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from
Detroit Free Press, February 14, 2001
from When Animals
Show Signs of a Mind
by Robert S. Boyd
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WASHINGTON—Dog owners know their pets recognize words like "bone"
and "walk" and "go for a ride." Cat owners brag about
how fast their kitties learn to use the litter box—or where their
cat treats are kept.
 But scientists are discovering that
animals are even smarter than even the most dedicated pet-lover may have
imagined.
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Animal Whiz Kids
In a flurry of recent books and research
papers, scientists report that some animals have gone far beyond understanding
human language. They can perform simple arithmetic, form mental maps of
their environment, exchange elaborate messages with each other, master
 intricate
social relationships, as well as create tools and teach other animals
to use them.
A few animal whiz kids even demonstrate
a rudimentary
self-awareness and can handle abstract concepts, such as whether things
are the same or different—intellectual capacities
previously thought to be limited to human beings.
"We share the planet with thinking
animals," Harvard neuroscientist Marc Hauser writes in his new book,
Wild Minds.
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…The
brainiest animals are chimpanzees, which share 99 percent of human DNA
and can be taught an elementary form of human language. Next come talking
birds, whose ability to make intelligible sounds opens a window into the
nonhuman brain that no other species provides.
Many other species, including dolphins,
whales, elephants and crows, also exhibit intelligent behavior but have
not been studied as intensively as apes and talking birds.
Irene
Pepperberg, a biologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, has trained
a parrot named Alex to name, request or refuse more than 100 objects.
She said Alex now understands such abstract concepts as similarity and
difference, color and quantity.
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From "When Animals Show Signs of a Mind" by Robert S. Boyd from Detroit Free Press, February 14, 2001, accessed October 4, 2001, at http://www.freep.com/news/nw/crits14_20010214.htm. Copyright © 2001 by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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