Animal intelligence

[EGB9000]

I was thinking recently if certain animals (Bottlenose Dolphins, Elephants, Crows) try to think of an explanation for their existence (religion), or not.

Please give your own feedback about what you think.

[Vanamonde]

Moved to Kerbal Network, The Lounge since it's not about KSP. 

And sorry, but religion itself is a disallowed topic on this forum (2.2.b). The problem is, it always ends up turning into arguments, so steer clear of that, please. 

[lajoswinkler]

Question of concept of existence is a philosophical question, not a religious one. Religion merely offers instant, but not falsifiable and unverifiable answer. Philosophy is all about asking questions.

 

I highly doubt dolphins ask themselves such questions because they're basically the pinnacle of abstract reasoning. They're comparable to mentally retarded young humans, but with serious physical skills. Even if some of them ever have a spark of "who am I" thought, it would be extremely rare and quickly obscured by "hee hee, fishes, yum fishes!", but their brain development would not suggest such thing.

 

At best, I think they're sometimes capable of asking "why", such as "why did you eat the fish? I am hungry, I want to eat the fish!".

 

Don't be fooled by the crap film industry shoves down our throats with montaged, misinterpreted footages of dolphins combined with Enya moaning.

[RizzoTheRat]

Dolphins and chips are among few animals that can recognise themselves in a mirror, which is generally taken being a sign of self awareness.  Dolphins are also able to take instructions from trainers via a monitor rather than seeing the trainer directly, I'm not sure what other animals are capable to understanding a 2d image like that.

[Vaporized Steel]

In terms of animal intelligence there is proof of ability among apes (bonobos in this case) of conversing with humans in our human concept of transferring information. Obviously not through talking since a ape can't talk or understand language. Atleast it's proven that apes or atleast this specific species can associate human vocal sounds with what we define our words with.

For this they use a device called a lexigram, a monitor with symbols. Apes can translate symbolic messages and these symbols can be associated with vocal sound of individual words.

Here is a video that demonstrates it.

That is quite a phenomenal display to watch.
I even remembered seeing a video once where a ape did not just identified words with with symbols but could understand the meaning and concept of the symbols.
I can't find this video unfortunately, but I thought to remember the ape in question was called Kanzi.

It was a real but yet infantile conversation that took place between a human and this ape. Where the ape suggested through a lexigram to play in his play pen. In this video the ape used sign language in the direction of the play pen where they went and played (or attempted to)
Quite a emotional think to watch for as far as I can remember.
If anyone knows this video and can find it may he be willing to distribute it in a reply.

 

[T-Bouw]

While I think our 3 birds are pretty smart, the old male among them can certainly not recognize himself in the mirror.

Rather, he thinks he sees another female and proceeds to court "her".
But we love him anyway...

[kerbiloid]

23 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

Dolphins and chips are among few animals that can recognise themselves in a mirror

Once had investigated a cold flat surface of mirror, cats and dogs usually do not pay attention to it.
But they successfully use this mirror to observe what are you doing in the next room, and if they watch something interesting, they run towards your location looking at the mirror to keep your activity under control.
And they don't attack their reflection as if it were another cat or dog. Also they (usually) don't attack their reflection in water.

They don't need to look at themselves to wash themselves and to investigate the peeed corners.
They just ignore the mirror picture as a delusion, until this delusion demonstrates something interesting.

Also if you take a cat to a mirror and wriggle your fingers over its head, the cat usually very quickly gets where to look at to catch them.
So, it binds the cat in the mirror to its own position.

On 14.06.2016 at 9:04 AM, lajoswinkler said:

I highly doubt dolphins ask themselves such questions because they're basically the pinnacle of abstract reasoning.

"We all know the stories from the people saved by dolphins — how the clever dolphins pushed them towards the coast.
But we never hear the stories of the people who were pushed by dolphins towards the sea..."

Edited June 15, 2016 by kerbiloid

[lajoswinkler]

4 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

"We all know the stories from the people saved by dolphins — how the clever dolphins pushed them towards the coast.
But we never hear the stories of the people who were pushed by dolphins towards the sea..."

Exactly.

[cubinator]

On 6/13/2016 at 11:00 PM, Vanamonde said:

Moved to Kerbal Network, since it's not about KSP. 

Wait...this isn't Kerbal Network! 

I think the intelligence of animals has a gradient; there's no definite line between "intelligent" and "dumb". The only reason we see such a line is because smarter humans out-competed dumber humans and we ended up at the top, with the other "in-between" species extinct.

Edited June 15, 2016 by cubinator

[Dispatcher]

I'm a sucker for octopi:

 

[LordFerret]

On 6/14/2016 at 5:46 AM, RizzoTheRat said:

I'm not sure what other animals are capable to understanding a 2d image like that.

Pigeons can, I've seen many experiments involving that.

15 hours ago, cubinator said:

The only reason we see such a line is because smarter humans out-competed dumber humans and we ended up at the top, with the other "in-between" species extinct.

And you think this isn't still happening even today?

[cubinator]

7 hours ago, LordFerret said:

And you think this isn't still happening even today?

Well, we are getting more knowledge, but that's different from the human capability to understand things. A human that can understand that 1+1=2 and 2+2=4 will be better off in the wild than one that physically cannot. We humans are probably capable of understanding and using the rules of quantum gravity, it's just that someone has to figure out what those rules are first. I don't know the figures for actual average intelligence over time, but it's probably gone up a little bit over the last several thousand years due to conflicts between larger and larger groups of humans.

Edited June 16, 2016 by cubinator

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

Well, we are getting more knowledge, but that's different from the human capability to understand things.

If the capability to understand things is not just an ability to associate known things between each other.
If so, a sum of knowledge means an amount of possible combinations of entities to be filtered.

1 hour ago, cubinator said:

I don't know the figures for actual average intelligence over time, but it's probably gone up a little bit over the last several thousand years due to conflicts between larger and larger groups of humans.

Where every soldier decides nothing, while officers are just small part of the army, preferably selected from the smartest ones (not wisest, though).

Edited June 16, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Randazzo]

I highly doubt that even animals with large or (relatively) highly developed brains sit around pondering why they exist, though I also could not imagine any way we could definitively prove this. The measures of animal intelligence are typically biased towards the human idea of intelligence, and understandably so, but this colors the entire perception of any study or interaction.

For example, we often hear or discuss that animals are intelligent because they can learn to communicate with us in a way we can understand. Animals that are particularly good at this are hailed as the brightest. Yet we as the undeniably most clever species on the planet (as a whole anyway), are mostly unable to communicate with animals on their level of understanding with few exceptions. Some of this can obviously be written off as being simply too different to communicate and indeed in some cases animal communication is done through pheromones or other means that we cannot duplicate, but in cases such as primates, we always expect the lesser animal in the equation to be the one to adapt their understanding. I've always found that fascinating.

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, Randazzo said:

I highly doubt that even animals with large or (relatively) highly developed brains sit around pondering why they exist, though I also could not imagine any way we could definitively prove this.

If one has growing babies at home — and an animal, it's graphically observable when the animal is still more sentient than a baby, and when a baby is already more clever than an animal.

As I had noticed, while a child is 2 or less years old, a cat knows the life better, demonstrates more complicated behavior, does its things in more reasonable way, better predicts events of the future.
When a baby is 4 years old, then vice versa — a child does things in ways the cat has no idea about.
The same with dogs.
So:
1) cats&dogs are approximately as 3 years old child in their cognitive functions;
2) a human breaks the glass ceiling in 3-4 years.

Edited June 16, 2016 by kerbiloid

[StrandedonEarth]

What about animal reasoning?

I had dog once (said to be a chihuahua/terrier/cocker spaniel cross) which was one of the smartest animals I've seen. One evening he was lying on the rough concrete hearth in front of the fireplace, moving his head around, trying to get comfortable. Finally he got up, went into a bedroom, came back with a pillow, put the pillow on the hearth, lay down with just his head on the pillow, and promptly fell asleep!

Many animals also use tools, usually sticks, to get food. Otters use rocks to break open sea urchins, and ravens have been documented using sticks to open snowmobile panniers to get at food.

[Bill Phil]

What's weird about hoomans is that we develop over almost 20 years physically, and mentally it takes even time. That's roughly comparable to elephants, in terms of amount of time to develop, yet our size and body mass are much much less.