Dumb But Not Stupid: Intelligence in The Animal Kingdom

Dumb But Not Stupid: Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom

By Mr Ghaz, November 10, 2009

Dumb But Not Stupid: Intelligence in the Animal Kingdom

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For every animal lover who claims that a pet is “almost human,” there is a cynic who considers pets “dumb animals.” But according to the latest scientific experiments on animal intelligence, the animal lovers may be right.

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Some of the most convincing evidence about animal intelligence has been collected by Alan and Beatrice Gardner at the University of Nevada. They have taught a female chimpanzee named Washoe to communicate with humans, using the sign language of the deaf.

Sign Language

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Almost from birth, only signs were used to communicate with Washoe, and she was encouraged to respond in the same way. During four years of training she acquired a vocabulary of 130 signs and used them to identify objects that she recognized. Sometimes she would even be clever enough to invent new signs, such as water-bird the first time she saw a swan.

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The use of tools by mammals and birds has reinforced the belief that animals are capable of some reasoning. At the Miami Seaquarium in Florida, a green heron has become well-known for using fish-food pellets as bait to catch his dinner. The heron picks up tray pellets, drops them into the water and, if fish are not attracted quickly, retrieves the pellets in order to try again. One observer reported that in one 25-minutes period, the bird baited and caught 24 fish, and that it failed on only two occasions.

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Other bird species employ tools also. A group of ravens in Oregon hit on the novel idea of picking up stones to bombard people who stray too close to their nests. Darwin’s finches, native to the Galapagos Islands, use cactus spines to probe crevices for insects. In Texas, green jays have been observed twigs for poking under loose back to dislodge insects.

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Mammals are equally enterprising. Sea otters open shells by pounding them with stones. And – perhaps even more impressive – chimpanzee strip branches of side shoots and leaves, forming probes of just the right length to extract termites from deep holes in mounds.

Brain Power

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Recent research is also overturning a few long-cherished beliefs about which animal are the cleverest. For example, it seems that pigeons may be as intelligent as chimpanzee and dolphins, the animals commonly thought to be second only to humans in their brain power.

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After one experiment researchers believed that chimpanzees were capable of thought because the animals actually decided to move a box to a spot where, by climbing onto it, they could eat bananas that hung out of reach. But when similar tests were carried out at Harvard University using pigeons that were specially trained to push boxes, the pigeons proved just as capable of solving a problem. And in tests that involved distinguishing red and green lights in order to obtain food, dolphins and pigeons performed equally well.

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One of the leading authorities on animal intelligence, Professor Donald R. Griffin of Rockefeller University, New York, believes that all the evidence indicates that animals are capable of what he calls “conscious mental experience.”

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Not all of his colleagues agree with Professor Griffin. But most of them no longer insist that only instinctive, automatic behavior characterizes members of the animal kingdom.