KidLit Forum

Thinking bees
Bees and other animals perform very complex behavior patterns. The honeybees can reason, they know the concept of “same” and “different”, abilities that were attributed only to vertebrates before.
Martin Giurfa says that the honeybees can search and find honey, return to their nest, tell the others where the best source is and then return to that source. Another discovery was that trained bees could recognize colors and grating patterns in a Y maze. They recognized the difference between yellow and blue and they were rewarded with sugar solution. The researchers concluded that they can think.
The researchers also discovered relations between variables such as forebrain size and feeding innovations and behavioral flexibility and sociallity in mammals.
Comparison between animals and humans
It has been discovered that:
- Chimpanzees and perhaps other great apes and monkeys have a sense of self
- Dogs and many other animals make planes for the future
- Many animals experience joy, sadness and sorrow and feel pleasure and pain
- The behavior of chimpanzees and the behavior of children of about two and a half past years are comparable with respect of language skills.
Leslie Irvine about her dog: the dog understood some principles of basic causality and action: the dog was trained to pick up a stick. She threw the stick into a drainage canal. The dog didn’t like the water. She threw the stick into the water and the dog understood that the water was moving in a certain direction and it went in that direction to wait for the stick.
Cognitive ethology
Cognitive ethology is the comparative, evolutionary and ecological study of animal minds and mental experiences including how they think, what they think about, their beliefs, how information is processed, whether or not they are consciousness and the nature of their emotions.
Comparative= they compare and contrast different species
Evolutionary= researchers want to know why and how a different behavior evolved over time
Ecological= they want to know how variations in food, the social environment, or the habitat influence the behavior patterns they are studying
Cognitive ethology traces its beginnings to Charles Darwin, who emphasized the importance of evolutionary mental continuity among animals and learning about the worlds of animals themselves.
Biologists talk about the evolution of kidneys, stomach and hearts from simpler to more complex systems.
Donald Griffin “ The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience”-1976- he wanted to find out “what is it like to be a particular animal”. He said that it is the flexibility and versatility of behavior that provide strong evidence of animal mind and consciousness. He, also said , that when the environment is changed, thinking and planning is used because animals and humans do not always think about what they are doing or are going to do.
Different views on cognitive ethology
There are three types: slayers, skeptics and proponents.
Slayers: - deny any possibility of success in cognitive ethology
- Ignore specific details of work by cognitive ethologists
- Deny the usefulness of cognitive hypotheses for directing empirical research
- Deny the evidence gained by observing animals in natural settings which is relevant to understand animal minds
Skeptics: - they are more open-minded than slayers
- They recognize some past and present success in cognitive ethology and remain optimistic about the future success
- Many of them appeal to the future of neuroscience and claim that ethology will be superfluous about nervous systems
- They do not favor anthropomorphic explanations
Proponents: - they recognize the utility of cognitive ethological investigations
- They see that ethological approaches have provided new and interesting data
- They accept the cautious use of anecdotes and anthropomorphism.

What does “being smart” mean?
Human and nonhuman animals requently act without thinking, or at least they act without knowing that they have actually thought about what they are doing.
Being smart means showing versatile and adaptive behavior in unpredictable situations and anticipating and planning for the future.
Animals are smart if they:
- Perform tasks as counting objects
- Forming concepts in which differences or similarities are recognized
- Avoiding predators
- Locating hidden food
- Making and using tools
- Using complex forms of communication
Animal communication
Donald Griffin believes that studies of animal communication provide a “window” into the minds of animals.
Con Slobodchikoff discovered that Gunnison’s prairie dogs use distinct alarm calls to designate predators such as hawks, coyotes and humans.