Animal Intelligence

Animal Intelligence

Intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge.

Psychologists have exploited this concept in many ways to try and

determine whether non-human animals are capable of intelligence.

From social learning it is logical to assume that, since non-human

animals are able to both acquire and use new behaviours, they must be

intelligent in some way. Heyes stated that there are 6 types of

behaviour which suggest intelligence. These are imitation,

self-recognition, social relationship formation, role-taking,

deception and perspective taking. These 6 behaviours are referred to

as the theory of mind (ToM).

Imitation is the ability to copy another's behaviour, this may be

because the behaviour is adaptive. Kawai (1965) studied Japanese

macaques and found that due to one monkey's actions (Imo), a large

amount of the macaque population acquired a useful behaviour in a

5-year period. Kawai reported that Imo would wash her sweet potatoes

before consumption, later other macaque monkeys showed the same

behaviour. Kawai thus suggested that the rest of the monkeys had

imitated Imo's behaviour.

Galef suggested that this behaviour was due to social learning. Given

the time period, of 5 years, it is possible that other monkeys had

learned this potato washing behaviour by themselves instead of

imitating Imo. The observers in this experiment provided the sweet

potatoes, and would pay more attention to the monkeys that washed the

potatoes. This attention would be a reinforcer of the behaviour

causing other monkeys to copy it. Although there is not enough

supportive evidence for imitation, some behaviours ca...

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...ceive the trainer

in white and pay attention to instructions given by the trainer in

green. The chimpanzee successfully got the food most of the time. This

supports the idea that non-human animals are capable of deceit. The

characteristics of this behaviour are very like a conditioned

behaviour.

It is nearly impossible to say whether non-human animals are

intelligent. Most studies, in this field of psychology, were carried

out on primates, and it is thought that these animals are naturally

superior. It seems most behaviour in the research discussed in this

essay can be explained through association learning, therefore not

actually a result of intelligence. It is difficult to falsify whether

animals are intelligent or not because, although they are able to

solve problems they only show some aspects to suggest ToM.