Parade Magazine
07-27-07
How Much Do Animals Really Know?
By Eugene Lınden
We all want to believe our pet is as smart as it seems, and every now and then a
dog or cat does something astonishing. In 2003 in Kentucky, a dog named
Scooby limped to a vet’s office after being hit by a car. A year later in Richland,
Wash., a rottweiler named Faith hit 911 on the speed dial with its nose and
barked into the phone after its owner fell out of her wheelchair.
Are these slam-dunk cases of animal intelligence? The answer used to be a
definitive “no,” but now we can say “maybe.”
Scientists are seeing evidence of higher mental abilities in a wider range of
animals than previously imagined. They’ve also observed unexpected traits and
skills, like empathy and the ability to fashion weapons.
Empathy—being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes—is important
because it is the basis of morality. But empathy is very difficult to prove. Actions
don’t always imply intent. Thus, skeptics have tended to dismiss accounts of
chimps helping other chimps, dolphins saving drowning people and elephants
supporting their injured herd mates. In lab experiments, rats have been shown to
refuse food if their eating causes suffering for other rats. But Harvard biologist
Marc Hauser has pointed out that the rats might simply be avoiding unpleasant
squealing.
Empathy relies on self-awareness. Only an animal that recognizes itself can
understand another’s plight. So there’s the gauntlet: If you can prove that an
animal knows it is a separate creature from others, the case for animal empathy
becomes stronger.
A widely used test for a sense of self is to see whether an animal recognizes
itself in a mirror. Experimenters will put a mark on an animal’s forehead, then
place the animal in front of a mirror. Monkeys, cats and rats react as though they
are encountering another member of their species and have shown no curiosity
about the mark. By contrast, dolphins and great apes realize that they are looking
at themselves.
Do elephants care?
Elephants have the largest brain of any land animal, but not much is known
about how they use it.
Last fall, Joshua Plotnik, an Emory University graduate student, published the
results of a mirror test he’d done with elephants. Working with Emory’s Frans de
Waal, a pioneer in the study of chimpanzee intelligence, and Diana Reiss, who
devised a version of the mirror test for dolphins, Plotnik installed a sturdy 8x8foot Plexiglass mirror in an enclosure at New York City’s Bronx Zoo. Keepers
painted a white X on the foreheads of three females—Maxine, Patty and Happy.
Then Plotnik sat back and enjoyed the show.
The results were fascinating. The three females seemed to recognize right off the
bat that the image was not another elephant. They experimented with the
reflected image just like kids—moving their heads to the side and watching how
the mirror image reacted. Happy used the image to guide her trunk so that she
could examine the white X marked on her forehead.
It may not sound like much, but this means that Happy has a prerequisite for
recognizing that another animal—or human—needs help. And if Happy has the
capacity for empathy, so do all elephants.
That’s what seemed to happen once at the Indianapolis Zoo. Sophi, a female
elephant, watched her keepers push a heavy cart across the yard after cleaning
up the enclosure. The elephant had never received any training to do chores, but
suddenly she started to push too. Was Sophi displaying empathy? We have no
way of knowing, notes Deborah Olson, a director at the zoo, but the staff keenly
felt Sophi’s attachment to them.
Actually, examples of animal empathy have long been noted. What’s new today
is that scientists seem ready to accept the idea that animals may be conscious or
smart. Frans de Waal cites an example of chimp empathy dating back to 1910: A
Russian scientist couldn’t get a chimp to come down from a roof unless she
pretended she was hurt. Only now are such stories receiving a hearing in the
scientific establishment.
“We are now much freer to talk about mental processes and emotions in animals
that 15 years ago would have been laughed out of the room,” says de Waal.
Animals bearıng arms
The use of tools—and weapons—is considered a mark of higher intelligence. In
the 1960s, the idea that animals might fashion weapons was the stuff of sciencefiction films. Then, in 1999, a team led by Richard Wrangham of Harvard
observed chimps using sticks to beat other chimps. Even more stunning were
reports published this spring by Jill Pruetz of Iowa State University about
chimps in the savannas of Senegal fashioning sticks into spears, which they
used to hunt small primates called bush babies.
These chimps may have been hunting for a very long time—there’s evidence that
they pass on such expertise from generation to generation. The primatologist
Christophe Boesch has observed chimps using granite stones to crack panda
nuts in the Ivory Coast’s Tai Forest since the 1980s. But this year, Boesch and
Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary uncovered nut-cracking stones in that
same forest dating back 4,300 years—even before early Africans started using
agriculture. This means that, unknown to science, the chimps have been doing
something in close proximity to humans for thousands of years.
As scientists continue to investigate evidence of intelligence, empathy and
foresight in animals, we’re also likely to broaden our understanding of the origins
and nature of human ingenuity. Such studies should increase our respect for the
other creatures with whom we share the planet.