| 1 | 1 | | It comes naturally to assume that dolphins are smart and earthworms are stupid, |
| 2 | | that chimpanzees are clever while toads are unimaginative and dull. What does it mean to |
| 3 | | say an animal is smart, and how can we hope to measure intelligence outside our own |
| 4 | | species? Is there some reason certain species are cleverer than others? These questions |
| 5 | | have been debated for centuries, and the answers hold a vital key to our picture of human |
| 6 | | intellect, and our relation to the creatures that share the planet with us. |
| 2 | 7 | | The first problem in coming to grips with the issue of animal intelligence lies in |
| 8 | | defining intelligence. Our intuition leads us to suspect intellect behind many things |
| 9 | | animals do, but intuition has in this case proved to be a misleading guide. Many animals |
| 10 | | behave in very complex ways, doing things that seem too difficult to accomplish without |
| 11 | | some awareness of what they are about. Each species of bird, for instance, builds its own |
| 12 | | distinctive kind of nest, using a particular set of materials and a specific way of binding |
| 13 | | them together. There is not an innate picture of the nest to go by: the birds are born with a |
| 14 | | prewired program which they execute, step by step, with no concept of what the |
| 15 | | end-product will (or should) look like. |
| 3 | 16 | | In retrospect, this makes good sense: it would be a difficult and time-consuming |
| 17 | | process to figure out how to build a nest. Natural selection will inevitably favour more |
| 18 | | and more precise innate instructions. Indeed, contrary to expectation, the more complex |
| 19 | | a task, the more likely it is to be innate, simply because really difficult problems require |
| 20 | | too much time to solve. |
| 4 | 21 | | What, then, is 'real' intelligence? We believe that what we call cognitive trial and |
| 22 | | error - analysing and solving problems in the mind rather than through physical |
| 23 | | experimentation - is probably the key. |
| 5 | 24 | | Important evidence for the ability of animals to put together information acquired |
| 25 | | independently to formulate a novel plan of action did not come until 1948, when it was |
| 26 | | demonstrated that rats develop what amounts to a bird's-eye view of the mazes they are |
| 27 | | made to navigate. Since then, the ability to construct a mental map and calculate a novel |
| 28 | | route has become a standard way of testing for animal intelligence. The threshold for this |
| 29 | | kind of mental ability, however, has been dropping at an alarming rate: a few years ago |
| 30 | | Thomas Collett at Sussex University discovered that mere toads can probably map out a |
| 31 | | new path to a nearby goal. |
| 6 | 32 | | In retrospect, these abilities should not have come as surprises. The lesson from |
| 33 | | studies of animal behaviour is th at animals are just as smart as they have to be. Natural |
| 34 | | selection has led to smart bees and stupid earthworms because intelligence is essential to |
| 35 | | meeting competition from other nectar foragers while navigating long distances with the |
| 36 | | poor vision provided by compound eyes. There is no advantage to be gained by being |
| 37 | | smart - at least in any way we can yet measure - if you are a worm. |
| | | |
| | | James and Carol Gould in The Listener, May 15, 1986 |
