Kyzra

on a side note i did a simple experiment when i was younger (and for you youngsters out there looking for a science project you can do with simple household items and bugs found in the yard and house, listen up).

i found that common ants exhibit what may be a non-reactive reasoning ability.

what i did was place a common house spider in a jar (a variety that produces webs). who then proceeded to make a web.

i then placed a warrior ant in the jar. the spider, recognising the danger, escaped higher into the web. the ant, detecting the anchor web strands, avoided the web. it ran around thumping the ground with its abdomen (it was lost and trying to find the way back home).

now the fun part begins. i placed a 2nd warrior ant from the same colony into the jar. these two ants found each other, communicated through their mandibles (sharing food?). they then proceeded to go around the jar cutting down every anchor strand, thus dropping the spider to the ground. then, they attacked and dismembered the poor spider.

this showed me that ants have enough reasoning ability to know that a single ant is not enough to attack the spider, but two, working together can.

they have devoloped enough intelligance to figure out that cutting the anchor strands will reward them with a falling spider.

they have enough communication ability to form a plan and co-operate with its execution.

Alonzo Fyfe

Point number 1: A human sits down to eat a meal. He hears a strange sound. Does he automatically run away? Where is the evidence of abstract reasoning in an automatic reaction?

We could very easily describe the antelope's actions as follows. It acquired an observation that suggested a possible hypothesis -- a lion was present. It picked its head up, listened, looked, and tried to come with with further evidence that either comfirmed or falsified its orginal hypothesis.

Antelopes are heard animals. It measures the reaction of the heard. Is there evidence that anybody else hears or sees anything?

If every antelope took off at every hint of problem, sending the whole heard into flight, the whole heard would never stop running. This is not the best solution to the problem. The solution is to run when the evidence suggests that there is more danger to staying than the benefits warrant. Without sufficient evidence to suggest otherwise, the heard stays put.

Just as a group of humans would do under similar circumstances. "Hey, Fred, what's up?" "I think I heard something." George listens. "I don't hear anything. Probably just the wind, or a gopher, or something. Just, keep an eye open."

Now, we may say that this is too complex for animals. It may well be. But, it is meant to point out that the claim that animals do not engage in abstract reasoning is an assumption -- and to use this to show that they think differently from humans is question-begging.

Animals do not think at the level of complexity as humans, but it does not follow from the fact that human thinking compares to animals is different in degree that it is a difference in the kind of thinking.

Mageth

Or it could all be "programmed" in the ants, rather than reasoning and problem solving. Ants are more like little programmed robots than reasoning machines. They just don't have the neurons to spare for reasoning.

Simple ant forage program:

forage
if (find food)
..if (alone)
....go get other ants
....bring back to food
....attack
..else if (not alone)
....attack

Could be simplified as:

forage
if (find food)
..if (alone)
....go get other ants
....bring back to food
..attack

Likewise, cutting spider webs could be "programmed" similarly to leaf cutting in leaf cutting ants.

Mageth

In his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennet reaches a similarly strong conclusion. The human mode of thought is quite qualitatively distinct from the mode of thought of animals; even of animals (like beavers) which appear to formulate long-term plans (like building a dam).

I'm reading that section of the book right now.
It's a great book and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it.

Dr.GH

A former student was one of the trainers of Michael the gorilla that was to be the
companion of the more famous Coco. The project didn’t want Coco to have an
“illiterate” friend so Michael was taught American sign language as well as Coco. I
asked my student about her experience and if she thought that gorillas could “talk.” (
note: this is not at all the same as being able to invent a language. The problem that
Chomski has with non-human primate language use is in MHO his objection to other
primates inventing language vis a vis innate/hardwired language ability.)

Odett said that I should learn to sign and talk with Michael or Coco, and that while she
was not a linguist (nor would ever want to be a linguist) her conversations with Michael
felt like conversations with (young) humans. Her accounts of Michael telling lies about
rules he broke (like throwing shit at a trainer because he didn’t get something he wanted
and then saying that “Coco did it,&#8221 were to me very persuasive. It was more persuasive
because Odett really was disinterested in the theoretical issues.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Dr.GH ]</p>

ksagnostic

Huh uh. YES! (sorry, couldn't resist)

OK, my fellow agnostic. We are going to have to tangle on this.

1) There is well documented, videotaped, peer reviewed work that strongly suggests that non-human animals can and do understand and manipulate symbols. Check out the works of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and collegues; Sarah Boysen; Lynn Miles; the original classic studies by Allan and Beatrix Gardner and the follow-up work by Roger and Deborah Fouts; Louis Herman; Roger Schusterman; and by far the most damaging in terms of claims that human thought is unique IN KIND when it comes to symbolic communication, the very thorough, detailed work of Irene Pepperberg. Terrance Deacon, much less Daniel Dennett, are hardly the last words on this issue.

2) Neurological evidence, at least when it comes to great apes, has generally not been helpful to the "human brains are qualitatively different from those of other animals, including great apes". The work of William Hopkins and collegues has indicated that great ape brains have substantial structural anatomical similarities to human brains, particularly in the presence of similar anatomical correlates to those that are labeled Wernicke's and Broca's areas in humans. Furthermore, the old argument that human brains have proportionately larger frontal lobes now appears to be false. To be sure, the quantitative difference between human and other great ape brains is substantial, not only in terms of brain size but in the amount and time of post natal brain development, and those differences account for qualitative differences. However, I think that the cognitive differences between humans and other great apes can be explained in terms of differences in quantity, and particularly much longer developmental windows of opportunity for humans. I would allow that it is possible that human brains have structures and qualities intrinsically different from those of other great apes, but I think that claims to this effect are the relatively extraordinary claims, and as such are the ones that need to be supported. For example, I tend to agree with those who argue that language acquisition devices are probable red herrings. I think the more general trait of attending to the communication signals of conspecifics, combined with a longer developmental period and an extremely large brain for body size in an already large mammal, is likely to explain the acquisition of language.

3) Keep in mind that there is a really hot political battle going on here. On one hand, you have a population of people who tend to work in the rich complexities of human thought and language, such as philosophers and linguists, who are very uncomfortable with the idea that the gap between humans and other cognitively complex non-human animals is not quite so enormous as they have imagined. In addition, you have some outspoken biomedical researchers who find the idea of vast qualitative differences between humans and all other animials much more comforting. On the other hand, some ape language researchers who have worked for years with non-human animals in language and cognitive studies have developed enormous bonds with their charges, and tend to take professional criticism of their methods and claimed results very personally. I would include in this population some other biomedical researchers who have had a lot of direct experience with their subjects. For more information on this war, I recommend two books, MONKEY WARS by Deborah Blum and VISIONS OF CALIBAN by Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall. Blum's book is the more balanced of the two, although her work (which won a Pulitzer Prize) substantiated a lot of what Peterson reported. At any rate, make no mistake, the controvery over animal cognition, and particularly animal language studies, is a front in this war. Most everyone participating in this study has an agenda, or at least a clear bias, and as such most everything written on this subject should be taken with a grain of salt. Including my post.

4) Finally, I fully admit to my biases in favor of a generaous interpretation of animal cognitive capabilities, and the background that predisposes me to these biases. These include a lifelong interest in human evolution and in particularly primatology, my professional emphasis in augmentative and alternative communication in people with profound developmental and communication disabilities (which owes quite a lot, as a matter of fact, to ape language experiments), and 12 and a half years as a zoo volunteer who has logged considerable observation time with chimpanzees. I can only hope that my awareness of these biases can help me to identify my less objective beliefs on this issue. On the other hand, my biases do, I think, select strongly for an enhanced bullshit detection system when it comes to the arguments of the "humans are unique" camp.

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]

[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]</p>

Dank

I think we need to note the difference between insight and abstraction. Insight is contemplating the effect of possible actions on known objects...the chimp and the boxes, for example. Abstraction is using symbols, etc. which is more 'human' than mere insight...

cricket

Pinker was saying that chimps can't point? Even my cat points. As well as a cat can, that is... she rears up on hind legs & stabilizes herself with one paw against a wall or cabinet. She uses the other arm to 'point'. She stretches out and reaches for whatever it is she's 'pointing' at. If she wants through a door she reaches for the doorknob. If she wants fed she reaches toward a bowl. etc.

It's not like she's smart, though. It's not like I can say words from the dictionary and she points out examples. But for the things she needs, she points to an item that to her, represents that something.

Someone mentioned beavers. They're just doing what they're programming tells them to do, right?

They don't realize they're building dams, do they?

I don't think they do.

(could be wrong. havent asked them)

Marduk

Sometimes these threads make me wonder if I stumbled onto a fundamentalist website by mistake, such desparation to proove man is 'better' than the other animals on this big rock.

lpetrich

As to animal intelligence, I remember a documentary on this subject that evaluated such claims; it mentioned 19th-cy. biologist Romanes as claiming that members of many animal species have a lot of planning ability and the like. However, that program presented some amusing counterexamples.

For example, individual tent caterpillars follow silk strands that their fellow caterpillars have laid down; the program showed an example of some tent caterpillars faithfully following some strands arranged in a circle -- they were moving in circles.

And as to beavers building dams, the documentary reported on an ingenious experiment: using an underwater speaker to play back the sound of rushing water -- and the beavers piled up sticks and mud at that place.

Much animal behavior can be understood as various simple algorithms: if you experience something, then do something. Thus, beavers have a dam-building algorithm that goes: if you hear some rushing water, put sticks and mud there. And tent caterpillars have a "when it's time to move, follow the silk strands" algorithm, which is followed when they move between their silken tents and their food: tree leaves.

Similar simple algorithms can produce such sorts of behavior as flocking; there's a simulation called "boids" that demonstrates a simple flocking algorithm -- each boid will move toward the closest boids it sees, but not too close.

If one was to compare human thinking with some approximate average of animal "thinking", there is a giant gulf. However, there are a few species that come close to our species, such as chimpanzees.

An interesting site:
<a href="http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/spring/BirdBrain.html" target="_blank">http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/spring/BirdBrain.html</a>

"To test how well animals reason, scientists can do several experiments. In one test called the Krushinsky problem, an animal looks into a chamber with two dishes. One has food, the other is empty. Then the scientist moves the dishes behind two trap doors so the animal can't see either dish, and watches where the animal goes."

Dogs and crows can pass the test, but cats, rabbits, pigeons, and chickens often fail. I wonder if anyone has done this experiment on monkeys or chimps or human children at various ages.

"Counting Ability
To test how well animals can count, scientists can train animals to learn to distinguish between two and three sound tones. Monkeys have to go through 21,000 trials to figure this out, and rats never learn how, but birds have little trouble with this. Another test shows birds a picture of a number of objects, and places different numbers of objects in front of several boxes. The box with the same number of objects in front of it as the picture has food and the others are empty. This test proved that ravens and parakeets can learn to count as high as 7."

By comparison, our species has a fast-reaction count limit of 4 or 5 -- it takes extra thinking to count past that.