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Scientific American Library Series #51
The Animal Mind
In this volume, James and Carol Gould go in search of the animal mind. Taking a fresh look at the evidence on animal capacities for perception, thought, and language, the Goulds show how scientists attempt to distinguish actions that go beyond the innate or automatically learned. They provide captivating, beautifully-illustrated descriptions of a number of clever and curious animal behaviors - some revealed to be more or less preprogrammed, some seemingly proof of a well-developed mental life.
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First published November 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 14, 2011
Fantastic book. I learned tons, despite the fact that I've already read other books and excerpts by this author-there was very little overlap. Gould runs a bee lab and it's pretty evident that bees are his thing. But really how could they not be? They are fascinating little buggers! And just when I thought I had learned all there was to know about the bees waggle dance, I discovered through this book that different species or subspecies of bees have a different distance associated for each waggle. For example, a temperate zone German subspecies dances one waggle for each 50m away the food is. To an Italian subspecies honeybee, one waggle means 20m and to the Egyptian subspecies, one waggle equals 10m. Tropical honeybees have a more accurate dance. This makes sense, given that tropical bees are looking for specific flowering trees and need to describe smaller but closer food sources. Temperate zone bees can forage farther away, but they are looking for large patches of flowers. Anyway, this book is a bit academic, but still worth the read. If you have limited patience for this type of book, but are interested in animal intelligence and social behavior, I would recommend at least chapters 8 and 9. Very cool stuff there.
January 9, 2023
Very interesting but not an easy read
March 20, 2016
Özellikle çocuklar için çok heyecan uyandırıcı ve esinleyici bir içeriği var. Her yaştan kişinin bilgilenebileceği bir kitap. Anlatımı yalın ve yabancı kavramlar güzel bir biçimde Türkçe terimlerle karşılanmış.
February 3, 2025
AN OVERVIEW OF RECENT RESEARCH TRENDS ABOUT ANIMAL COGNITION
Ethologist James Gould and writer Carol Grant Gould wrote in the Prologue to this 1994 book, “Until very recently it has been anathema in the scientific world to suggest in print that intelligence of some sort, perhaps even self-awareness, might guide the routine and often stereotyped behavior of many animals. And field research into the mechanisms of animal behavior HAS revealed many intricate but innate behavioral programs that, despite their sophistication have no apparent intellectual component… Imagine, then, the reaction when the notably rigorous behavioral scientist Donald Griffin… argued that intelligence and an ability to plan are characteristics that would be favored by natural selection as much as any other useful adaptation… Many researchers reacted to these arguments with outraged scorn; most of the rest displayed a polite lack of interest.
“But the last two decades have seen a major change in our picture of animal minds. Griffin… persists in prodding psychologists and fellow ethologists to reexamine our basic assumptions about animal cognition, as well as … encouraging research on animal thinking… In many ways this book recapitulates the slow but steady breaking down of the walls of resistance put up by a scientific community determined never again to be blinded by the cleverness of Hans…”
They explain in Chapter 1, “Higher degrees of mental activity are called ‘cognition,’ which is defined… as the act or process of KNOWING. Cognition can be innate---passive knowledge encoded in an animal’s genes and used as instructions for wiring a nervous system to generate particular inborn abilities and specializations. Active cognition---the ongoing process of gathering, analyzing, and using knowledge---can incorporate several stages of mental processing beginning with sensation, which is the detection of stimuli by a sensory receptor organ and the subsequent processing of that sensory information by the brain… we will look at how an animal’s sensory experience is strictly winnowed from the broad range of stimuli available and then systematically emphasized and distorted by the nervous system to create a surprisingly schematic version of reality for the brain to deal with.” (Pg. 8)
They outline, “The wasp’s technique [for tunnel-building] is to break down a complex task into a series of simpler tasks… What makes the wasp’s behavior more like that of a computer than an architect is the lack of any comprehension of the GOAL. Instead, the insect focuses on a series of immediate TASKS… A close look at the impressive feats of building by many other species, ranging from spiders [to] birds, reveals that the same pattern of individual tasks organized into subroutines underlies each web and nest… Perhaps it should not be so surprising that much of the most complex behavior seen in nature should be innate: after all, it would be very hard if not impossible to learn anything so intricate. Learning in animals tends to focus on far simpler tasks…” (Pg. 43)
They note, “The question of self-awareness is very touchy, evoking extreme emotional responses from many students of animal behavior… Nevertheless, privately many primatologists (and publicly a few) concede that they assume that their subjects are to some degree self-aware. In part this view may arise not because primates are so much smarter than other species, but because it is much easier for humans to read primate gestures and emotional expressions than the equivalents to, say, beavers or dolphins. It is also easier for us to empathize with behavioral responses to situations that could touch our own lives.” (Pg. 155)
They summarize, “Taking together the experiments we have looked at, it seems most likely that the ability to form conceptual categories and use logic is present even when language is not, and is probably used in the wild to deal with the most challenging problems animals face. The word-based communication being taught to animals is probably serving simply as a window into the minds of the few species researchers have to date discovered how to reach. As we will see, though, there remains the lively possibility that language instruction greatly amplifies the ability of an animal to make logical deductions.” (Pg. 179-180)
They conclude, “Given the gap that the accelerating enlargement of our brains and vocabulary has generated, it is no wonder we are tempted to treat humans as a special creation, somehow exempt from the constraints of our genetic inheritance. It is not surprising that many people consider nonhuman animals a lower form of life, ruled by instincts and mindless drives. But most likely it was evolutionary chance that put us where we are. We probably owe our species’ present exalted status as much to luck… as to the preexisting cognitive abilities of early humans… When we look at other species, then, we should remember that there, but for natural selection, we might still be.” (Pg. 217-218)
This book will appeal to some who are studying animal cognition, and related topics.
Ethologist James Gould and writer Carol Grant Gould wrote in the Prologue to this 1994 book, “Until very recently it has been anathema in the scientific world to suggest in print that intelligence of some sort, perhaps even self-awareness, might guide the routine and often stereotyped behavior of many animals. And field research into the mechanisms of animal behavior HAS revealed many intricate but innate behavioral programs that, despite their sophistication have no apparent intellectual component… Imagine, then, the reaction when the notably rigorous behavioral scientist Donald Griffin… argued that intelligence and an ability to plan are characteristics that would be favored by natural selection as much as any other useful adaptation… Many researchers reacted to these arguments with outraged scorn; most of the rest displayed a polite lack of interest.
“But the last two decades have seen a major change in our picture of animal minds. Griffin… persists in prodding psychologists and fellow ethologists to reexamine our basic assumptions about animal cognition, as well as … encouraging research on animal thinking… In many ways this book recapitulates the slow but steady breaking down of the walls of resistance put up by a scientific community determined never again to be blinded by the cleverness of Hans…”
They explain in Chapter 1, “Higher degrees of mental activity are called ‘cognition,’ which is defined… as the act or process of KNOWING. Cognition can be innate---passive knowledge encoded in an animal’s genes and used as instructions for wiring a nervous system to generate particular inborn abilities and specializations. Active cognition---the ongoing process of gathering, analyzing, and using knowledge---can incorporate several stages of mental processing beginning with sensation, which is the detection of stimuli by a sensory receptor organ and the subsequent processing of that sensory information by the brain… we will look at how an animal’s sensory experience is strictly winnowed from the broad range of stimuli available and then systematically emphasized and distorted by the nervous system to create a surprisingly schematic version of reality for the brain to deal with.” (Pg. 8)
They outline, “The wasp’s technique [for tunnel-building] is to break down a complex task into a series of simpler tasks… What makes the wasp’s behavior more like that of a computer than an architect is the lack of any comprehension of the GOAL. Instead, the insect focuses on a series of immediate TASKS… A close look at the impressive feats of building by many other species, ranging from spiders [to] birds, reveals that the same pattern of individual tasks organized into subroutines underlies each web and nest… Perhaps it should not be so surprising that much of the most complex behavior seen in nature should be innate: after all, it would be very hard if not impossible to learn anything so intricate. Learning in animals tends to focus on far simpler tasks…” (Pg. 43)
They note, “The question of self-awareness is very touchy, evoking extreme emotional responses from many students of animal behavior… Nevertheless, privately many primatologists (and publicly a few) concede that they assume that their subjects are to some degree self-aware. In part this view may arise not because primates are so much smarter than other species, but because it is much easier for humans to read primate gestures and emotional expressions than the equivalents to, say, beavers or dolphins. It is also easier for us to empathize with behavioral responses to situations that could touch our own lives.” (Pg. 155)
They summarize, “Taking together the experiments we have looked at, it seems most likely that the ability to form conceptual categories and use logic is present even when language is not, and is probably used in the wild to deal with the most challenging problems animals face. The word-based communication being taught to animals is probably serving simply as a window into the minds of the few species researchers have to date discovered how to reach. As we will see, though, there remains the lively possibility that language instruction greatly amplifies the ability of an animal to make logical deductions.” (Pg. 179-180)
They conclude, “Given the gap that the accelerating enlargement of our brains and vocabulary has generated, it is no wonder we are tempted to treat humans as a special creation, somehow exempt from the constraints of our genetic inheritance. It is not surprising that many people consider nonhuman animals a lower form of life, ruled by instincts and mindless drives. But most likely it was evolutionary chance that put us where we are. We probably owe our species’ present exalted status as much to luck… as to the preexisting cognitive abilities of early humans… When we look at other species, then, we should remember that there, but for natural selection, we might still be.” (Pg. 217-218)
This book will appeal to some who are studying animal cognition, and related topics.
February 8, 2025
Mükemmel bir çalışma. Şaşırdığım ve etkilendiğim birçok araştırma sonucu okudum. Yine de hayvan zihnine dair bildiklerimizin ne kadar yüzeysel olduğunu bir kez daha anladım. Hem okuması eğlenceli hem de eminim okurken yeni bir şeyler öğreneceksiniz. Özellikle arıların iletişim şekillerine dair yapılan çalışmalar çok etkileyiciydi.
June 26, 2019
This excellent book really opened my eyes to the variety of levels of cognition in the animal world. I loved the expert usage of experimental evidence and anecdotes to illustrate principles of animal behavior and the challenges researchers face in understanding how animals see the world.
October 9, 2016
Most mind illuminating book I read this year. Chanced upon this one as I was doing some research on Pattern Recognition principles and this book has a graphic description of how bees could deal with 'rotational variance' of a pattern. There were far more insights, especially about how bees 'speak through dancing' and how bees from different geography has different dialects! Quite amazing. Hoping to unpack some of the learning principles at work.
January 29, 2016
This is one of the most interesting books I've ever read. The chapter on bees was fascinating. It's worth reading again (and that's exactly what I'm about to do).
July 25, 2024
Hayvan üzerinde yapılan akıl yürütme, bilişsel gelişim araştırmalarına yer veren önemli bir kaynak. Keyifle okunuyor, ufuk açıcı, insanın doğadaki yerini yeniden düşünmesine yardımcı oluyor.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews