THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYComparing Species
Whether it’s “Dog dials 999 to rescue owner” or “Monkey solves cross-
word!”, barely a week goes by without the papers reporting on some feat
of animal intelligence. Comparisons with human intellect usually ensue,
a traditional pastime that dates back to Aristotle and probably beyond.
For centuries, those seeking to highlight the ways that humans differ
from animals used to be spoilt for choice. Language, culture, emotions,
tool use ... the list went on. Over the last few decades, however, each of
these prized bastions of human uniqueness has been washed away like
so many sand castles lost to the tide. Crows use tools, monkeys scream
alarm calls, and elephants mourn their dead.
Time and again, experts have attempted to draw new dividing-lines.
So when apes were taught to communicate with signs, or macaques
were heard issuing alarm calls, the boundary was moved. Okay, animals
can communicate with sounds and gestures, so the argument went,
but it still remains beyond any animal to put different calls together to
form new meanings – only humans can do that. But then, late in 2009,
scientists observed monkeys in the Ivory Coast stringing different calls
together in rule-based fashion, creating new meanings (see p.157). This
pattern of shifting the boundaries and then new discoveries being made
is one that keeps being repeated across different forms of behaviour and
mental functioning.
Take another key skill once considered the preserve of humans –
deception. There have now been many examples of chimps and other
animals taking another individual’s perspective into account and using
that information so as to further their own aims. Brian Hare and his
colleagues showed this in 2006 when they set up a situation in which
chimps competed with a human researcher for food. The chimps soon
learned to sneak up to the food using a route that was hidden from the
human’s view.
What about a sense of justice and morality? In fact, animals seem to
have these too. There’s a classic study from the 1960s by Stanley Wechlin
at the Northwestern University Medical School in Illinois, in which he
and his team observed hungry macaque monkeys refusing to take food
if taking it meant another monkey would get an electric shock. Even
your pet dog has a sense of justice, albeit a selfish one. Late in 2008,
Friederike Range at the University of Vienna tested dogs on a task in
which they had to offer their paw as if shaking hands. Crucially, when the