Animal Minds
By Edward Minar / Paintings by Leigh Caruthers Prassel
1. One important aspect of communication is sensitivity to audience. Which of the following
is not true of roosters?
a. Rooster clucks show audience sensitivity.
b. Roosters more often issue alarm calls signaling aerial predators when in the presence of hens.
c. Roosters more often produce clucks in the presence of food when there are no hens around.
d. Roosters are more likely to cluck around food when hens are around. They often follow up with courtship behavior.
2. Which of the following species is the most intelligent?
a. Wolves
b. Dogs
c. Dolphins
d. It’s a trick question.
3. True or false: When your dog gives you that guilty look, it’s likely that they’ve done something bad and are expressing their guilt.
4. While “culture” can be defined in many ways, ethologists (students of animal behavior) associate culture with socially transmitted habits that result in behavioral differences in different groups of the same species. Which of the following have been claimed to develop “traditions” in this sense?
a. Macaques
b. Humpback whales
c. Blue tits
d. All of the above
5. Mirror tasks test different animals for:
a. Vanity
b. Beauty
c. Self-Recognition
d. Specialized neurons
Bonus
Strong claims for success on mirror tests have not been made for which of the following: Elephants, parrots, dolphins, dogs, manta rays, gorillas.
Extra Credit
Philosopher Dale Jamieson writes “it is now clear that many animals cooperate, reconcile, punish, reciprocate and engage in altruistic behavior” and that “this is sufficient to show that animals… can be motivated to act by moral reasons.” Can you think of examples? Do you think that these claims, if true, should have an impact on human treatment of non-human animals?
1. / c. One might expect roosters to want to keep the food to themselves, but in fact they cluck, apparently to try to attract hens to food.
2. / d. It’s a trick question. If intelligence is linked with problem-solving ability, modern comparative psychology takes each species to have its own problems to solve in its distinctive environment, and to evolve its own skills for their solution.
3. / False, probably. Experiments have shown that dogs tend to look guilty in response to what they might take to be dominant behavior or precursors to punishment, whether or not they’ve done something “bad.” One experiment suggests that they are more likely to look “guilty” when they haven’t stolen the cookie off the counter than when they have!
4. / d. The case of blue tits illustrates the difficulty in adequately defining “culture” and “social transmission.” In the early 20th century in England, many of these birds developed the habit of “attacking” shiny milk-bottle caps. The initiators of the habit probably found by trial and error that they were rewarded with milk, and then the “inheritors” of the “tradition” learned by imitation.
5. / c. Self-recognition of a sort. Mirror tasks typically involve marking a subject’s body and seeing whether he/she notices the mark on his/her mirror image. The interpretation of this kind of experiment is controversial and the setups must vary from species to species.
Bonus question: Parrots, dogs.
Extra credit: What do you think?
For further reading:
Kristin Andrews, The Animal Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Animal Cognition (Routledge, 2015)
Clive D.L. Wynne and Monique A.R. Udell, Animal Cognition: Evolution, Behavior and Cognition, Second Edition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).