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We humans have a big problem: we are selfish and arrogant.
In his book "Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?", the primatologist Frans De Waal pointed out several critics of how we study and think about animal behavior.
For decades, we investigated what animals are like us. If they didn't behave like us or how we expected them to behave, they were simple dumb creatures.
That was never the real question. Instead, we needed to focus on the real question that matters:
Who Are They?
Why do they behave like that?
Human Arrogance: Anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism is the belief that humans are the central or most important entity on the planet.
Donald Griffin, in his inspiring book "The Question of Animal Awareness", argued that we humans have ever the wrong perception that everything is related to what we do.
For example, to think that we are the only ones who can feel pain, emotions, or have consciousness.
This view is wrong.
We are not the center of the universe.
We share our planet with incredible animals capable of amazing behaviors.
However, for a pretty long time, we always studied them wrong.
Moving On Anthropocentrism: Umwelt
Anthropocentrism led to another concept: anthropomorphism.
This is the attribution of human-like behaviors or experiences to other animals. This point of view biased a lot of studies in animal behavior and cognition.
However, this changed when ethology was born.
Ethology is the science that studies animal behavior in their natural habitats and contexts.
And one concept was and still is vital for ethology: Umwelt.
Umwelt means environment in German, but von Uexküll used it to refer to the perceptive world of an animal. In other words, it means the sensory bubble of an animal.
We humans rely on vision, and therefore our Umwelt is pretty visual. But there are a lot of animals that are blind, and their Umwelten relies on sounds or echoes.
For fish, electric fields are vital to know their environment. For migrating birds that can probably see the magnetic field, their Umwelt is visually more complex than ours (in the sense of colors).
There are multiple worlds out there, each ruled by an animal Umwelt. Each animal has a unique sensory bubble, even you.
Studying Animals
To show you how Umwelt is so important when studying animals and how anthropomorphism biased research in the past, I will take some real examples of previously conducted research.
Can Elephants Use Tools Like Humans and Other Primates?
For several years, it was believed that elephants were completely incapable of tool use.
How did scientists conclude this?
Well, they took an experiment where elephants had to use sticks to get yummy food. The problem was that the food was pretty high.
The objective for the elephants was to use the stick to get the food.
Easy, right?
Well, the elephants failed the test. And scientists concluded that they were not smart enough.
What?! Elephants are incredibly smart, how …
Years later, some other scientists decided to test the elephants again. The difference was that now they knew something:
Despite primates, the tactile organ of an elephant is their nose.
And they not only use their trunk to get food but also to smell it and feel it.
Kandula, a young male elephant, could simply solve the problem by throwing a box to step in with their 2 front feet, and then get the food with his trunk.
It turned out that elephants are capable of tool use … if they are appropriate.
Gibbons
The same test was done on gibbons, a primate that lives in subtropical and tropical rainforests in Asia.
They are known to jump from branch to branch thanks to their strong arms. And despite other primates, they don't live on the ground, but on trees.
When gibbons faced the test they also failed.
Why?
Gibbon's hands are designed to hold branches.
They use them to jump from branch to branch. Not to use tools. They are not designed for that!
Additionally, they don't live on the ground where the experiment was conducted: gibbons live in the trees.
In their Umwelt, they are on the branches, not on the ground.
Again, when scientists changed this experiment into a more natural context for the animal, gibbons passed the test.
Gibbons then were just as smart as other primates.
Conclusion
Our way of studying animals was biased with anthropomorphism and anthropomorphism, the belief that we are the center of the universe (the only animals capable of intelligence), and the attribution of human-like behaviors in other species.
By changing this philosophy, science started to learn a lot about animals.
And it turned out that they are smart, have emotions, and probably consciousness.
But we still need to learn a lot about them.
And you … do you think we are smart enough to study intelligence in other animals?
Thanks for reading! Hope you have a Wonderful Day!
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Axel
📚 Reference
De Waal, F. (2016). Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?. WW Norton & Company.