Not the highest standard of science, I’ll admit, but I saw a TV program about 2 years ago about the intelligence of the ravens in Tokyo. These suckers are huge, much bigger than any other crows or ravens I’ve seen anywhere else. Raptors get harassed by them.
On the show, they showed the bird some food, which they then wrapped in a plastic bag, put the bag in a box, wrapped the box in paper, and tied it with string. The raven could see them do it since they did all this right outside its cage. Then they let the raven out of its cage. It actually untied the knot in the string, picked at a seam in the paper instead of just ripping in anywhere, used its beak to flip the lid open, got out the plastic bag, and after some fumbling, picked it up by one corner so that the food spilled out of the bag.
If ravens were really just acting on instinct and had no way of reasoning/problem solving then it would have just tried to fray the string instead of untying the knot to get past the string. It also would have just pecked at random until the paper tore instead of picking a spot that was easier to open, like the seam. The plastic bag was clear, so I would have expected it to just peck a hole through to the food it could see there. Nope, it spilled the food out to get easier and more direct access. It was truly one of those “holy shit!” moments.
If a bird, with a relatively different and much smaller average brain size than a mammal of the same size, is able to do this kind of thinking it is not unreasonable to think that pet mammals like dogs and cats can do some simple problem solving and abstract reasoning. Yes, animals think in different ways from us, but that doesn’t mean that they are incapable of thinking at all.
Katz is dismissing the whole idea of animal intelligence from a lack of information. He even admits at the end of his article that we don’t know a whole lot about how animals think, but yet he makes pronouncements about their sense of time and their ability to link cause and effect. We don’t know enough to know what most animals know and don’t know. Something to keep in mind is that our brains didn’t just coalesce out of the ether. While we’ve got some specialized structures, most of our brain is pretty much the same as other mammals. People set up this big division between animals and humans while in reality the gulf is a lot smaller than they’d like to think.
Similar to that raven thing was a show on one of the cable stations several years ago, apparently imported from Britain. It was called “The Bird Brain of Britain”, and showed birds working out how to get past cleverly contrived barriers anmd puzzles to get to food. This was not the result of random poking and probing. The puizzles were complex, and requitred specific actions in specific orders to get to the fod. The films showed birds performing these actions flawlessly.
This was followed by another show, whose name I’ve forgotten, showing squirrels getting past even more complex barriers. If the birds were impressive, the squirrels were positively stellar. Anyone who’s tried to keep squirrels out of bird feeders knows how they can get past even the cleverest devices. But these tests required incredibly long strings of actions to reach a successful conclusion, yet the squirrels succeeded. It’s very hard not to credit them with having the logic and creativity to perform extremely complex puzzle-solving. It’s no a big leap from that to thought, although I know you can argue otherwise.
This is the kind of thing I meant when I mentioned medieval theologians and dogs above. There’s a passage in The Bestiary on dogs that’s damned incomprehensible as written, but I’ve come across similar statements, going back to the classical world. It’s the observation that a dog on a trail, coming to a three-way split, will sometimes sniff the first way, then the second way, then will immediately run off down the third way in pursuit of its quarry without sniffing the road first. he observer concludes that the dog has reasoned that, if the quarry didn’t go the first two ways, and it didn’t double back, then it must have gone down the third.
I once walked into my bedroom and found two racoons sitting on the bed. They had rifled through my purse and removed a package of peanuts, which they opened and were feasting upon. The bed was littered with the little “nubs” that exist at one end of every peanut; for some reason, the racoons won’t eat the nubs.
At college, there was an outside vending machine area. One squirrel would climb inside the candy machine through the flap to the delivery shelf, grab a candy bar, and climb back out.
Some dogs definitely feel jealousy. My Dog #2 is a very jealous dog; he cannot stand to see me paying attention to Dog #1. Dog #2 is also very greedy about food, but he’s learned to share. Now neither dog will eat the canned food from the other’s bowl, even if the other dog isn’t present.
Dog #1 used to be a very fastidious eater, not interested in small treats of human food. But after witnessing Dog #2’s enthusiasm for treats, Dog #1 now has to have her share.
Hey, as long as we’re pulling generalizations out of our asses, how about this one:
[ul]
[li]Anyone who thinks a joke is deserving of death is a psychopath who should take a break from internet message boards.[/li][/ul]
I read a National Geographic article on ravens a few years back. The author had gone to study them in Minnesota in the winter, and he drove around in a snowmobile with saddlebags holding all his supplies. He described, along with photos, how one of the ravens figured out how to open three buckles and two zippers to steal all his chocolate bars that were inside.
I have wondered about our cats learning from each other. When my husband and I moved in together, we both had an adult cat. In the four years they have lived together, it seems like they have both picked up some traits from the other.
I have to say, I’m pretty on-the-fence about animal intelligence, too. My cats are by no means thinking exactly like humans, but they do seem to show more than just an organic intelligence. There does seem to be some cognition going on in their little walnut brains.
As for training cats, it can be done, but some are definitely easier than others. My cat seems to have a will to please her human, so she acts mostly properly, while my husband’s cat doesn’t care much for pleasing humans, so she does mostly as she pleases. And you don’t need to beat them; a loud noise or a water squirt will be much more effective. Cats hate to be startled.
Once in a great while the ArmadilloHound will get into the garbage. I’ve never caught him at it, and thus never scolded him for getting into the garbage. The worst experience he’s ever had near the garbage can is me saying in a mildly stern voice “get yer snout outta there” if he pokes his head into the garbage while I’m in the kitchen.
He always does it when we’re upstairs or asleep, and we always just clean up the mess without a word to him–you can’t punish a dog for something unless you catch him in the act, and we never have.
However. Somehow he knows that this is a Bad Thing To Do. Twice I have come downstairs just after he committed the crime and was greeted by a slinky puppy practically oozing out of the kitchen on his belly and grovelling all over the floor. Once, we were upstairs watching a movie, and Sir Guilty McFelonstein came slinking up the stairs and oozed under the covers. I went to the kitchen and found the most spectacular mess ever created by one dog.
It’s not even like he’s doing it because he’s bored and we’re bad dog owners for not keeping him busy, because he’s done it after a ten mile run and tracking excercises, when he should by all rights be tired and mentally satisfied. I keep trying to come up with some sort of cause and effect for the slinky puppy act, like he’s anticicpating being yelled at because in the past we’ve punished him for _____, but honestly, the only thing he’s ever really been corrected for (outside obedience training, which has zero to do with the household rules) was during potty training. He’s never even chewed anything in appropriately. Yet somehow he’s made enough connections about puppies rooting through garbage cans to 1) be “sneaky” about doing it when we’re occupied, and 2) express “guilt” for doing so.
I wanted to put in a plug for Temple Grandin’s new book Animals in Translation. She believes that animals think, but not like normal humans, but in a way similar to how autistic people think. She’s mentioned this before in her books, but this time she lays out her entire theory of how this works.
Sometimes, pets can clearly express their displeasure with you.
One that stands out in my mind: we had gone on vacation for about a week, leaving our pug, Jasmine, in our backyard under the care of some friends of ours. We came back, but we got home late at night, and we didn’t let her inside (she sleeps outside). The following morning, my wife went out for some reason or another, and I let the pug inside.
A couple of hours later, I discover that she has climbed up onto our bed and pooped right in the middle of it. Things to keep in mind: she is very well housebroken, and always scratches when she needs to go out, and we always let her go out when she scratches. No scratching here. She knows that my wife and I sleep in that bed, so she chose it, even though there are two other beds in the house. In order to get onto our bed, she has to first jump onto a chair, then leap across to the bed, so getting up there took some effort. And finally, this was an open and blatant pooping, with no attempts at concealment, while I was right in the next room.
A clearer case of a dog expressing “I am displeased with you lately,” I have never seen.
I’ve read that cases like this aren’t actually caused by the animal expressing anger. Rather, it’s a way for the animal to comfort himself due to the stress of separation. He seeks out a place where the scent of his owners is strongest (usually the bed or shoes) and then defecates, mixing his scent with theirs. The combined scent comforts him.
