{"id":753491,"date":"2018-06-06T08:07:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T12:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arkcenter.us\/?p=753491"},"modified":"2018-06-06T08:07:05","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T12:07:05","slug":"humans-are-dumb-at-figuring-out-how-smart-animals-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=753491","title":{"rendered":"Humans Are Dumb At Figuring Out How Smart Animals Are"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<blockquote  class=\"bs-quote bs-quote-1 bsq-t1 bsq-s1 bsq-left\">\n\t\t<div class=\"quote-content\">\n\t\t\t<p>Animals are smart in the ways they need to be smart... And because environment and needs differ by animal, trying to rank them is futile.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER:<\/strong> <em>&#8216;The case for giving the chimps a human right like freedom from unlawful incarceration is based on their similarity to humans \u2014 they can think, feel and plan, argue the people bringing the case on behalf of the chimpanzees, so shouldn\u2019t they have some guarantees of liberty?&#8230; So, does a chimpanzee deserve more rights than, say, a pigeon? The logic that leads to \u201cyes\u201d is clear enough, but putting it into practice would be tough, scientists say. Because when it comes to measuring intelligence, we\u2019re actually a little dumb&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>One of the problems: Animals don\u2019t stack up the way you\u2019d expect. \u201c[Pigeons have] knocked our socks off in our own lab and other people\u2019s labs in terms of what they can do,\u201d said Edward Wasserman, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Iowa. \u201cPigeons can blow the doors off monkeys in some tasks.\u201d Experts who study animal intelligence across species say we can\u2019t rank animals by their smarts \u2014 scientists don\u2019t even try anymore \u2014 which means there\u2019s no objective way to determine which animals would deserve more human-like rights&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>Scientists know animals are capable of demonstrating an array of cognitive skills, and there are some skills that some animals are better at than others. But the problem is that a hierarchy assumes all animals (including humans) evolved for the same environment. And that just isn\u2019t true. Animals are smart in the ways they need to be smart, Andrews said. And because environment and needs differ by animal, trying to rank them is futile. If a polar bear has different skills than an octopus, does that mean one is smarter than other \u2014 or does it just mean the ocean is different from an iceberg?&#8217;<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/humans-are-dumb-at-figuring-out-how-smart-animals-are\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>SOURCE&#8230;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED VIDEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IPg-1YhAAkY?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER: &#8216;The case for giving the chimps a human right like freedom from unlawful incarceration is based on their similarity to humans \u2014 they can think, feel and plan, argue the people bringing the case on behalf of the chimpanzees, so shouldn\u2019t they have some guarantees of liberty?&#8230; So, does a chimpanzee deserve more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":753492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[21,23,24],"tags":[33,34,37],"class_list":["post-753491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kisnship","category-rights","category-science","tag-intelligence","tag-personhood","tag-speciesism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=753491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753493,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753491\/revisions\/753493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/753492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=753491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=753491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=753491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}