14 ms·

Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans

90 points by Vigier 4y ago

shakes_mcjunkie 4y ago
I had a conversation recently with a friend about the classic cats vs. dogs, which species is more intelligent. It was surprising to me how dismissive he was about cat intelligence and adamant that they were nowhere near dogs' intelligence, mostly based on the ability to train dogs. I've clicker trained my cats to sit and also to follow my finger. Searching around the net and YouTube you can find cats learning all kinds of more complex behaviors. Also, watching the cats interact with each other and their interactions with us, they clearly have complex inner thoughts about the world around them. I guess all that to say, I find myself shocked by how little regard people have for the intelligence of other animals.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Famously, jazz musician Charles Mingus trained his cat to poop in a toilet. He even authored a pamphlet about it. Not that I'm advocating that people to do that of course. I'm just noting how intelligent cats are.
- meristem 4y ago
  Your friend confused intelligence with obedience + desire to please.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    I was about to say, we host and feed cats in every corner of the globe yet they have us run around to fetch their stuff and both the ancient Egyptians as well as modern day internet user revere them like gods. If that's not intelligence I don't know what is.
    - theplumber 4y ago
      >> If that's not intelligence I don't know what is. Maybe it's just luck. If they were to taste good their faith could be different.
      - pif 4y ago
        > If they were to taste good But many people report they do!
        theplumber 4y ago
        Imported answer from 3rd party: " Texturally it's similar to goat or pork. Almost like chicken but stringier. Same color as pork, same general fattiness. That's where the similarities end. Granted both times were in seaside towns, but the flavor was akin to the way it smells when you open a can of tuna. Fishy, pungent and strong. Basically cat tasted like cheap cat food smells. "
- cpsns 4y ago
  > I find myself shocked by how little regard people have for the intelligence of other animals. If people readily accepted the intelligence of many mammals, much less other animals, they would have to confront some very serious cognitive dissonance and moral dilemmas. That said, I've found many dog folks are super dismissive of the idea of cats being smart and I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps part of the problem is the sheer stubbornness of cats, you can't force them to do anything if they decide they don't want to do it.
  - dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
    I always thought that was a sign of their intelligence over dogs.
  - mromanuk 4y ago
    > If people readily accepted the intelligence of many mammals, much less other animals, they would have to confront some very serious cognitive dissonance and moral dilemmas. Not sure about that, lot of people are completely fine with human being killed for several reasons (punishment for robbery just to give you an example).
    - sweetheart 4y ago
      Sure, but people generally have a problem watching extreme senseless violence perpetrated against innocent people, which is more analogous to what happens to the animals that carnists eat.
      - prometheus76 4y ago
        I grew up on a farm. We were always grateful and a little sad when we slaughtered an animal, and we said a prayer for it when we slaughtered it. We always did our best to make our animals comfortable while alive, and made their death as quick as possible with as little suffering as possible. Life survives on life. Something died so that you could live today. I think about that often, and I think that growing up confronting the reality of surviving as a person by eating food that was once alive in a very immediate way helps me not take food for granted and to always be grateful for the daily sacrifices that are made so that I can live. In my will, I have outlined that I want my body to be put into a burlap sack with no embalming fluid and be returned to earth as soon as possible after my death so that I can be part of the same chain of life for other living things. Life lives by the death of other living things. We cannot change that, but we can at least be grateful and present with that reality.
- samatman 4y ago
  I agree with your friend. Dogs have around twice as many cortical neurons as cats, and it shows. Interestingly, raccoons, which are the size of cats, have a comparable number of neurons in the cortex as dogs. And act like it as well. Which isn't to say cats are like, dumb creatures, and it's fine you like them more. Dogs are smarter though, according to me, your buddy, and zoologists, who unlike the three of us know what they're talking about.
  - jcims 4y ago
    I caught a young mother raccoon in a live trap a few years ago. The process of releasing her was interesting. She maintained eye contact with me the entire time i was handling the cage. She used her front paws to stay upright and positioned to maintain said eye contact with incredible hand-like dexterity. It was clear she was trying to predict how i was going to move the cage and was doing a good job. In my limited experience oldet raccoons tend to be much more aggressive, making lots of noise and showing their teeth.
  - groby_b 4y ago
    Uhuh. They have more neurons. This does say exactly nothing about "smart". There's also the small matter that while dogs have more neurons than cats in general, they have significantly less neurons allocated to their cortex. The study you likely refer to talks about total brain matter. It is, in short, a dog lovers argument.
    - throwaway675309 4y ago
      I don't really have a dog in this fight, no pun intended, but you would be wrong. The only modern study that looked at neurons of carnivorous animals including cats/dogs found that dogs have nearly twice the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, and the ratio of cortical neurons to overall neurons is also higher (~20% vs ~23%). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnana.2017.00118/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnana.2017.0011...
      - jazzyjackson 4y ago
- bitwize 4y ago
  My cat spent the first year or so of his time with us plotting a Mission: Impossible style ingress into my home office. The tricky bit has been finding a way to the exposed ventilation pipe in our loft, from which he could hop through the high-up, paneless window into my office. He attempted literally climbing the walls, and investigated the possibility of hopping on the blades of the ceiling fan to reach the pipe. (Thankfully, he never hopped on said blades, only stared at them and attempted to trace a path back to a perch he could reach.) I'm fairly certain he knows one could simply use the door handle. It's only a question of height and weight. He can reach it with his paws now, and it's only a matter of time before he figures out how to shift his weight to pop that door open...
  - mcswell 4y ago
    My daughter had me replace the lever-style doorknob on her bedroom with a round doorknob, since her cat had figured out how to open the door.
- epgui 4y ago
  > I find myself shocked by how little regard people have for the intelligence of other animals. This observation can be generalized quite far: humans in general have abysmally poor empathy skills and generally have very little respect for everything outside their in-group. Other humans in the out-group are similarly less intelligent or less worthy. And yet despite this, humans also think overly highly of themselves.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    Maybe this is part of the evolution. A kind of decentralisations of the human species in smaller groups. If we would be one big world governed by the same policies we could all die by the same mistake. Not to mention that too much empaty would be highly detrimental to any innovation and even survival. You would never fire someone and would use all the reasources to "help the poor" instead to invest into high risk high reward projects(i.e computers, space exploration). You would die of starvation instead to slaughter the cow because you are too empathic.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > Not to mention that too much empaty would be highly detrimental to any innovation and even survival. You would never fire someone and would use all the reasources to "help the poor" instead to invest into high risk high reward projects(i.e computers, space exploration). You would die of starvation instead to slaughter the cow because you are too empathic. This is a fantasy of objectivism, reactionaryism, and the like, a transparent attempt at justification for their selfishness. Empathy makes you care about the people you will feed with the beef, including yourself (empathy starts with yourself) - it doesn't turn you into an idiot, except in the imaginary strawperson fantasies of the aformentioned groups. > "help the poor" Why is that in scare quotes? Also, if you invest in people, many more will eventually invent high-reward things.
      - theplumber 4y ago
        >> Empathy makes you care about the people you will feed with the beef, including yourself (empathy starts with yourself) - it doesn't turn you into an idiot, except in the imaginary strawperson fantasies of the aformentioned groups. >> empathy starts with yourself That's not empathy. Empathy starts with the animal/person by your side otherwise you are just a selfish person. If you can eat grass/vegetables and survive why would you kill the poor animal? Help the poor is in quotes because it's a relative term. People who can afford food and shelder could still be considered poor. Poor people in the U.S are rich people in Yemenn. I always wondered, if investment in poor people provides good returns why there is not enough investment? (i.e unsecured loans provided by the private sector)
- paganel 4y ago
  Not sure about your friend but we have a cat (he's almost 4-year old now) and a border collie (almost 2-year old). We've professionally trained our BC, he is a very smart and especially loving animal, but the cat is "smarter", so to speak. It is the cat that initiates and, I dare say, invents the games they sometime play with each other.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  We mistake programmability for "intelligence" but not only for animals, but for humans too. If it does not execute the program it is stupid. Our estimate for intelligence is a heuristic in the brain, firing on the same networks we would use. Which is why intelligence only ever can behave like us, exactly like us and in no other way. Mirror Neurons. If they do not fire that way, we early out and call it a day. Its energy efficient and i assume most animals do that too. The tools with which we look for and on intelligence are deformed and often incapable of detecting it. Same goes for cats too though, they have zero empathy with prey. Mirror neurons are not firing for mice, but firing for their own kittens. Somewhere there is a switch.
- LocalH 4y ago
  I consider cats more intelligent than dogs, frankly. Dogs seem to have evolved or been bred for obedience, as they are much easier to train than cats. I consider cats to be much more autonomous than dogs. As an ADHD human, I strongly identify with cats. Sometimes I wish I could experience life as a comfortable, loved house cat. Maybe I will next time
- mistercow 4y ago
  My cat also knows a few tricks. A few years back, he had fatty liver disease, which is caused by a vicious cycle where the cat won't eat, which makes them sick and suppresses their appetite. The first thing you try when this happens is to jump start their appetite by encouraging them to eat however you can. Ultimately, I couldn't get enough calories in him, and we had to do a feeding tube. But before that, I was able to get him to eat some treats. He wouldn't eat them if I just gave them to him, but if I had him do "shake" first (the only trick he was up to), and then gave the treats as a reward, he would eat them. I found it fascinating that the reward had taken on its own meaning for him. You might naively model training with rewards as "the cat is hungry and knows that treats bring food". But he didn't want food. After years of practicing tricks, it's like being rewarded became its own positive experience for him, and the ritual of eating the treat is part of that experience, independent of whether or not he actually wants to eat.
- pxc 4y ago
  > I've clicker trained my cats to sit and also to follow my finger. Dogs are so invested in human approval that even abuse can be an effective training 'method' much of the time. As you likely know, before scientific training methods started gaining popularity, this was the predominant tradition for training dogs. And in an anthropocentric way and from a position of utter ignorance, that somehow became the cultural standard. If you can't yell at or pinch or shove an animal and still have it be interested in pleasing you, it's 'not intelligent'. It's absolutely absurd. It's not fair to dogs or to other animals, and erases the massive, fundamental similarity in the way dogs, cats, and other creatures of all kinds actually learn. All because humans struggle to separate the notion of intelligence from being interested in or useful to ourselves.
stevenjgarner 4y ago
How do we understand an intelligence based on an olfactory sense?
- hosh 4y ago
  One way is to simulate the experience of that with psychedelics or transcranial magnetic stimulation.
  - stevenjgarner 4y ago
    Genuine question: how would you go about simulating it in that manner? Are you suggesting that we might visualize or otherwise cognize an olfactory intelligence using those techniques? It seems to me that much of human "intelligence" is our superior ability to perceive patterns in visual and auditory sensory input, and then to process those perceived patterns in some manner. In that light, what might an olfactory "pattern" actually represent?
    - hosh 4y ago
      Great question. Starting with the easier one, I don't know how to accomplish it with transcraniel magnetic stimulation, other than that, it can produce altered states of consciousness similar to psychedelics. I don't think we have enough insight into knowing how to adjust settings for a particular person to reliably get certain shifts in consciousness. Perhaps investigating along the lines of why and how someone can experience synthesia. As far as psychedelics goes, we'd probably have to delve into the traditional practices that works with altered states of consciousness, and that all depends one one's tolerance for experiences that would be considered woo. Two that come to my mind are Tantra, and the shamanic practices involved with "shapeshifting" into animals. In Tantric philosophy, pure consciousness descends into the manifest world through the five senses, and you see those representations as five downward triangles in the yantras. There's probably some yogi out there that have explored along those lines. Tantric methods can involve offerings of flowers and incense, so why wouldn't smell be involved? With the shamanic practices, with the assistance of drumming or psychedelics (and keeping in mind the basis for shamanic practices is animism), the practitioner would seek out the archetypal intelligence of an animal, and request to form a relationship. If granted, one of the ways the practitioner learns the wisdom of that animal archetype is a kind of shifting of consciousness into that of the animal, while partially retaining the perspective of a human. If that animal's olfactory senses is a big part of its role in the ecology it inhabits, and the human is receptive to that, I think it is possible to experience what it is like to have smells that is usually inaccessible as humans. As far as human's ability to process things with visual and auditory senses ... I'd say that whales and dolphins probably got us beat as far as auditory intelligence goes, and birds has us beat as far as visuals goes. Bird brains also seem more efficient than humans in terms of energy usages, and birds have to process five retinal cones compared to our three retinal cones. The unusual humans who have fully formed fourth retinal cones can already disginguish significantly more color tones than the rest of us ordinary humans. If someone wanted to experience what superior visual and audio experiences are, I'd say try the shamanic techniques to shapeshift into a whale or a parrot.
woojoo666 4y ago
Seems quite relevant to the recent discussion about current AI sentience [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31716639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31716639
- anyonecancode 4y ago
  Had the same thought. I think one other major difference between biological brains and computers, beyond the fact of having a body vs not, is that biology is analog and not digital. A signal going from cell to cell in a brain or up a spinal cord isn't just "on" or "off", but in any number of infinite states. No matter how many bits you manage to pack into a digital "brain," that's a fundamental difference. Now I can't predict out to the future and say something like digital intelligence is "impossible" or that in the vast universe all life is analog. But from the vantage point of today and what we currently know, it feels that reality is fundamentally analog and so any digital brain can only ever hope to be a simulation of intelligence. On the flip side, I think we vastly underestimate the various ways intelligence does and can exist amongst living creatures.
  - tnzk 4y ago
    Yeah if we hadn't go digital and built something equivalent to modern computers with super-dense analog circuits then it would've gain intelligence.
  - mpoteat 4y ago
    Neural networks operate on floating point values. Are you saying that e.g. 64 bits of resolution isn't enough to accurately model a neuron? The idea of significant figures in physics puts a limit on what is useful in practice. I could be wrong, but I feel that digital vs analog is a pretty meaningless distinction in this case, as past a certain level of resolution in practice this is noise. This doesn't even get into the fact that we know the universe is quantum in nature and that systems have a finite amount of possible states. The universe does not have a "infinite" state resolution in the way you are talking about, merely a large one.
cheese_goddess 4y ago
> But what makes a pig optimistic? In 2010, researchers at Newcastle University showed that pigs reared in a pleasant, stimulating environment, with room to roam, plenty of straw, and “pig toys” to explore, show the optimistic response to the squeak significantly more often than pigs raised in a small, bleak, boring enclosure. That... is dumb. They just chose whatever definition of "optimistic" was convenient for their experimental hypothesis and then used it to confirm their hypothesis. "What's an optimist pig? It's one that reacts to squeaks more often. How do we know a pig is optimistic? Because it reacts to squeaks more often!". Not only dumb, but also circular. Circularly dumb.
- ggm 4y ago
  Initially I also read it that way but it's a better designed experiment than first glance suggests: it's a choice predicated on three things leading to two outcomes, of the three things, one is clearly beneficial and one not beneficial, and the third indeterminate. So the two outcomes are beneficial and not beneficial. How does the pig interpret the as-yet unknown case? An "optimistic" pigs behaviour suggests it is open to the indeterminate choice having an upside. A "pessimistic" pig acts like its more likely to be disappointing. I could say a richly stimulated pig has more open choices and a poorly stimulated pig does not. It's a reasonable definition of optimism or pessimism in the field of choice. I do still think it's anthropomorphic thinking but I think it's a well founded experiment even in that critique.
  - cheese_goddess 4y ago
    Thanks, I understand the experiment as described. But if you start by asking "what makes a pig optimistic", you're already assuming that a pig can be optimistic. Whatever reason you find after that to say that the pig is optimistic is going to be wrong, because you have failed to do anything to justify the idea that pigs can be optimistic in the first place.
polishdude20 4y ago
I was surprised by the intelligence of a little spider I encountered the other day. As I was looking for my keys to enter the house, this little jumping spider was on the front door. As I approached the door he moved almost with anticipation. As I turned the keys, he got closer to the door edge. As I opened the door, he swung himself around the door and into the house ahead of me! At that point I decided if got this spectacular show, he can enter my house and do whatever he wants.
- justinclift 4y ago
  Heh Heh Heh. If you're into Science Fiction, then Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" might be your kind of thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316452505 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316452505 It's really, really good. :)
  - kmarc 4y ago
    It is, however in his story the spiders gained intelligence from a "virus" that helped them accumulate and carry over experience across generations. BUT! The book and Tchaikovsky is still brilliant; he did a great job "thinking outside the box" by creating a thought experiment of "how would human-like skills, like reading, develop over time in non-human-like creatures, like spiders" - I'm pointing to the balls of spiderweb as "books". Tchaikovsky himself used to study zoology and had a focus in insects. Coincidentally he just turned 50 yesterday. Happy birthday to him!
- _Microft 4y ago
  This is an article on the intelligence of jumping spiders and how they plan their approach for an attack and that they e.g. fake being a different animal or even a gust of wind to camouflage when they move through the web of another spider. Maybe you like that: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/spiders-are-much-smarter-than-you-think/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/spiders-are-much-sma...
  - simonh 4y ago
    It's interesting and sophisticated behaviour, but there are limits to what extent I'd characterise it as intelligent. I'm sure the spider has no concept of the animals it's mimicking, or that it's even mimicking an animal, or anything else. It might even be a stretch to describe their tactics as 'planned' in the human sense, as they're probably automatic responses to stimuli. They're still one of the most interesting and adept creatures we commonly encounter though.
eointierney 4y ago
Anthropomorphism is the curse of our intelligence
- shsysuzhzbb 4y ago
  Everyone always says this, but why? I hear how it is 'dangerous' to anthropomorphize animals by people like Joe Rogan constantly. Can you explain what is 'dangerous' about it? Or why we have to be 'careful' doing so? Genuinely interested. To me, the only downside is we might have to face the atrocities we commit in our daily life.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > I hear how it is 'dangerous' to anthropomorphize animals by people like Joe Rogan constantly. They find some odd things to worry about.
  - BurningPenguin 4y ago
    Some people seem to think that if humans aren't special, then they will be treated like animals. Which is quite ironic, if you consider human history.
  - eointierney 4y ago
    It's not so much about animals as about everything else. It's dangerous because we over-simplify in terms of ourselves, and we often therefore lead each other astray from demonstable accuracy. We might commit atrocities as we are very wasteful, but with a little more "seeing the universe in ourselves" and a little less "seeing ourselves in the universe", we might refrain from anthropomorphisation and just enjoy our extraordinary amazingness, without destroying the planet as an afterthought to our vanity. Anthropomorphism is boring and lazy
jcims 4y ago
Why do dogs seem to ‘understand’ us to an extent but we struggle to understand dogs?
- jonsen 4y ago
  We struggle to understand each other. We conduct wars, need religion and the like to keep some order, etc.
mcswell 4y ago
Interesting article, but: "Compared with bird neurodiversity, humans are a monoculture." That happens when you compare a single species with hundreds or thousands of species.
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trhway 4y ago
>To grant animals “minds” in any meaningful sense was to indulge a crude anthropomorphism that had no place in science. Actually it hasn't been about violating supposed science principles. It has always been about going against the deeply entrenched even today religion dogma of "only humans have soul".
kmarc 4y ago
I'm surprised that the article mentions Frans de Waal primatologist, but doesn't mention his book, which is an excellent read about the topic: Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? [1] [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30192493-are-we-smart-enough-to-know-how-smart-animals-are https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30192493-are-we-smart-en...
- xolox 4y ago
  In addition to "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" another book by Frans de Waal, "Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves" is also well worth the read.
antux 4y ago
Recently learned that pigs are smarter than dogs and even 3-year olds. They're also very social, which makes them humanlike. For this reason I don't ever eat pork. It would be like eating dog or human meat.
- HellsMaddy 4y ago
  May I ask, why does the intelligence and sociability of the animal sway your decision, as opposed to the animal’s ability to think and feel? Where is the line that separates eating dog or pork from eating cow or chicken?
  - prometheus76 4y ago
    I'm not the OP you're asking about, but on a related note: I don't eat dogs because they're omnivores. I try to stick as much as possible to only eating ruminants. But that's a completely separate issue than what you were asking OP about.
    - HellsMaddy 4y ago
      Can you explain why you are okay with eating ruminants but not omnivores?
      - prometheus76 4y ago
        Much lower chance of getting parasites.
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lynguist 4y ago
The difference between modern humans and other animals, even extinct humans, is not the presence of intelligence, it is language. Just compared to other extinct humans, we are more social and more violent. I believe what makes humans different is this: language and music and religion. This makes humans something bigger than just the individual. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947341/#!po=0.847458 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947341/#!po=0....
- simonh 4y ago
  Indeed there are conceptual and communications skills we possess that no animals approach. The problem I find in these debates is that we each have different ideas what terms like intelligence, understanding and consciousness mean. Consciousness is particularly difficult because we use it in so many different ways. If you look in most dictionaries you will see about half a dozen different definitions ranging from meanings equivalent to perception, all the way up to awareness of ones self and the world, or self-reflection. Personally I see no reason to suppose that the capacity for self-reflection depends on the cognitive skills underlying language, rather it seems to me it's likely to be the other way around. If this is correct, then I expect our ancestors evolved self-reflection before language, and therefore other animals might also have developed that capability without having language in the sophisticated form we possess. Viewed in this way, if animals, particularly higher mammals and primates exhibit behaviour consistent with self-reflection and self-awareness, it seems reasonable to me that they may have inherited this capacity from a common ancestor of ours. That's especially so if many different species exhibit this trait. It seems unlikely that such behaviours would evolve completely independently in so many different species that are all related to each other and share so many common neurological features.
  - prometheus76 4y ago
    The other very strange aspect of consciousness is that the only way we have of experiencing consciousness is through our own consciousness. The recursive nature of trying to reflect on consciousness while using our consciousness to do so ends up having some very weird effects. The book, I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter is what got me thinking about this problem.
abrenuntio 4y ago
"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties". Or as Nim Chimpsky used to say: "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." A lot of work remains to be done before we can give a full scientific account of the human mind in relation to the rest of nature. It seems quite narrow minded to me, fanatical even, to deny a priori that such an account, if at all possible, would confirm a transcendental distinction between humans and the rest of nature; or would feature non-material aspects.
- raducu 4y ago
  This reminds me of the debate of the origins of the Universe. Some religions maintained that the Universe at some point did not exist. Some scientists up to very recently maintained (perhaps in opposition to religious views) that the Universe always existed. I'm of the view that animals are a lot smarter than we'd regularly think, but that there is indeed something very special about human intelligence. My prediction would be that we won't be able to uplift even a chimpanzee. And that would be an awesome and debate ending experiment -- if human intelligence is nothing special and it's just a few mutations away from a chimpanzee, just patch the chimpanzee genome with the intelligence genes and see what happens.

90 points by Vigier 4y ago

I had a conversation recently with a friend about the classic cats vs. dogs, which species is more intelligent. It was surprising to me how dismissive he was about cat intelligence and adamant that they were nowhere near dogs' intelligence, mostly based on the ability to train dogs. I've clicker trained my cats to sit and also to follow my finger. Searching around the net and YouTube you can find cats learning all kinds of more complex behaviors. Also, watching the cats interact with each other and their interactions with us, they clearly have complex inner thoughts about the world around them. I guess all that to say, I find myself shocked by how little regard people have for the intelligence of other animals.

formerkrogemp 4y ago
Famously, jazz musician Charles Mingus trained his cat to poop in a toilet. He even authored a pamphlet about it. Not that I'm advocating that people to do that of course. I'm just noting how intelligent cats are.
meristem 4y ago
Your friend confused intelligence with obedience + desire to please.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  I was about to say, we host and feed cats in every corner of the globe yet they have us run around to fetch their stuff and both the ancient Egyptians as well as modern day internet user revere them like gods. If that's not intelligence I don't know what is.
  - theplumber 4y ago
    >> If that's not intelligence I don't know what is. Maybe it's just luck. If they were to taste good their faith could be different.
    - pif 4y ago
      > If they were to taste good But many people report they do!
      - theplumber 4y ago
        Imported answer from 3rd party: " Texturally it's similar to goat or pork. Almost like chicken but stringier. Same color as pork, same general fattiness. That's where the similarities end. Granted both times were in seaside towns, but the flavor was akin to the way it smells when you open a can of tuna. Fishy, pungent and strong. Basically cat tasted like cheap cat food smells. "
cpsns 4y ago
> I find myself shocked by how little regard people have for the intelligence of other animals. If people readily accepted the intelligence of many mammals, much less other animals, they would have to confront some very serious cognitive dissonance and moral dilemmas. That said, I've found many dog folks are super dismissive of the idea of cats being smart and I'm not sure why that is. Perhaps part of the problem is the sheer stubbornness of cats, you can't force them to do anything if they decide they don't want to do it.
- dhzhzjsbevs 4y ago
  I always thought that was a sign of their intelligence over dogs.
- mromanuk 4y ago
  > If people readily accepted the intelligence of many mammals, much less other animals, they would have to confront some very serious cognitive dissonance and moral dilemmas. Not sure about that, lot of people are completely fine with human being killed for several reasons (punishment for robbery just to give you an example).
  - sweetheart 4y ago
    Sure, but people generally have a problem watching extreme senseless violence perpetrated against innocent people, which is more analogous to what happens to the animals that carnists eat.
    - prometheus76 4y ago
      I grew up on a farm. We were always grateful and a little sad when we slaughtered an animal, and we said a prayer for it when we slaughtered it. We always did our best to make our animals comfortable while alive, and made their death as quick as possible with as little suffering as possible. Life survives on life. Something died so that you could live today. I think about that often, and I think that growing up confronting the reality of surviving as a person by eating food that was once alive in a very immediate way helps me not take food for granted and to always be grateful for the daily sacrifices that are made so that I can live. In my will, I have outlined that I want my body to be put into a burlap sack with no embalming fluid and be returned to earth as soon as possible after my death so that I can be part of the same chain of life for other living things. Life lives by the death of other living things. We cannot change that, but we can at least be grateful and present with that reality.
samatman 4y ago
I agree with your friend. Dogs have around twice as many cortical neurons as cats, and it shows. Interestingly, raccoons, which are the size of cats, have a comparable number of neurons in the cortex as dogs. And act like it as well. Which isn't to say cats are like, dumb creatures, and it's fine you like them more. Dogs are smarter though, according to me, your buddy, and zoologists, who unlike the three of us know what they're talking about.
- jcims 4y ago
  I caught a young mother raccoon in a live trap a few years ago. The process of releasing her was interesting. She maintained eye contact with me the entire time i was handling the cage. She used her front paws to stay upright and positioned to maintain said eye contact with incredible hand-like dexterity. It was clear she was trying to predict how i was going to move the cage and was doing a good job. In my limited experience oldet raccoons tend to be much more aggressive, making lots of noise and showing their teeth.
- groby_b 4y ago
  Uhuh. They have more neurons. This does say exactly nothing about "smart". There's also the small matter that while dogs have more neurons than cats in general, they have significantly less neurons allocated to their cortex. The study you likely refer to talks about total brain matter. It is, in short, a dog lovers argument.
  - throwaway675309 4y ago
    I don't really have a dog in this fight, no pun intended, but you would be wrong. The only modern study that looked at neurons of carnivorous animals including cats/dogs found that dogs have nearly twice the number of neurons in the cerebral cortex, and the ratio of cortical neurons to overall neurons is also higher (~20% vs ~23%). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnana.2017.00118/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnana.2017.0011...
    - jazzyjackson 4y ago
bitwize 4y ago
My cat spent the first year or so of his time with us plotting a Mission: Impossible style ingress into my home office. The tricky bit has been finding a way to the exposed ventilation pipe in our loft, from which he could hop through the high-up, paneless window into my office. He attempted literally climbing the walls, and investigated the possibility of hopping on the blades of the ceiling fan to reach the pipe. (Thankfully, he never hopped on said blades, only stared at them and attempted to trace a path back to a perch he could reach.) I'm fairly certain he knows one could simply use the door handle. It's only a question of height and weight. He can reach it with his paws now, and it's only a matter of time before he figures out how to shift his weight to pop that door open...
- mcswell 4y ago
  My daughter had me replace the lever-style doorknob on her bedroom with a round doorknob, since her cat had figured out how to open the door.
epgui 4y ago
> I find myself shocked by how little regard people have for the intelligence of other animals. This observation can be generalized quite far: humans in general have abysmally poor empathy skills and generally have very little respect for everything outside their in-group. Other humans in the out-group are similarly less intelligent or less worthy. And yet despite this, humans also think overly highly of themselves.
- theplumber 4y ago
  Maybe this is part of the evolution. A kind of decentralisations of the human species in smaller groups. If we would be one big world governed by the same policies we could all die by the same mistake. Not to mention that too much empaty would be highly detrimental to any innovation and even survival. You would never fire someone and would use all the reasources to "help the poor" instead to invest into high risk high reward projects(i.e computers, space exploration). You would die of starvation instead to slaughter the cow because you are too empathic.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > Not to mention that too much empaty would be highly detrimental to any innovation and even survival. You would never fire someone and would use all the reasources to "help the poor" instead to invest into high risk high reward projects(i.e computers, space exploration). You would die of starvation instead to slaughter the cow because you are too empathic. This is a fantasy of objectivism, reactionaryism, and the like, a transparent attempt at justification for their selfishness. Empathy makes you care about the people you will feed with the beef, including yourself (empathy starts with yourself) - it doesn't turn you into an idiot, except in the imaginary strawperson fantasies of the aformentioned groups. > "help the poor" Why is that in scare quotes? Also, if you invest in people, many more will eventually invent high-reward things.
    - theplumber 4y ago
      >> Empathy makes you care about the people you will feed with the beef, including yourself (empathy starts with yourself) - it doesn't turn you into an idiot, except in the imaginary strawperson fantasies of the aformentioned groups. >> empathy starts with yourself That's not empathy. Empathy starts with the animal/person by your side otherwise you are just a selfish person. If you can eat grass/vegetables and survive why would you kill the poor animal? Help the poor is in quotes because it's a relative term. People who can afford food and shelder could still be considered poor. Poor people in the U.S are rich people in Yemenn. I always wondered, if investment in poor people provides good returns why there is not enough investment? (i.e unsecured loans provided by the private sector)
paganel 4y ago
Not sure about your friend but we have a cat (he's almost 4-year old now) and a border collie (almost 2-year old). We've professionally trained our BC, he is a very smart and especially loving animal, but the cat is "smarter", so to speak. It is the cat that initiates and, I dare say, invents the games they sometime play with each other.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
We mistake programmability for "intelligence" but not only for animals, but for humans too. If it does not execute the program it is stupid. Our estimate for intelligence is a heuristic in the brain, firing on the same networks we would use. Which is why intelligence only ever can behave like us, exactly like us and in no other way. Mirror Neurons. If they do not fire that way, we early out and call it a day. Its energy efficient and i assume most animals do that too. The tools with which we look for and on intelligence are deformed and often incapable of detecting it. Same goes for cats too though, they have zero empathy with prey. Mirror neurons are not firing for mice, but firing for their own kittens. Somewhere there is a switch.
LocalH 4y ago
I consider cats more intelligent than dogs, frankly. Dogs seem to have evolved or been bred for obedience, as they are much easier to train than cats. I consider cats to be much more autonomous than dogs. As an ADHD human, I strongly identify with cats. Sometimes I wish I could experience life as a comfortable, loved house cat. Maybe I will next time
mistercow 4y ago
My cat also knows a few tricks. A few years back, he had fatty liver disease, which is caused by a vicious cycle where the cat won't eat, which makes them sick and suppresses their appetite. The first thing you try when this happens is to jump start their appetite by encouraging them to eat however you can. Ultimately, I couldn't get enough calories in him, and we had to do a feeding tube. But before that, I was able to get him to eat some treats. He wouldn't eat them if I just gave them to him, but if I had him do "shake" first (the only trick he was up to), and then gave the treats as a reward, he would eat them. I found it fascinating that the reward had taken on its own meaning for him. You might naively model training with rewards as "the cat is hungry and knows that treats bring food". But he didn't want food. After years of practicing tricks, it's like being rewarded became its own positive experience for him, and the ritual of eating the treat is part of that experience, independent of whether or not he actually wants to eat.
pxc 4y ago
> I've clicker trained my cats to sit and also to follow my finger. Dogs are so invested in human approval that even abuse can be an effective training 'method' much of the time. As you likely know, before scientific training methods started gaining popularity, this was the predominant tradition for training dogs. And in an anthropocentric way and from a position of utter ignorance, that somehow became the cultural standard. If you can't yell at or pinch or shove an animal and still have it be interested in pleasing you, it's 'not intelligent'. It's absolutely absurd. It's not fair to dogs or to other animals, and erases the massive, fundamental similarity in the way dogs, cats, and other creatures of all kinds actually learn. All because humans struggle to separate the notion of intelligence from being interested in or useful to ourselves.

stevenjgarner 4y ago

How do we understand an intelligence based on an olfactory sense?

hosh 4y ago
One way is to simulate the experience of that with psychedelics or transcranial magnetic stimulation.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  Genuine question: how would you go about simulating it in that manner? Are you suggesting that we might visualize or otherwise cognize an olfactory intelligence using those techniques? It seems to me that much of human "intelligence" is our superior ability to perceive patterns in visual and auditory sensory input, and then to process those perceived patterns in some manner. In that light, what might an olfactory "pattern" actually represent?
  - hosh 4y ago
    Great question. Starting with the easier one, I don't know how to accomplish it with transcraniel magnetic stimulation, other than that, it can produce altered states of consciousness similar to psychedelics. I don't think we have enough insight into knowing how to adjust settings for a particular person to reliably get certain shifts in consciousness. Perhaps investigating along the lines of why and how someone can experience synthesia. As far as psychedelics goes, we'd probably have to delve into the traditional practices that works with altered states of consciousness, and that all depends one one's tolerance for experiences that would be considered woo. Two that come to my mind are Tantra, and the shamanic practices involved with "shapeshifting" into animals. In Tantric philosophy, pure consciousness descends into the manifest world through the five senses, and you see those representations as five downward triangles in the yantras. There's probably some yogi out there that have explored along those lines. Tantric methods can involve offerings of flowers and incense, so why wouldn't smell be involved? With the shamanic practices, with the assistance of drumming or psychedelics (and keeping in mind the basis for shamanic practices is animism), the practitioner would seek out the archetypal intelligence of an animal, and request to form a relationship. If granted, one of the ways the practitioner learns the wisdom of that animal archetype is a kind of shifting of consciousness into that of the animal, while partially retaining the perspective of a human. If that animal's olfactory senses is a big part of its role in the ecology it inhabits, and the human is receptive to that, I think it is possible to experience what it is like to have smells that is usually inaccessible as humans. As far as human's ability to process things with visual and auditory senses ... I'd say that whales and dolphins probably got us beat as far as auditory intelligence goes, and birds has us beat as far as visuals goes. Bird brains also seem more efficient than humans in terms of energy usages, and birds have to process five retinal cones compared to our three retinal cones. The unusual humans who have fully formed fourth retinal cones can already disginguish significantly more color tones than the rest of us ordinary humans. If someone wanted to experience what superior visual and audio experiences are, I'd say try the shamanic techniques to shapeshift into a whale or a parrot.

woojoo666 4y ago

Seems quite relevant to the recent discussion about current AI sentience [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31716639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31716639

anyonecancode 4y ago
Had the same thought. I think one other major difference between biological brains and computers, beyond the fact of having a body vs not, is that biology is analog and not digital. A signal going from cell to cell in a brain or up a spinal cord isn't just "on" or "off", but in any number of infinite states. No matter how many bits you manage to pack into a digital "brain," that's a fundamental difference. Now I can't predict out to the future and say something like digital intelligence is "impossible" or that in the vast universe all life is analog. But from the vantage point of today and what we currently know, it feels that reality is fundamentally analog and so any digital brain can only ever hope to be a simulation of intelligence. On the flip side, I think we vastly underestimate the various ways intelligence does and can exist amongst living creatures.
- tnzk 4y ago
  Yeah if we hadn't go digital and built something equivalent to modern computers with super-dense analog circuits then it would've gain intelligence.
- mpoteat 4y ago
  Neural networks operate on floating point values. Are you saying that e.g. 64 bits of resolution isn't enough to accurately model a neuron? The idea of significant figures in physics puts a limit on what is useful in practice. I could be wrong, but I feel that digital vs analog is a pretty meaningless distinction in this case, as past a certain level of resolution in practice this is noise. This doesn't even get into the fact that we know the universe is quantum in nature and that systems have a finite amount of possible states. The universe does not have a "infinite" state resolution in the way you are talking about, merely a large one.

cheese_goddess 4y ago

> But what makes a pig optimistic? In 2010, researchers at Newcastle University showed that pigs reared in a pleasant, stimulating environment, with room to roam, plenty of straw, and “pig toys” to explore, show the optimistic response to the squeak significantly more often than pigs raised in a small, bleak, boring enclosure. That... is dumb. They just chose whatever definition of "optimistic" was convenient for their experimental hypothesis and then used it to confirm their hypothesis. "What's an optimist pig? It's one that reacts to squeaks more often. How do we know a pig is optimistic? Because it reacts to squeaks more often!". Not only dumb, but also circular. Circularly dumb.

ggm 4y ago
Initially I also read it that way but it's a better designed experiment than first glance suggests: it's a choice predicated on three things leading to two outcomes, of the three things, one is clearly beneficial and one not beneficial, and the third indeterminate. So the two outcomes are beneficial and not beneficial. How does the pig interpret the as-yet unknown case? An "optimistic" pigs behaviour suggests it is open to the indeterminate choice having an upside. A "pessimistic" pig acts like its more likely to be disappointing. I could say a richly stimulated pig has more open choices and a poorly stimulated pig does not. It's a reasonable definition of optimism or pessimism in the field of choice. I do still think it's anthropomorphic thinking but I think it's a well founded experiment even in that critique.
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  Thanks, I understand the experiment as described. But if you start by asking "what makes a pig optimistic", you're already assuming that a pig can be optimistic. Whatever reason you find after that to say that the pig is optimistic is going to be wrong, because you have failed to do anything to justify the idea that pigs can be optimistic in the first place.

polishdude20 4y ago

I was surprised by the intelligence of a little spider I encountered the other day. As I was looking for my keys to enter the house, this little jumping spider was on the front door. As I approached the door he moved almost with anticipation. As I turned the keys, he got closer to the door edge. As I opened the door, he swung himself around the door and into the house ahead of me! At that point I decided if got this spectacular show, he can enter my house and do whatever he wants.

justinclift 4y ago
Heh Heh Heh. If you're into Science Fiction, then Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Time" might be your kind of thing: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316452505 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316452505 It's really, really good. :)
- kmarc 4y ago
  It is, however in his story the spiders gained intelligence from a "virus" that helped them accumulate and carry over experience across generations. BUT! The book and Tchaikovsky is still brilliant; he did a great job "thinking outside the box" by creating a thought experiment of "how would human-like skills, like reading, develop over time in non-human-like creatures, like spiders" - I'm pointing to the balls of spiderweb as "books". Tchaikovsky himself used to study zoology and had a focus in insects. Coincidentally he just turned 50 yesterday. Happy birthday to him!
_Microft 4y ago
This is an article on the intelligence of jumping spiders and how they plan their approach for an attack and that they e.g. fake being a different animal or even a gust of wind to camouflage when they move through the web of another spider. Maybe you like that: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/spiders-are-much-smarter-than-you-think/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/spiders-are-much-sma...
- simonh 4y ago
  It's interesting and sophisticated behaviour, but there are limits to what extent I'd characterise it as intelligent. I'm sure the spider has no concept of the animals it's mimicking, or that it's even mimicking an animal, or anything else. It might even be a stretch to describe their tactics as 'planned' in the human sense, as they're probably automatic responses to stimuli. They're still one of the most interesting and adept creatures we commonly encounter though.

eointierney 4y ago

Anthropomorphism is the curse of our intelligence

shsysuzhzbb 4y ago
Everyone always says this, but why? I hear how it is 'dangerous' to anthropomorphize animals by people like Joe Rogan constantly. Can you explain what is 'dangerous' about it? Or why we have to be 'careful' doing so? Genuinely interested. To me, the only downside is we might have to face the atrocities we commit in our daily life.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  > I hear how it is 'dangerous' to anthropomorphize animals by people like Joe Rogan constantly. They find some odd things to worry about.
- BurningPenguin 4y ago
  Some people seem to think that if humans aren't special, then they will be treated like animals. Which is quite ironic, if you consider human history.
- eointierney 4y ago
  It's not so much about animals as about everything else. It's dangerous because we over-simplify in terms of ourselves, and we often therefore lead each other astray from demonstable accuracy. We might commit atrocities as we are very wasteful, but with a little more "seeing the universe in ourselves" and a little less "seeing ourselves in the universe", we might refrain from anthropomorphisation and just enjoy our extraordinary amazingness, without destroying the planet as an afterthought to our vanity. Anthropomorphism is boring and lazy

jcims 4y ago

Why do dogs seem to ‘understand’ us to an extent but we struggle to understand dogs?

jonsen 4y ago
We struggle to understand each other. We conduct wars, need religion and the like to keep some order, etc.

mcswell 4y ago

Interesting article, but: "Compared with bird neurodiversity, humans are a monoculture." That happens when you compare a single species with hundreds or thousands of species.

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trhway 4y ago

>To grant animals “minds” in any meaningful sense was to indulge a crude anthropomorphism that had no place in science. Actually it hasn't been about violating supposed science principles. It has always been about going against the deeply entrenched even today religion dogma of "only humans have soul".

kmarc 4y ago

I'm surprised that the article mentions Frans de Waal primatologist, but doesn't mention his book, which is an excellent read about the topic: Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? [1] [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30192493-are-we-smart-enough-to-know-how-smart-animals-are https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30192493-are-we-smart-en...

xolox 4y ago
In addition to "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" another book by Frans de Waal, "Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves" is also well worth the read.

antux 4y ago

Recently learned that pigs are smarter than dogs and even 3-year olds. They're also very social, which makes them humanlike. For this reason I don't ever eat pork. It would be like eating dog or human meat.

HellsMaddy 4y ago
May I ask, why does the intelligence and sociability of the animal sway your decision, as opposed to the animal’s ability to think and feel? Where is the line that separates eating dog or pork from eating cow or chicken?
- prometheus76 4y ago
  I'm not the OP you're asking about, but on a related note: I don't eat dogs because they're omnivores. I try to stick as much as possible to only eating ruminants. But that's a completely separate issue than what you were asking OP about.
  - HellsMaddy 4y ago
    Can you explain why you are okay with eating ruminants but not omnivores?
    - prometheus76 4y ago
      Much lower chance of getting parasites.

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lynguist 4y ago

The difference between modern humans and other animals, even extinct humans, is not the presence of intelligence, it is language. Just compared to other extinct humans, we are more social and more violent. I believe what makes humans different is this: language and music and religion. This makes humans something bigger than just the individual. See: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947341/#!po=0.847458 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4947341/#!po=0....

simonh 4y ago
Indeed there are conceptual and communications skills we possess that no animals approach. The problem I find in these debates is that we each have different ideas what terms like intelligence, understanding and consciousness mean. Consciousness is particularly difficult because we use it in so many different ways. If you look in most dictionaries you will see about half a dozen different definitions ranging from meanings equivalent to perception, all the way up to awareness of ones self and the world, or self-reflection. Personally I see no reason to suppose that the capacity for self-reflection depends on the cognitive skills underlying language, rather it seems to me it's likely to be the other way around. If this is correct, then I expect our ancestors evolved self-reflection before language, and therefore other animals might also have developed that capability without having language in the sophisticated form we possess. Viewed in this way, if animals, particularly higher mammals and primates exhibit behaviour consistent with self-reflection and self-awareness, it seems reasonable to me that they may have inherited this capacity from a common ancestor of ours. That's especially so if many different species exhibit this trait. It seems unlikely that such behaviours would evolve completely independently in so many different species that are all related to each other and share so many common neurological features.
- prometheus76 4y ago
  The other very strange aspect of consciousness is that the only way we have of experiencing consciousness is through our own consciousness. The recursive nature of trying to reflect on consciousness while using our consciousness to do so ends up having some very weird effects. The book, I Am A Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter is what got me thinking about this problem.

abrenuntio 4y ago

"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties". Or as Nim Chimpsky used to say: "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." A lot of work remains to be done before we can give a full scientific account of the human mind in relation to the rest of nature. It seems quite narrow minded to me, fanatical even, to deny a priori that such an account, if at all possible, would confirm a transcendental distinction between humans and the rest of nature; or would feature non-material aspects.

raducu 4y ago
This reminds me of the debate of the origins of the Universe. Some religions maintained that the Universe at some point did not exist. Some scientists up to very recently maintained (perhaps in opposition to religious views) that the Universe always existed. I'm of the view that animals are a lot smarter than we'd regularly think, but that there is indeed something very special about human intelligence. My prediction would be that we won't be able to uplift even a chimpanzee. And that would be an awesome and debate ending experiment -- if human intelligence is nothing special and it's just a few mutations away from a chimpanzee, just patch the chimpanzee genome with the intelligence genes and see what happens.