When Animals Show Signs of a Mind

BY ROBERT S. BOYD FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF

WASHINGTON -- Dog owners know their pets recognize words like "bone" and "walk" and "go for a ride." Cat owners brag about how fast their kitties learn to use the litter box -- or where their cat treats are kept.

But scientists are discovering that animals are even smarter than even the most dedicated pet-lover may have imagined.

In a flurry of recent books and research papers, scientists report that some animals have gone far beyond understanding human language. They can perform simple arithmetic, form mental maps of their environment, exchange elaborate messages with each other, master intricate social relationships, as well as create tools and teach other animals to use them.

A few animal whiz kids even demonstrate a rudimentary self-awareness and can handle abstract concepts, such as whether things are the same or different -- intellectual capacities previously thought to be limited to human beings.

"We share the planet with thinking animals," Harvard neuroscientist Marc Hauser writes in his new book, "Wild Minds."

"Insights from evolutionary theory and cognitive science have begun to revolutionize our understanding of animal minds."

The brainiest animals are chimpanzees, which share 99 percent of human DNA and can be taught an elementary form of human language. Next come talking birds, whose ability to make intelligible sounds opens a window into the nonhuman brain that no other species provides.

Many other species, including dolphins, whales, elephants and crows, also exhibit intelligent behavior but have not been studied as intensively as apes and talking birds.

Irene Pepperberg, a biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has trained a parrot named Alex to name, request or refuse more than 100 objects. She said Alex now understands such abstract concepts as similarity and difference, color and quantity.

Pepperberg calls Alex an "avian Einstein." Alex knows his numbers up to six, she said. When he is shown five keys or corks and is asked, "How many?" he answers "Five." He also can combine the notions of color and number, answering correctly when asked, "How many blue key?"

Alex has "changed our perception of the term 'birdbrain,' " Pepperberg said.

Scientists acknowledge that there is an enormous gulf between human and animal mental capacities, and animal researchers compare their subjects to human babies -- not to adults.

According to Hauser, some adult monkeys are at least as talented as a 1-year-old human when it comes to counting objects. Like a human infant, rhesus monkeys appear to understand that one plus one equals two, two plus one equals three, two minus one equals one and three minus one equals two. But, also like babies, they failed to understand that two plus two equals four.

Before the new wave of research, it was considered "scientifically unsound to even contemplate whether animals think," Australian animal psychologist Lesley Rogers said. "Attributing humanlike characteristics to animals exposed scientists to ridicule."

Researcher Sue Savage-Rumbaugh said: "Many people make fun of what I do." Savage-Rumbaugh teaches chimpanzees to understand elementary English at Georgia State University's Language Research Center in Atlanta. "But I live with these animals every day. We have to learn to listen to them. They don't have a vocal tract. They can't speak. But they can comprehend very much the way we do."

According to Donald Griffin, a Harvard zoologist and pioneer in animal brain research, there has been "a subtle shift on the part of scientists from asserting that animals do not think at all to the view that their thoughts are very different from ours."

Bea Van Kampen, an animal behaviorist and owner of Animal Manors Plus in Williamston, near Lansing, said she wasn't surprised by the recent studies and said she expects future research will show that animals are even smarter than scientists now believe.

"At times people say. 'Oh, it's just an animal.' They think that the human species is more superior to animals," said Van Kampen, who will teach animal behaviorism at Michigan State University beginning in March.

"If you measure it on intelligence, then they are correct," she said. "But although it is not the same level, it is intelligence."

Some experts, however, remain reluctant to use the words "think" or "intelligence" in connection with animals, because the terms are vague and frequently misunderstood.

Hauser, for example, prefers to talk about "mental tools." He describes a "universal mental tool kit that provides animals with a basic capacity to recognize objects, count and navigate."

Researchers attribute their new appreciation of animal intelligence to recent developments in cognitive psychology, infant development and neuroscience. For example, positron emission tomography -- or PET -- scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reveal similar patterns of electrical activity in human and animal brains. PET scans show the chemical functioning of tissue and organs, and MRI reveals the structure of organs.

Advances in computer science, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning, also indicate that mental skills -- such as playing championship chess -- are not limited to human beings.

In his book "Animal Minds," Griffin asserts that the "levels and types of intelligence in nonhumans form a continuum with those of humans."

Rogers agreed, saying: "It is possible that we humans are just another step in the continuity of the evolution of mind."