, in which a specific solution is used to solve a specific problem. But these solutions cannot be applied to new situations or to solve different kinds of problem. On the other hand, humans have “floodlight” cognition that permits them to use thought processes in innovative ways and apply the solution of one problem to another situation.

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26. Causal reasoning is the process of identifying causality: the relationship between a cause and its effect. Humans have the ability not only to understand causality, but also to use this information to improve decision making and to make inferences about past and future events. Learning may be found in numerous species, but reasoning, at least at the highest level, only in a very few. Several species are sensitive to causally relevant features or cues in their environment (e.g., the weight or length of a tool), may be innately tuned to (at least some) of these features, and act as if surprised if causally sound relations are violated (e.g., objects floating in mid-air). It is unclear whether animals indeed have a deep understanding of the causal relationships or whether they respond to covariations.

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27. Because animals lack recursion (and human language is recursive), the animals’ lack of language is attributed to this factor. But recursion is not the only factor animals lack. If a species lacked language, even a nonrecursive language would be an enormous boon. Yet, chimpanzees have no language of any kind, recursive or nonrecursive. A number of factors stand between animals and language. For instance, chimpanzees lack voluntary control of their voice. Teaching is essential for language. Human children are taught their initial words by their mother, and only later do they acquire words more or less on their own. In humans, the evolution of teaching evidently preceded that of language. Chimpanzees do not teach, and even if they possessed all the other factors mentioned above, they could not have evolved language.

Externalization of concepts is just one component of language, and another is to help structure our private internal thought. Thus, we cannot accurately limit our estimation of what humans know to what they say. The same is true of animals, only more so. The flexibility and expressivity of human language is simply not present in animal communication systems. This limitation prevents animals to express what they know.    

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28. Among the most intelligent non-human species are chimpanzees & other great apes, elephants, New Caledonian Crows, and dolphins.

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29. Ethics is the ability to appreciate fairness, justice and rights. It is at the very core of our ability to form stable societies and to cooperate to achieve common goals. It depends on theory of mind (which allows us to “put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes”); on social emotions like guilt, shame, pride and contempt; on empathy and compassion, and on cultural heritage. For any degree of morality, one must have empathy, altruism, cooperation and a sense of fairness. In dolphins, elephants, and apes, we see more sophisticated versions of such capacities in terms of targeted helping, consolation, cooperation, and a sense of fairness; therefore, these animals can be moral agents. Interestingly these animals are also intelligent. However human studies show that intelligence and morality are not correlated. Why so? Because only humans are capable of truly calculated evil which obviously need intelligence.

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30. Suicide is unique to humans and sets us apart from other animal species. The scientifically proved suicide events by animals are mainly related to parasites affecting the behaviour of animals.

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31. Domesticated animals such as dogs, cats, and cattle are animals that have been selectively bred and genetically adapted over generations to live alongside humans. They are genetically distinct from their wild ancestors or cousins. If only the most human-tolerant members of the population are allowed to mate, certain genetic traits like reduced fear and increased friendliness will become more prevalent in future generations. The classic example of this is dogs being bred from wolves. The changes in behavior occur due to alterations in genes controlling brain development and function that increase animals’ tolerance of and even friendliness towards humans. Besides change in behaviour, change in diet is another characteristic found in domesticated animals. Domesticated animals are more likely to be smaller or larger than their wild counterparts; undergo multiple periods of fertility within the span of one year unlike wild animals, which often mate seasonally; and have spots or patches in their fur, curly hair, floppy ears, smaller heads, and shorter tails.

Animal domestication falls into three main groupings: domestication for companionship (dogs and cats), animals farmed for food (sheep, cows, pigs, turkeys, etc.), and working or draft animals (horses, donkeys, camels).            

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32. Unconditional love is known as affection without any limitations, or love without conditions. In human relationships, this precious commodity is almost impossible to find except mother’s love. But not with pets. It doesn’t matter if your boss yelled at you, your girlfriend broke up with you, or your car broke down on the Interstate. Your beloved pet is there for you. He/she is rubbing up against you, looking at you with those adoring eyes. Your dog or cat doesn’t care whether you’re skinny, rich, athletic, aged or popular. He/she just wants you: your presence, your affection, your voice, and your touch. We have to learn unconditional love from animals.

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33. Positive effects of human animal relationship include reduced stress, increased physical activities, improvement of immune system functioning and pain management, increased trustworthiness of and trust toward other persons, reduced aggression, enhanced empathy and improved learning. All these lead to an increase in the well-being of pet owners and also give them health benefits.         

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34. Anthropomorphism involves the attribution of human characteristics and qualities to animals, while zoomorphism does the reverse by giving animal qualities to humans; and dehumanization refers to the removal of human-like traits from a human i.e. humans are represented as nonhuman objects or animals or even worse. Dehumanization has negative connotation e.g. Nazi treatment of Jews; while zoomorphism has positive connotation e.g. spider man.  

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35. Of the 108 Nobel Prizes awarded for Physiology or Medicine, 96 were directly dependent on animal research. Animals are good research subjects for a variety of reasons. They are biologically similar to humans and susceptible to many of the same health problems. Also, they have short life-cycles so they can easily be studied throughout their whole life-span or across several generations. In addition, scientists can control the environment around the animal (diet, temperature, lighting, etc.), which would be difficult to do with people.

On the other hand, research conducted on animals is unable to reasonably predict what can be expected in humans, and medical treatments developed in animals rarely translated to humans. Although 85 HIV/AIDS vaccines have been successful in nonhuman primate studies, everyone has failed to protect humans. Research with human volunteers, sophisticated computational methods, and in vitro studies based on human cells and tissues are critical to the advancement of medicine.

Torturing and killing animals for human wellbeing is cruelty on animals. People with pets are often more capable of granting animals their due than scientists because the dog or cat or bird lover simply relates to the animal in their lives and doesn’t have to categorize or quantify or prove anything—they just experience their pets’ depth.

We the humans always have double moral standards. When we read about a lion or an elephant who is hunted and killed in the wild, our response is one of anger, almost as much anger as hearing stories of abuse and neglect of dogs and cats. Ironically routine slaughter of animals for food (cattle, chickens, pigs, etc.) doesn’t faze us nearly as much. Our morality is based on hypocrisy and selfishness, and yet we call ourselves morally superior to animals.  

One harmful consequence of creating categories where one group is unique and superior to others is that it justifies committing negative, often atrocious, acts on the members of the inferior group. Scholars have often claimed that humans are unique and superior to animals but these scholars forget that animals have similar physiological and mental capacities as infants or disabled human beings. We cannot survive without many of those other species today; it is because of the existence of other species that we exist. We need to treat them with the respect they deserve and not judge their intelligence by how much they resemble us, nor evaluate them only on the basis of what they provide us. 

We should care about the welfare of animals, even as we try to understand how similar and how different they are from ourselves. What moves us to treat animals well is our empathy, our compassion, our sense of fairness and our cultural values. Things that animals do not have. Ultimately, we must treat animals right not because of what they are, but because of who we are.   

We must not continue to place human profit ahead of the rights of animals and the ecosystems that support them otherwise it will eventually lead to diseases like Covid-19 and global warming.       

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36. Animals do move in groups governed by the collective. Think of a flock of birds, a parade of ants, a school of fish and herd of sheep. Living in a group provides quite a few benefits. There is safety in numbers. Catching one animal is much harder when there are dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of similar animals nearby. Group members can cooperate in finding food. Group hunters can catch larger prey than individual animals can, and animals foraging might find spots where food is plentiful and all members of the group benefit rather than wasting time fighting over it. Groups can defend territories more efficiently than individuals can, and living in a group also provides better access to mates.

Humans also live in groups based on religion, ethnicity, race, caste, region and language to reap similar benefits. Majority of humans are not intelligent and independent, and behave like sheep and act according to their herd. Humans have herd mentality. That’s why they are so predictable. That’s why big corporate businesses can make billions upon billions of dollars, selling the same stuff over and over again. That is why vote bank politics works as politicians segregate people based on race, caste, religion, language, region and ethnicity.     

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Dr. Rajiv Desai. MD.

September 17, 2020 

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Postscript:

Are we animals?

No, we are worse than animals. We do not believe in unconditional love and we are capable of truly calculated evil. We do not wear mask or wear mask improperly resulting in unprecedented spread of Covid-19. Masking not only reduces the spread of Covid-19 but also builds immunity against the disease as masks reduce the viral load that a person is exposed to, thereby acting like a vaccine. I am sure that if animals are trained to wear mask, they would do better than humans.          

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