By Simon Caterson
SCIENCE
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
FRANS DE WAAL
GRANTA, $34.99
Like anything else that limits the rate of human progress, in expanding our knowledge and understanding of the lives of animals we are constrained only by our intellect and imagination.
Are we Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, by Frans de Waal.
For any reader whose mind is open to the possibility that animals are not simply lesser beings that exist for us to consume or be entertained by, Frans de Waal's book is a fine introduction to current scientific advances underpinning a slow but seemingly inevitable historical shift in attitudes towards the treatment of animals.
In Australia, the gradual recognition of the importance of issues pertaining to animal welfare is manifested in the intense public debate over inherently exploitative activities such as greyhound racing and the live export trade. The way we treat animals reflects on us.
A Dutch-American ethologist and primatologist, de Waal considers different aspects of a variety of species and outlines the structures of scientific knowledge that have assisted, and at times hindered, our growing awareness of the wonder and complexity of the animal world.
Under test conditions and when observed in the wild, animals can show us that they aren't just instinct machines seeking opportunities to eat and mate, and that they possess attributes such intelligence and empathy as well as emotions. They can remember things and plan ahead, just as we do.
They also have to struggle with the world as they find it. "We think of flight as something that birds do naturally, but it is actually a skill that they have to learn." Similarly, it may take young chimpanzees, animals we rightly regard as highly intelligent, years to truly master the skill of cracking nuts.
The tester or observer has to have a subtlety of mind that matches that of the subject. "It seems highly unfair to ask if a squirrel can count to 10 if counting is not really what a squirrel's life is about."
Increasingly, de Waal says, animals are revealing to us that they possess cognition. He cites examples of animals proving to be more sophisticated than even scientists have been prepared to credit. "We hear that rats may regret their decisions," de Waal notes, "that crows manufacture tools, that octopuses recognise human faces, and that special neurons allow monkeys to learn from each other's mistakes.
"We speak openly about culture in animals and their empathy and friendships. Nothing is off limits anymore, not even the rationality that was once humanity's trademark."
According to de Waal, one key move we should make in order to better understand animals is to see them in terms of themselves and discard our assumed superiority in all things. In adopting this more flexible and humble approach, it becomes apparent that animals to an astonishing degree are both more and less like humans than has often been supposed.
Among the findings described are those indicating that within a given species individual animals are no more alike than humans. Animals learn from experience and apply that knowledge individually as we do, and they can be just as conformist as we are. They can be as deceptive and gullible as any human.
Animals may also feel, think and act in ways we simply cannot fathom as yet. Elephants, for example, have enormous brains, the exact workings of which remain a mystery. Sadly, there are many humans who view an elephant merely as a source of wealth derived from taking its ivory or as something fun to shoot at.
"Time after time we have demonstrated capacities in animals that were thought to set our species apart," writes de Waal. "Proponents of human uniqueness face the possibility that they have either grossly overestimated the complexity of what humans do or underestimated the capacities of other species."
The underlying message behind this engaging book about accelerating advances in the science of animal behaviour is simple, also profound and perhaps unsettling. "The comparison is not between humans and animals but between one animal species – ours – and a vast array of others."