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Do some Animals, aside from Humans, think?

DouglasL said:
The Gorilla that can talk in sign language was an unintentional hoax.
The gorillas handlers would misinterpret random gestures as a word in sign language. Outside testing with deaf people (who only "spoke" in sign language) confirmed that the gorilla only had a limited vocabulary and would use some of that vocabulary randomly (gibberish).
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That first sentence isn't entirely true. While the syntax used by Koko, Washoe and others was found to be gibberish by ASL signers, the conclusion that their communication abilities didn't exist comes more from lingiusts than from psychologists or biologists.

Also elephants mourn their dead.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
I understand that there is a Gorrilla somewhere that can actually express itself using sign language, which is quite extraordinary in my book.

I just wonder, can the more intelligent animals, like Apes and Dolphins actually think? I think I heard that Dolphins actually have their own language, or something like that. Seeing how Chimps can now prove themselves to have better memory than Humans, presumably there is some process going on in their minds that is beyond 'food ug. Mate ug ug.'
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Forget the Gorilla. Look up Kanzi, the bonobo. Prepare to be amazed.
 
<--------------Monty is currently working on the Riemann hypothesis. He likes to lick my uncle's ears in his spare time.
 
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De Waal's Law

People such as primatologists and zookeepers who work on a daily basis with apes, always have a high opinion of apes' intelligence and abilities. Those who attempt to minimize apes' language abilities and cognitive skills are always people with little or no first-hand experience with apes.
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From Our Inner Ape -Frans de Waal, one of my favourite books, which I will plug at every opportunity...

He reprises some of subjjects in his seminal book "Chimpanzee Politics" (my wife is an antrhopologist and she described it as seminal, so I won't argue)...

The stories seem very convincing that both chimps and bonobos share psychological traits with us. One female was unable to suckle her young, and he taught her to bottlefeed. He visited the zoo a long time later (15 years IIRC), and she singled him out for greeting with what he said could only be described as gratitude.

One low status female was mean with any food she found,and so never got offered any, whilst another similar-status female was generous and always got offered food by the others. The book is full of examples that seem to demonstrate a "theory of mind" by the chimps. He also points out that when researchers set up experiments as to whether chimps have a theory of mind about humans they often get poor results. But then humans often will have seemed to demonstrate inexplicable knowledge (due to hidden cameras etc), which might skew these results, and lead chimps to suppose that if they knew about something the humans might too.
 
DouglasL said:
The Gorilla that can talk in sign language was an unintentional hoax.
The gorillas handlers would misinterpret random gestures as a word in sign language. Outside testing with deaf people (who only "spoke" in sign language) confirmed that the gorilla only had a limited vocabulary and would use some of that vocabulary randomly (gibberish).
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You are confusing the gorilla Koko with Herb Terrace's chimp Nim Chimpsky. And that is still inaccurate.
As Danish Dynamite said, check out the bonobos, Kanzi, et al.
 
Jeff Corey said:
You are confusing the gorilla Koko with Herb Terrace's chimp Nim Chimpsky. And that is still inaccurate.
As Danish Dynamite said, check out the bonobos, Kanzi, et al.
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Wasn't it Nim Chimspsky's chimp, Noam Chomsky?

Seriously. Here is a factoid.

Dog at bottom of steps. I just gave it a dog biscuit. The dog put it down at the base of the steps.

I walked six paces and motioned for the dog to come. Dog pauses, then grabs the biscuit and trots up. Looked like a decision process with cognitive delays.

(a) disobey (BAD IDEA, but sometimes has big payoff but this is only a little biscuit)
(b) eat biscuit then follow master (BAD IDEA, he might be going inside and I wouldn't get to go inside)
(c) other options? what to do? what to do? EUREKA! Pick it up and follow master, eat biscuit later.
 
If anyone is intrigued by ape-intelligence studies, dolphins will really stun you.

The rub in assessing dolphin intelligence is that they live in an alien enviornment.
We have almost nothing in common with them.
Apes play into our innate anthropological chauvanism.
They behave like retarded humans, when put in school.

Dolphins, on the other hand, bore very easily, as though our intelligence tests are below them. In either animal, human dominance is essential in the assessment.

We have no tests that could possibly address an animal more 'intelligent' than we.
We don't go there.
We probably won't ever go there.

we are heavily invested with the notion of being the 'crown of creation'.

Without the willingness to set that aside, we will learn nothing about alien intelligence, or the lack thereof.

Brain mass used to be the reference point, as per intelligence.
That there are several species on earth with much larger brains than us...well, that has always been something to avoid...if only to continue to justify the slaughter; the inherrent superiority of being able to slaughter.

Basicly, we are smart, and nothing else is, as proved by our ability to exterminate them.

There is no other reliable interpretation of intelligence.
We can kill everything we don't understand; therefore, we rule.
If whales were so smart, they would have killed us, right?

(forget bonobos, chimps, gorillas, and other great apes. they have no chance against human intelligence.)
 
quarky said:
They behave like retarded humans, when put in school.
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Really? When did you see this comparison side by side?


quarky said:
Dolphins, on the other hand, bore very easily, as though our intelligence tests are below them. In either animal, human dominance is essential in the assessment.

We have no tests that could possibly address an animal more 'intelligent' than we.
We don't go there.
We probably won't ever go there.

we are heavily invested with the notion of being the 'crown of creation'.

Without the willingness to set that aside, we will learn nothing about alien intelligence, or the lack thereof.

Brain mass used to be the reference point, as per intelligence.
That there are several species on earth with much larger brains than us...well, that has always been something to avoid...if only to continue to justify the slaughter; the inherrent superiority of being able to slaughter.

Basicly, we are smart, and nothing else is, as proved by our ability to exterminate them.

There is no other reliable interpretation of intelligence.
We can kill everything we don't understand; therefore, we rule.
If whales were so smart, they would have killed us, right?

(forget bonobos, chimps, gorillas, and other great apes. they have no chance against human intelligence.)
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Could you please state the point you are trying to make, and how it relates to the subject of this thread.
 
we are in no position to test intelligence, much less if we are the only species that thinks.
We don't even have a real definition of thought.

Fortunately, for other organisms, our superior intelligence and sole ability for thought, will soon remove us from the evolutionary history.
 
quarky said:
we are in no position to test intelligence, much less if we are the only species that thinks.
We don't even have a real definition of thought.

Fortunately, for other organisms, our superior intelligence and sole ability for thought, will soon remove us from the evolutionary history.
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I'd like to hear exactly why you believe we cannot test intelligence or the ability to think. From the neuropsychology perspective, there is a definition of thought. Look it up.

I don't think you have any clue what you are talking about, and are simply using this thread to get on your soapbox about the evils of humanity. Even a simple search would show that quite a bit of thought has been put into this (forgive the pun).

we are heavily invested with the notion of being the 'crown of creation'
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What the heck is this "we" stuff? Do you seriously think this applies to everyone?

By the way, I would still like to know you arrived at the conclusion that apes behave like retarded children when put in school.

Oh,

Dolphins, on the other hand, bore very easily, as though our intelligence tests are below them.
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Linky please.

By your definition of intelligence, the bubonic plague must have all been microscopic geniuses.
 
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Normal Dude, I have been trying to find a neuropsycholoigcal defintion of thought.
Guess what. Ain't one.
 
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Slimething said:
I agree that animals think. I don't use their inability to communicate with us as a valid measure of intelligence or thought.
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They communicate with us all the time. Body language, mostly.

Animals think? I'm certain they do. But animals live here and now, they don't worry about tomorrow or regret yesterday.
 
Here is a test showing "selective imitation" in dogs:

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn11720

The dogs seemed to think that the dog with a ball in it's mouth used her paw to move the food lever because of the ball-- they imitated getting the food by using their mouth... whereas, when the dog did not have a ball in her mouth and used her paw to move the lever--they used their paws too. That was a clever test that shows a degree of thought for sure.
 
articulett said:
The dogs seemed to think that the dog with a ball in it's mouth used her paw to move the food lever because of the ball-- they imitated getting the food by using their mouth... whereas, when the dog did not have a ball in her mouth and used her paw to move the lever--they used their paws too. That was a clever test that shows a degree of thought for sure.
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If the dogs seeing the demo of dog with ball in mouth intuit that it's easier to use their own mouth rather than a paw, why do the dogs seeing the demo without the ball not reach the same conclusion? From the results, the ball makes a difference but there may be a different explanation than that given.
 
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