Marc Bekoff and Frans de Waal have recently been especially effective in puncturing the myth of animal mental vacancy, and in the process, giving the lie to the myth that only human beings think.
DAVID BARASH: ‘How did the erroneous view that other animals lack an internal mental life get started? It wasn’t merely a consequence of self-serving theology and a reaction to anthropomorphism, but has some legitimate basis in science. Early research by ethologists focused on the role of “releasers,” simple stimuli that are typically present in members of a given species, to which individuals respond automatically and instinctively—nearly always without any indication of insight…
Biologist Marc Bekoff and primatologist Frans de Waal have recently been especially effective in puncturing the myth of animal mental vacancy, and in the process, giving the lie to the myth that only human beings think. Most influential in this respect was the biologist Donald Griffin; and herein lies an interesting story, not only of science but also the sociology of researchers.
For decades, the study of animal cognition (and a related, even more controversial assertion, animal consciousness) was the third rail of ethological research: touch it and you wouldn’t get a research grant or tenure. Griffin was no starry-eyed animal lover addicted to anecdotes about his pet cat; rather, he was a highly regarded scientist, who, through a series of careful empirical studies had discovered that bats used echolocation (essentially, a form of ultra-high frequency sonar) to avoid obstacles and detect their insect prey.
Griffin then shocked the animal behavior establishment when in a series of carefully argued books—notably Animal Minds, Animal Thinking, and The Question of Animal Awareness—he urged his colleagues to take seriously the question of, well, animal minds, animal thinking and the question of animal awareness.
Once a giant like Griffin said it was kosher, a growing number of biologists and psychologists began treading where no self-respecting scientists had previously allowed themselves to go. The results have been overwhelmingly persuasive, such that these days, virtually no scientist publicly doubts the mental life of nonhuman animals’. SOURCE…
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