[LINK] Animal intelligence

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/scientists-unlock-animal-
intelligence-20120625-20xdi.html#ixzz1ymht7Zzi


Apes and other animals can memorise 10,000 pictures, use tools, recognise 
words, express empathy, and, put humans to shame at a touch-screen number 
game.

The more we study animals, the less special we seem.

Baboons can distinguish between written words and gibberish. Monkeys seem 
to be able to do multiplication. 

Apes can delay instant gratification longer than a human child can. They 
plan ahead. They make war and peace. They show empathy. They share.

"It's not a question of whether they think — it's how they think," says 
Duke University scientist Brian Hare. Now scientists wonder if apes are 
capable of thinking about what other apes are thinking.

The evidence that animals are more intelligent and more social than we 
thought seems to grow each year, especially when it comes to primates. 

It's an increasingly hot scientific field with the number of ape and 
monkey cognition studies doubling in recent years, often with better 
technology and neuroscience paving the way to unusual discoveries.

This month scientists mapping the DNA of the bonobo ape found that, like 
the chimp, bonobos are only 1.3 per cent different from humans.

Says Josep Call, director of the primate research center at the Max 
Planck Institute in Germany: "Every year we discover things that we 
thought they could not do."

Call says one of his recent more surprising studies showed that apes can 
set goals and follow through with them.

Orangutans and bonobos in a zoo were offered eight possible tools — two 
of which would help them get at some food.

At times when they chose the proper tool, researchers moved the apes to a 
different area before they could get the food, and then kept them waiting 
as much as 14 hours.

In nearly every case, when the apes realised they were being moved, they 
took their tool with them so they could use it to get food the next day, 
remembering that even after sleeping. The goal and series of tasks didn't 
leave the apes' minds.

Call says this is similar to a person packing luggage a day before a 
trip: "For humans it's such a central ability, it's so important."

For a few years, scientists have watched chimpanzees in zoos collect and 
store rocks as weapons for later use. In May, a study found they even add 
deception to the mix. They created haystacks to conceal their stash of 
stones from opponents, just like nations do with bombs.

Hare points to studies where competing chimpanzees enter an arena where 
one bit of food is hidden from view for only one chimp.

The chimp that can see the hidden food, quickly learns that his foe can't 
see it and uses that to his advantage, displaying the ability to perceive 
another ape's situation. That's a trait humans develop as toddlers, but 
something we thought other animals never got, Hare said.

Monkey Memory

And then there is the amazing monkey memory.

At the National Zoo in Washington, humans who try to match their recall 
skills with an orangutan's are humbled. Zoo associate director Don Moore 
says: "I've got a Ph.D., for God's sake. You would think I could out-
think an orang, and I can't."

In French research, at least two baboons kept memorising so many 
pictures — several thousand — that after three years researchers ran out 
of time before the baboons reached their limit. Researcher Joel Fagot at 
the French National Centre for Scientific Research figured they could 
memorise at least 10,000 and probably more.

And a chimp in Japan named Ayumu who sees strings of numbers flash on a 
screen for a split-second regularly beats humans at accurately 
duplicating the lineup. He's a YouTube sensation, along with orangutans 
in a Miami zoo that use iPads.

Beyond Primates

It's not just primates that demonstrate surprising abilities.

Dolphins, whose brains are 25 per cent heavier than humans, recognise 
themselves in a mirror. So do elephants. A study in June finds that black 
bears can do primitive counting, something even pigeons have done, by 
putting two dots before five, or 10 before 20 in one experiment.

The trend in research is to identify some new thinking skill that chimps 
can do, revealing that certain abilities are "not uniquely human," said 
Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal. Then the scientists find 
that same ability in other primates further removed from humans 
genetically. Then they see it in dogs and elephants.

"Capacities that we think in humans are very special and complex are 
probably not so special and not so complex," de Waal said. "This research 
in animals elevates the animals, but it also brings down the humans... If 
monkeys can do it and maybe dogs and other animals, maybe it's not as 
complex as you think."

At Duke, professor Elizabeth Brannon shows videos of monkeys that appear 
to be doing a "fuzzy representation" of multiplication by following the 
number of dots that go into a box on a computer screen and choosing the 
right answer to come out of the box. This is after they've already done 
addition and subtraction.

This spring in France, researchers showed that six baboons could 
distinguish between fake and real four-letter words — BRRU vs KITE, for 
example. And they chose to do these computer-based exercises of their own 
free will, either for fun or a snack.

Empathy isn't just for humans

It was once thought the control of emotions and the ability to empathise 
and socialise separated us from our primate cousins. But chimps console, 
and fight, each other. They also try to soothe an upset companion, 
grooming and putting their arms around him.

"I see plenty of empathy in my chimpanzees," de Waal said. But studies 
have shown they also go to war against neighbouring colonies, killing the 
males and taking the females. That's something that also is very human 
and led people to believe that war-making must go back in our lineage 6 
million years, de Waal said.

When scientists look at our other closest relative, the bonobo, they see 
a difference. Bonobos don't kill. Hare says his experiments show bonobos 
give food to newcomer bonobos, even when they could choose to keep all 
the food themselves.

One reason scientists are learning more about animal intellect is 
computers, including touch screens. In some cases, scientists are setting 
up banks of computers available to primates 24-7. In the French word 
recognition experiment, Fagot found he got more and better data when it 
was the baboons' choice to work.

Animal cognition researcher Steve Ross at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago 
agrees.

"The apes in our case seem to be working better when they have that 
control, that choice to perform," he said.

What the brain scans show

Brain scans on monkeys and apes also have helped correct mistaken views 
about ape brain power. It was once thought the prefrontal cortex, the 
area in charge of higher reasoning, was disproportionately larger than 
the rest of the brain only in humans, giving us a cognitive advantage, 
Hare said. But imaging shows that monkey and ape prefrontal cortexes have 
that same larger scale, he said.

What's different is that the human communication system in the prefrontal 
cortex is more complex, Hare said.

So there are limits to what non-human primates can do. Animals don't have 
the ability to communicate with the complexity of human language. In the 
French study, the baboons can recognise that the letters KITE make a word 
because through trial and error they learn which letters tend to go 
together in what order. But the baboons don't have a clue of what KITE 
means.

It's that gap that's key. "The boundaries are not as sharp as people 
think, but there are certain things you can't overcome and language is 
one of them," said Columbia University animal cognition researcher 
Herbert Terrace.

And that leads to another difference, Ross said. Because apes lack 
language skills, they learn by watching and mimicking. Humans teach with 
language and explanation, which is faster and better, Ross said.

Ethical Questions

Some of the shifts in scientific understanding of animals are leading to 
ethical debates. When Emory University researcher Lori Marino in 2001 co-
wrote a groundbreaking study on dolphins recognising themselves in 
mirrors, proving they have a sense of self similar to humans, she had a 
revelation.

"The more you learn about them, the more you realize that they do have 
the capacity and characteristics that we think of as a person," Marino 
said. "I think it's impossible to ignore the ethical implications of 
these kinds of findings."

After the two dolphins she studied died when transferred to another 
aquarium, she decided never to work on captive dolphins again. She then 
became a science adviser to the Nonhuman Rights Project, which seeks 
legal rights or status for animals. The idea, Marino said, is to get 
animals such as dolphins "to be deemed a person, not property."

The intelligence of primates was one of the factors behind a report last 
year by the Institute of Medicine that said the National Institutes of 
Health should reduce dramatically the number of chimpanzees it uses in 
biomedical research.

The NIH is working on new guidelines that would further limit federal 
medical chimpanzee use down from its current few dozen chimps at any 
given time, said NIH program planning chief James Anderson. Chimps are a 
special case, with their use "very, very limited," he said. But he raises 
the question: "What happens if your child is sick or your mother is 
dying" and animal research might lead to a cure?

The issue is more about animal welfare and giving them the right "not to 
be killed, not to be tortured, not to be confined unnecessarily" than 
giving them legal standing, said David DeGrazia, a philosophy and ethics 
professor at George Washington University.

Hare says that focusing on animal rights ignores the problem of treatment 
of chimps in research settings. He contends that for behavioral studies 
and even for many medical research tests they could be kept in zoos or 
sanctuaries rather than labs.

Animals performing tasks in near-natural habitats "is like an Ivy League 
college" for the apes, Hare said. "We're going to see them do stunning 
and sophisticated things."  AP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/scientists-unlock-
animal-intelligence-20120625-20xdi.html#ixzz1ymht7Zzi
--

Cheers
Stephen