Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?(85)

This will be an excellent way to test the continuity assumption, since homologous cognitive processes imply shared neural mechanisms. Such evidence is already accumulating for face recognition in monkeys and humans, the processing of rewards, the role of the hippocampus in memory and of mirror neurons in imitation. The more evidence for shared neural mechanisms we find, the stronger the argument for homology and continuity will become. And conversely, if two species engage different neural circuits to achieve similar outcomes, the continuity stance will need to be abandoned in favor of one based on convergent evolution. The latter is quite powerful, too, having produced face recognition in both primates and wasps, for example, or flexible tool use in both primates and corvids.

The study of animal behavior is among the oldest of human endeavors. As hunter-gatherers, our ancestors needed intimate knowledge of flora and fauna, including the habits of their prey. Hunters exercise minimal control: they anticipate the moves of animals and are impressed by their cunning if they escape. They also need to watch their back for species that prey on them. The human-animal relationship was rather egalitarian during this time. A more practical knowledge became necessary when our ancestors took up agriculture and began to domesticate animals for food and muscle power. Animals became dependent on us and subservient to our will. Instead of anticipating their moves, we began to dictate them, while our holy books spoke of our dominion over nature. Both of these radically different attitudes—the hunter’s and the farmer’s—are recognizable in the study of animal cognition today. Sometimes we watch what animals do of their own accord, while at other times we put them in situations where they can do little else besides what we want them to do.

With the rise of a less anthropocentric orientation, however, the second approach may be on the decline, or at least add significant degrees of freedom. Animals should be given a chance to express their natural behavior. We are developing a greater interest in their variable lifestyles. Our challenge is to think more like them, so that we open our minds to their specific circumstances and goals and observe and understand them on their own terms. We are returning to our hunting ways, albeit more in the way that a wildlife photographer relies on the hunting instinct: not to kill but to reveal. Nowadays experiments often revolve around natural behavior, from courtship and foraging to prosocial attitudes. We seek ecological validity in our studies and follow the advice of Uexküll, Lorenz, and Imanishi, who encouraged human empathy as a way to understand other species. True empathy is not self-focused but other-oriented. Instead of making humanity the measure of all things, we need to evaluate other species by what they are. In doing so, I am sure we will discover many magic wells, including some as yet beyond our imagination.