This is a big problem. But I’m not sure I want to see how the research looks when they DON’T care about the animals.
If you think about it, there are many times in the lives of most humans when they are seemingly unaware of their own mortalitiy. It’s not like we can all be Nietzsche and Kierkegaard all the time.
I’m guessing animals are even more like that.
To do the research properly I think you’d have to be very cruel. Particularly if it does turn out that some animals a concept of mortality. It would be difficult to do such a study without repeatedly exposing animals to death.
To be fair, I mostly subscribe to what you call the Cartesian theories because I think I think the idea we “still adhere to today” is that we’re different. Ask someone why they got married and it’s all flowers and poetry and love and self-actualization. Really? It’s got nothing to do with an instinctual urge to pair up and procreate? They just decided to do that all on their own, just like 99% of their friends?
I suppose if we were sea turtles, we’d just find it really romantic to find a particular beach on a particular full moon?
Or maybe possible that even human behavior is like an iceberg: 90% of our brain is following the currents, while the 10% at the top creates ex-post-facto delusions to convince itself that it’s in control. I suppose it’s the cynic in me, but this explanation of behavior seems to fit world affairs better than the idea that we’re rational, thinking, feeling beings.
Human males don’t seem to grasp the concept until they’re about 25.
I think this was more applicable maybe 20, 30 years ago. Forget mammals, nowadays people rave about how clever corvids and octopuses are. I figure it’s only a matter of time before they find a problem solving lizard somewhere.
Showing empathy towards others is great and all, but it doesn’t imply a level of self-awareness or meta cognition that includes the knowledge of one’s own death. Think of a small child. They’ll grieve over the death of a parent, but the idea that they too will die someday isn’t always apparent. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is beyond all non-human animals.
Dogs have been mentioned. Dogs can’t pass a mirror test. They would act different when they’re dying because they’re sick and in pain, not because they’re suffering existential angst. Or maybe they do. Maybe the mirror test isn’t the be all end all, but there’s not much other evidence yet that says otherwise.
Animals that can pass the mirror test:
- many but not all great apes
- cetaceans
- corvids
- elephants
Animals with intermediate results:
- capuchin monkeys
- pigs
This thread reminded me of this Onion video. I don’t know what’s funnier, the video itself or all the outraged comments taking it seriously.
That’s a hell of a typo when what you surely meant to write is “it’s possible that there may be some interpretive bias in some of the large amount of published literature on animal linguistic capabilities.”
This. Many dogs will instinctively view something moving at a high rate of speed as either a predator or prey and thus will either run away in the direction or its perceived path or chase it, respectively, and thus risk being killed even in the former situation when they view the car as a threat. They are not instinctively aware that the car is a non thinking, non living object that bears no relation to them as long as they do not deliberately put themselves in its way.
Animal psychology researchers have been divided for some time into two camps: The SR (Stimulus/Response) camp, which holds that animals are nothing more than mechanical stimulus / response machines, versus the so-called SOR camp, which posits that there is some cognitive activity mediating between the S and the R. (The “O”, typically pronounced “oh”, is just an empty circle representing the hypothesized vague cognitive-something-or-other in between the S and the R.)
Occam’s Razor or something like it is typically invoked in favor of the SR theory: We should assume as little as possible, and the “O” of SOR is a BIG HUNGUS PILE of stuff to assume that we don’t need.
However, an argument in favor of the SOR explanation has arisen, based on . . . (wait for it) . . . Occam’s Razor!
The idea here is that animal behavior is so complex, with such elaborate contingencies between S and R, that cognition is the least complicated thing to assume. Furthermore, humans evolved that way, so it might be simplest to assume that this is a common trait on all higher animals (inherited from a common ancestor), rather than assume that every species has evolved such elaborate behavior independently and differently.
This idea is further motivated by the observation that a lot of complex animal behavior is so recognizably similar to human behavior. Sure, they’re all different. But not so alien! The anecdotes above, about animals near death, show animals behaving in ways similar enough to human behavior that we find such behaviors recognizable! That seems to suggest a common evolutionary origin. For such complex behavior, it’s hard to imagine that a totally different mechanism might evolve that produces such similar results.
All those zillions of stories you read about clever things that dolphins do can be seen in this light. Didja all see that post I put up a few days ago about about the dolphin that pranked me when it got hold of a pen that fell out of my pocket? You can read cutesy stories all day and all night, there are so many of them. Anyone who has worked with dolphins has seen plenty of things like that, first hand. Should Occam’s Razor suggest to us that dolphins probably have cognitive lives recognizably like our own (even including a malicious sense of humor), or that they are some kind of totally alien beings that have no cognitive life, or at least nothing remotely like humans?
All these ideas could be food for thought about the OP’s original question about animals contemplating their own death.
I think that we owe a large debt to all the SR researchers, for getting a lot of stuff off the ground. As pointed out upthread, we have a lot more SR in our own lives than we readily acknowledge.
Ultimately, however, it seems to me that we should be able move to this SOR model, for all the reasons you mention. I still remember dissecting a dogfish shark in college. As I was looking at it’s tiny cerebrum, I found myself wondering just what kind of sharky thoughts it would use that tiny brain for as it swam around.
A concept of mortality probably comes in a number of forms. Most of us don’t really have much of a concept of it in our daily lives.
But when faced with the certainly of imminent death - that is likely a different issue. The difference between someone who is terminally ill in their last days or hours, or is on death row waiting for the morning on the appointed day, versus a healthy person who has no reason to suspect death any time soon. I have heard suggestions that pigs lining up in the slaughterhouse have a pretty clear idea of their imminent fate. Also I too have had cats that in their last days appeared to behave in just the way you might expect a creature with awareness of its death.
Physiological arguments might be made about this. There is a lot of our brain that controls emotion, behaviour and the like that we share with many other animals. We might have the additional components that provide for planning, higher levels of sentience, language; but that doesn’t mean that these particular neural structures are what are required for an understanding of personal death. Indeed it would be somewhat surprising if it was exactly just these structures that differentiate us that did carry all such capabilities.
Nice poetry.
Did Lawrence have any actual, you know, evidence for his assertion? Or was it just the Romaticism of his era leaking out?
We lived in area with lots of trees and lots of birds. Many of whom liked to tweet away all day long. A happy sound, or so it seems to us. One day as a joke I commented to my wife: “You know what they’re saying? ‘My feet hurt’ ‘Ow, Fred, my feet hurt. how about yours?’ ‘Yeah Sam, my feet hurt too’ Back and forth all day long I think they’re just complaining about their feet.”
It was a silly joke and to this day when I see a cluster of birds standing and tweeting up a storm I’ll say “I guess their feet really hurt!”. A private joke good for a chuckle at most.
But the underlying point is valid. We have no clue what that tweeting means. Happy, sad, random, lamenting sore feet? Who can tell?
This is a great conversation, you guys.
Cognitive Ethology is something that I should have done as a career if I’d only known it existed before last year. What brought me into reading everything there is about this topic is working in international animal rescue. I fully understand and appreciate that western values don’t fully line up with values of other places in the world, so we can’t expect every animal to live on figs and pillows. I in fact have a rural upbringing, so it doesn’t bother me at all to see animals on farms or dogs kept in yards - as long as proper animal husbandry is practiced. And we fall down even there in so many places. But when I talk about this with many people (I’ve tried various internet forums - I write better than I talk since I can pause and think about my wording) I constantly run into people who fully believe these things:
- Animals don’t think or feel so what do I care about if they’re hurt or not?
- You (meaning me) trying to explain how animals think and feel is nothing more than anthropomorphism so you should grow up and shut up.
And lots of people use logical fallacies which I find difficult to argue with. For example if I say that all I ask is that people should be kind, just don’t go out of your way to hurt things, I’m met with arguments about stepping on ants or killing bacteria when I wash my hands. Very black and white, all or nothing thinking.
So let’s try some gray thinking.
Anthropomorphism is an interesting concept. It states that observing an animal’s behavior and describing it in human behavior terms means I am projecting human motivation/thinking/feeling onto an unthinking/unfeeling animal. The reality is that until we can get a scientifically-sound body of evidence to prove that animals can think and feel, we can’t assume one way or the other. Cartesians and people who shout “anthropomorphizer!” are by nature assuming that animals do not think or feel. I would then state that they’re no better than I am, just the same going in the other direction. My argument at this point in time is that as long as we don’t know for sure, we should error on the side of caution. Don’t assume that dogs don’t feel so there’s no problem vivisecting them with no anesthesia.
The concept falls down in so many ways and when you point it out to the people who espouse it they get enraged. For example, there are some low-functioning autistic people who can’t communicate with the rest of society. Since they can’t speak we can’t know for sure that they think or feel (I’m using the black and white thinking of the Cartesian’s here, this is not my personal belief). If I observe their behavior and say that it looks like Joe Autistic is angry, am I anthropomorphizing? No, because I can clearly see that Joe is a human being. Okay, so it’s species-centric. Only humans are allowed to think and feel? Isn’t that an arrogant and egocentric position to take? My opinion is that the concept of anthropomorphism is offensively egocentric. “It does not look like me therefore it cannot function like I do.”
Another good fallacy that someone in one of the books I read pointed out: Some recent drug research studies (with rats) were discontinued because we’ve now collected enough of a body of evidence to prove that rats do not react to some medications the same way humans do. (See the problems with drugs like Vioxx.) The reason we test on rats is because they’re mammals and therefore close enough to humans to do accurate tissue studies. But now we’re seeing that’s wrong, since they react differently to the drugs than humans do, it makes no sense to
research on them.
There is also a U.S. animal welfare law that states that “higher” animals used for research (dogs, cats, primates) must be given anesthesia and pain controlling medication when the research involves vivisection or surgery, but mice, rats and birds are specifically excluded from that requirement. So cats are thinking and feeling enough to warrant anesthesia but rats are not? Parrots are not? Who drew that line, and why was it drawn there? (Hint: politics)
To paraphrase George Orwell: Furry/cute, good; scaly/slimy/ugly, bad.
Yes, that’s undoubtedly part of it. That’s the part that allowed the lobbyists to get away with drafting the law that way, thus winning out over the HSUS/PETA folks.
Although, I and many others think that rats are quite cute. I’m not a bird person, but many people are, and they’d argue the same thing for the birds.
I can’t even begin to fathom how anyone could possibly believe those things unless they never had any kind of interaction with an animal in their entire lives. Certainly anyone who has ever had a dog would be well aware of how false those beliefs are, unless that person had all the perception and sensitivity of a block of concrete. My dog would constantly amaze me with his displays of emotion, wants, likes, and dislikes, and his sometimes clever cunning to get things he wanted or to avoid being tricked. He was, admittedly, exceptionally smart, and he also had many of the traits of an alpha dog, which made him a challenge to train but a wonder to observe.
It also seems to me that those who hold to such beliefs are drawing an absolute line delineating some fundamental qualitative difference between humans and all other animals, rather than merely a difference of degree. This is a close cousin to Creationism and other such nonsense, if not in fact a corollary of exactly the same belief. As someone once said, in an assertion that was correct in its basic truth if not its precise taxonomy, humans are not descended from apes – we are apes.
P.S.- Congratulations on the good work you do in dog rescue. We need more of you!
When I was a kid, I got to see a few goats get butchered. Before it began, they were all just milling about in the corner of the slaughterhouse. But, after the first got its skull stabbed and throat slit, the others definitely knew they didn’t want any part of that. They started bleating and crowding into the corner.
Soon after all were slaughtered and dead, another goat was brought to the slaughterhouse. I saw it approaching from the outside, calm as could be. But, once the door opened and it saw the scene within, it totally freaked out.
I’d say those goats had some sense of “mortality”.
If by '“interpretive bias” you mean fraud:
Here’s a Q&A session with the famous Koko the Gorilla and Dr. Penny Patterson her handler.
AOL: MInyKitty asks Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
PENNY: OK, is that for Koko? Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
KOKO: Koko-love eat … sip.
AOL: Me too!
PENNY: What about a baby? You going to have baby? She’s just thinking…her hands are together…
KOKO: Unattention.
PENNY: Oh poor sweetheart. She said ‘unattention.’ She covered her face with her hands…which means it’s not happening, basically, or it hasn’t happened yet. . . I don’t see it.
AOL: That’s sad!
PENNY: It is responding to the question. In other words, she hasn’t had one yet, and she doesn’t see a future here.
This is classic Facilitated Communication and worthless science. It’s a big issue in the field. The people doing the research are self selected animal lovers
“Pee unto others…”?
Animals are aware they can die, and nature has given them instincts that usually worjk pretty well in helping them to escape or defend themselves from other animals.
But cars aren’t something that existed thousands of years ago when animal instincts were evolving, so instincts that would help a deer avoid death at the claws and fangs of a wolf or puma are no help to it where cars are concerned.
A possum or squirrel crossing a road doesn’t have any instincts or experience to tell it, “Those things going back and forth are dangerous!”
How do you know that? All the rest of your post is about instinctual behavior.