Brains of the Animal Kingdom: Research shows we've underestimated

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323869604578370574285382756.html

by rdl • 13 years ago

211 110 13 years ago

online.wsj.com

rdl• 13 years ago

A lot of those seemed like really striking examples of bad experiment design. I wish there were more venues for publishing negative results (as well as experimental setup for failed experimental design) -- I know sometimes it is done for really "interesting" negative results, but there's a strong bias against publishing when you don't see what you want, in the conventional journal system.

Alex3917• 13 years ago

If by 'we' the authors of this article mean people who only believe things that have been 'proven' by science, then the intelligence of animals will always be underestimated by definition.

uptown• 13 years ago

I have no question that animals far exceed the cognitive capabilities most humans give them credit for. It saddens me that there's such a massive void in knowledge about this world we live in. I wonder how much more advanced humans would be if more time were spent expanding that knowledge instead of gratifying our other pleasure-systems by focusing instead on increasing bank account balances, political power, or participating in destructive conflicts with other humans. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge seems to be turning into one of those huge unappreciated things that seems to have been degraded in its worth unless it's able to be leveraged to some competitive advantage.

xk_id9• 13 years ago

Thank you! You are a great human.

lukifer• 13 years ago

Whether intended ironically or not, this comment amused me. (Knowledge seeking, moral high ground, and social approval are also pleasure-reward systems; not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Carry on; both of you are fantastic humans. :)

svenkatesh• 13 years ago

Science research requires funding.

Even though we beat our chests about STEM education, basic sciences are woefully underfunded in relation to the number of students who graduate every year with BS, MS, and PhD degrees in life sciences.

njharman• 13 years ago

Funding is prelevant. Governments, foundations, charities, donations, kick starters. What we lack is proper priority. We value things such as wealth & imaginary gods higher than knowledge.

reverend_gonzo• 13 years ago

This is all great in theory, and I agree, it would be awesome if we could increase knowledge for its own sake.

However, as the other poster pointed out: research requires funding, and sources of funding are far lower that people who want funding. Furthermore, if you're doing research for its own sake, where there's no chance of a payout, you're going to have it survive on a small amount of money. This is fine when you're 22, but what about when you're 35 and have a wife and kids you need to take care of? If you don't have money in the bank, some bad luck (like a kids broken leg) could wreck you. Which means its in your best interest to go where the money is.

Now suppose we lived in an idyllic society where if you were a scientist, you would never have to worry about health an vacation and groceries and car repairs and house repairs and everything else that comes up. Well, in that case, you've got a bunch of researchers, many of whom will never produce anything of value, and they're being funded by the state, or more so the rest of the people. And because by definition research is hard to judge the value of, people can't decide if your research is legitimate or something just to take state funding. Which brings you to where we are now: a limited pool of public funding, to which people apply for grants, or corporate funding, which usually expects some payout. While it would be nice a larger pool of public funds for research, there is in no way we could have an infinte supply for knowledge at all costs. After all, the world runs on money, and that needs to cone from somewhere.

The best way to do whatever research you want is to make your money first, and then do what you want with it.

fragsworth• 13 years ago

Or governments can fund it.

dgreensp• 13 years ago

Other primates had been tested, but they had been tested on human faces -- based on the assumption that ours are the easiest to tell apart.

::face-palm::

nessus42• 13 years ago

Yes, if that's really true one has to wonder about the common sense of the scientists who did that research!

Houshalter• 13 years ago

Well if it turned out that they could tell apart human faces that would be an interesting result. But it certainly doesn't prove that they can't distinguish members of their own species, if that is what the researchers were claiming.

darkxanthos6• 13 years ago

Wow. I remember a time when I thought scientists were infallible, almost magical in their reasoning abilities. Then I read stuff like this and remember "Nope. Still only human." ;)

coldtea3• 13 years ago

>I remember a time when I thought scientists were infallible, almost magical in their reasoning abilities. Then I read stuff like this and remember "Nope. Still only human."

Why would you think that?

Scientists are just humans that follow a methodology of inquiry (and keep tabs). Nothing more.

Sure, some scientists are super-smart (e.g Feynman) but that's because they happen to be geniuses, not because they are scientists.

They can also be stupider than the guy flipping burgers at McDonalds, not only in generic fields (he might be better at music than them), but also in general thinking.

Even having a PhD doesn't mean much. I've seen people I know getting those that are dumb as hell (being meticulous and methodological seems more of a predictor of getting one).

And of course the classic: sex, money, ideology, power, personal psychological complexes etc can make a scientist think BS just like any other guy.

enjo• 13 years ago

Although there are interesting results there. There have been a few studies now done with dogs and their ability to not only recognize human faces, but to decipher emotions from them. It's fascinating insight into how domesticated dogs complement humans in really amazing ways.

derleth2• 13 years ago

So... if they think we all look alike, does that make them racist?

;)

philwelch3• 13 years ago

I wonder if anyone has quantitatively measured the variation in human faces and how that differs from faces of other animals.

frabcus• 13 years ago

How could you? Any process and algorithm you picked for that measurement would be a prejudiced choice.

For example, if you used a human digital camera as your input, you'd be biasing based on frequencies human vision can see.

If your algorithm did some kind of hamming distance of pixels, it might be that one species cared more about that, whereas another cared more about a distance metric between fields of detected line boundaries. Who knows!

Any such attempt to quantitively measure variation in faces would also ignoring other senses, and other ways to establish identity than the face - just the choice of considering faces as an important discriminator feels anthropocentric to me.

In short, there is no definitive quantitative measure of "variance". That measure depends on both the senses and the brain of the observer - whether mechanical or biological.

Whm0102• 13 years ago

The things listed are kind of old... this discussion has been going on for a while. Goldfish and tit for tat, fish and tool use, none of it is really new... so the implication that we're just getting to it isn't quite accurate, and the article didn't even mention what little actually is unique to humans. If you want an interesting talk about "uniqueness" Robert Sapolsky has one from a few years back that has been highlighted on ted, but I feel like the way it is approached in the article implies it is new, and it is not.

http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_uniqueness_of_h...

One thing that is not correct is that humans are unique in sex not being used solely for reproduction, bonobos are very reliant on sex for social purposes.

xk_id9• 13 years ago

Excellent article!

A couple of observations...

"Aristotle's idea of the scala naturae, the ladder of nature, put all life-forms in rank order, from low to high, with humans closest to the angels. During the Enlightenment, the French philosopher René Descartes, a founder of modern science, declared that animals were soulless automatons. In the 20th century, the American psychologist B.F. Skinner and his followers took up the same theme, painting animals as little more than stimulus-response machines." <- rudimentary systems of ideas.

And I kindof gasped towards the end of the article, when I read this: "The one historical constant in my field is that each time a claim of human uniqueness bites the dust, other claims quickly take its place. Meanwhile, science keeps chipping away at the wall that separates us from the other animals."

I mean, as I said, excellent article, but let's not falsify by omission. We are the only species who can build on previous generations' achievements; and the only species who can abstract indefinitely (i.e, always make a statement about a previous statement). These are both due to the special linguistic behaviours we are capable of.

dormouse• 13 years ago

Yet don't you think your last statement there is a perfect example of walking through a quiet wood and declaring a woodpecker absent? We certainly don't understand non-human languages/communication systems, and significant evidence is piling up that it's often far more sophisticated than we think it is. And "building on previous generations' achievements" is a little ill-defined; isolated groups of individuals often form a unique society, even if they aren't conducting research on human intelligence.

xk_id9• 13 years ago

I didn't say other species clearly do not possess equally impressive linguistic abilities. But qualitatively, our stand in sharp distinction. Surely, we can never be certain the woodpecker is absent, but, that's just a new take on the fact that our theories are merely the expectations with maximum probability. I stay open, and prepared to accept if a new sign of legacy-based behaviour is found in other species, as well as a form of extra-neural storage of symbolic configurations (e.g writing). But surely you cannot ask me to expect those.

I'm not sure about what you meant in your last remark. I meant that humans are uniquely able of starting where the former generations left off. This explains the techno-ideological development that has been occurring naturally for all and any of us (unless a library was burned down, which was a pathological thing to do).

tokipin2• 13 years ago

there's probably a lot of examples of knowledge in animals that is passed from generation to generation, like say the knowledge of how to crack open nuts with rocks

we definitely have something most animals don't, but that something may be more of a degree thing than a kind thing

xk_id9• 13 years ago

Very much agreed.

derleth2• 13 years ago

> we definitely have something most animals don't

"Religion and control of fire" seem to be the big things that humans have and no non-human animal has. "Language with recursive grammar" is a possible differentiator, but that's currently up for debate.

Someone• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_culture gives a, IMO, decent overview but misses the famous example of the tit and the milk bottle: http://www.brefigroup.co.uk/resources/view_product.do?produc...

gwern• 13 years ago

Also worth reading: "If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness" http://web.archive.org/web/20090416230704/http://www.nytimes...

jessedhillon• 13 years ago

Here's the author's Wikipedia page http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal

jkaljundi• 13 years ago

You could also say we've vastly overestimated the intelligence of human animals.

fkdjs• 13 years ago

In that respect, I would say we are separating into different species.

Lost_BiomedE• 13 years ago

After working a while with animal behavior and neuro-research, I tend to ask myself if there is proof an animal can't do something rather than if they can. They usually learn slower than humans, depending on animal and task, but they can learn complex tasks. What they fail at usually tends to be due to physical limitations such as visual acuity. I don't think we have found the limits of what many animals can do but we are raising the bar slowly. It takes a lot of thought and work to design an experiment with a complex task correctly.

Of Note: Pigeons can classify a Picasso from a Monet at an expert level and peck their answer within 300ms: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1334394/. They were tested on assembly lines to pick out defective parts. They did better than humans but were not used due to decreased moral of other humans on the line. This was done in the early 60's I believe. Here is an article on it in the New Scientist (1962) http://books.google.com/books?id=HxU-9UeDCI0C&pg=PA498&#...

darkxanthos6• 13 years ago

Please link me to a study or web article. That's amazing.

EDIT: I see the links now! Thanks!

xk_id9• 13 years ago

Link to the study about pigeons' discrimination between Picasso and Monet paintings: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1334394/pdf/jeab...

Still looking for a source for the assembly lines tests.

vacri• 13 years ago

Proof that you can't do something is harder to get than proof that you can. It's hard to prove that an animal can't make a hammer drill, for example.

Draco6slayer3• 13 years ago

It's probably rude, but I think that the fact about the decreased morale is somewhat hilarious. Just picture the situation where you have a whole bunch of assembly line workers being ousted by pigeons. What would it feel like to know that a bird is better at your job than you? It's just absurd.

DavidSJ• 13 years ago

Somehow it offends one's dignity less to be ousted by a robot.

perchance• 13 years ago

Pigeons have also been shown to have atleast rudimentary capability for solving the Traveling Salesman Problem: http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~psychgso/gradlunchtime1011/lub... http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-011-0463-9

darkxanthos6• 13 years ago

This is my belief too and a reason I'm vegetarian. In my mind the chance of us eventually beginning to see animals as more and more people like are VERY good. I don't want to look back over the last 20 years and realize that I killed and ate so many people especially since it is unnecessary.

Part of my chain of reasoning is seeing how black people were referred to as animals and their intelligence and general ability was VERY much underestimated since we are in fact all human beings. Then seeing all of the research we've done with dolphins. They have their own language and social structure. Even bees have a language that we're just now beginning to understand.

In fact, the more research we do, the more evidence we seem to find that we've sold "animals" short.

ams6110• 13 years ago

Animals eating each other is part of the nature of our existence. I myself don't feel any guilt about it.

mlent13• 13 years ago

Yes, but not all animals eat one another. And we are not, like tigers and lions, obligate carnivores. We can survive and thrive without meat. Our bodies are capable of surprising dietary adaptation.

If you don't need to kill/keep captive animals for food to live healthily, why do it? That's just my personal philosophy.

darkxanthos6• 13 years ago

This sounds like you're saying "We've always done it so it is ok by me." It's flawed reasoning. Following that reasoning why'd we let women start to vote?

As mlent points out we have a choice today. In the past there were times when it was necessary to travel and survive. Why do it if it's unnecessary?

michaelvanham• 13 years ago

Many of the animals that humans eat are born into captivity, caged their entire existence, and slaughtered at a young age.

I feel sorrow for them.

guygurari4• 13 years ago

I am a vegan for moral reasons, and I have no objection to people eating animals. What I do object to is the horrifying daily torture that animals must suffer in the meat, dairy and eggs industry. I am guessing this is where some of your food comes from.

In my experience, people who have no qualms about using animal-based products are ignorant of the realities of how these products are made. I encourage you to watch Earthlings [1] -- free to watch on their site -- and see if you feel the same way once you've seen some evidence.

[1] http://earthlings.com/

MarkMc• 13 years ago

Here's a thought experiment: Imagine that I breed gorillas. Soon after reaching adulthood each gorilla is killed and made into dog food. One day I discover a gorilla whose mental abilities are similar to a 6-year old human child. That is, the gorilla can reason, communicate, be creative and show empathy just like a child. Is it OK to kill that gorilla? If so, how about an '8-year-old child' gorilla? Or 10-year-old?

jacoblyles• 13 years ago

Chickens, cows, and fish aren't very smart.

georgemcbay• 13 years ago

"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."

- Douglas Adams

sudo_robin• 13 years ago

Should we be saying "Research shows research underestimated"

benched• 13 years ago

I have always believed that we were nowhere near over our chauvinism as a species in this regard.

nicrogo• 13 years ago

I've realised a long time ago that human knowledge on animal intelligence was underrated. They may not be able to predict future observations nor to be able to remember trivial events from the past nor to create or use tools, but when you take a closer look at them, whether they are insects, fish or mammals, they can all sense danger and opportunity in nature. It's no automatic reflexes but true analytics of their environment. After all a worm is said to have an IQ of 1 when the IQ of a computer is 0. Animal kingdom is smarter than previously thought and most of them probably have emotions like fear, pain & empathy. This is no anthropomorphism but a true fact.

Brains of the Animal Kingdom: Research shows we've underestimated

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