Our human cognitive abilities are not as unique as we once thoughtScientific American: Problem solving? Sorry, but crows and octopuses do that too. Tool use? Primates, birds and even fish have learned that trick... The collapsing divisions between animal and human minds is exactly what a group of scientists gathered to discuss...
The first topic of conversation was a behavior known as altruism: selflessly helping a stranger. Brian Hare... described a recent experiment on this kind of cooperation in bonobos -- primates that are in the same genus as chimpanzees... 'The smartest thing about bonobos is that they live in a society with very little violence.' said Vanessa Woods... Woods explained how close-knit groups of females work together to keep the peace in bonobo societies...
Klaus Zuberbuhler... has found the rudiments of language in certain monkeys. Vervet and Diana monkeys... have different alarm calls for different predators, reacting in the most appropriate way to signs of a leopard, eagle or snake... Monkeys aren't the only ones eavesdropping on each other -- birds listen for the distinct calls as well...
'Insects can accomplish some very sophisticated things without big brains,' said Jeremy Niven... 'It kind of makes you wonder why you need an extra billion neurons to be able to do something that a human does.'... Niven also highlighted footage from an experiment designed to shed light on whether bees have aesthetic sensibilities... Bees prefer Van Gogh's sunflowers to more classical flower portraits and to other colorful but flowerless paintings. 'It's not really science,' Niven said... 'but it's interesting nonetheless.'...
Hare explained that although many animals can think and make decisions, questions remain about whether animals can interpret the thoughts of others... One way to test this is to ask whether animals understand the same kinds of social cues human infants learn to recognize -- like voice, gesture and gaze... 'We've found that dogs are incredibly good at this.'... It's especially interesting that dogs are so good at taking social direction because chimpanzees, in contrast, rarely understand the same cues in the same kind of test. The chimps just don't get it. In some ways, neither do we.
