Just like Us? Animals and Humans
If you ever study animal behavior or ethology, you’re taught not to read human emotion into animal reactions and behavior.
But why?
The answer is that these are animals and we’re looking for reasons for actions rather than saying an animal hid because it was embarrassed. Animals aren’t humans! they don’t even come CLOSE! Right…?
Perhaps it isn’t as inaccurate as all that to believe that some animals are as complex in emotion as humans. What comes to mind is watch a video of a gorilla telling his human companions about the death of his mother at the hands of poachers.
“Cry,” Michael says, “Sharp-noise loud.”
Is there something human-like in those eyes? Photo Credit: youngrobv via Flickr
The Great Apes genome is at the very least 98% the same as the human genome. In fact, according to Thoughts on the Future of Great Ape Research, by Edwin H. McConkey and Ajit Varki, scientists are still unable to pinpoint exactly what in our DNA what us human.
Besides Great Apes, we know animals are much more intelligent than we give them credit for. Take crows, for example. Most people only think crows are the annoying black birds with the grating call that wakes people up. However, crows possessive a uncanny intelligence. While we were proud of our chimpanzee cousins and their use of tools, crows may have them beat. ” To obtain out-of-reach food, the crow repeatedly took a piece of straight wire and bent it to create a hook,” states the National Geographic article with a slight sense of amazement. This may be even better than the chimps and definitely may put them on a level next to humans.
Do I detect a hint of intelligence in that beady eye? Credit: law_kevan via Flickr
Unlike great apes, Crows are non-primates, birds and on a different evolutionary track than us humans. In her children’s book, The Tarantula in My Purse: and 172 other Wild Pets, 
Crows and Gorillas are only examples of how animals can be similar to humans. Animal Psychologists, Ethologists, Primatologists and pet owners all admit an occasional slip of scientific thinking. “You spend so much time with an animal, you start to think of them as human.”
And why not? Are they really so different? You decide for yourself.
Related links:
- The Gorilla Foundation- Research on Koko and her friends
- Michael’s story of his mother’s death
- Brief explanation on ASL use by Primates:
- National Geographic Article on Crow Intelligence:
- Jean Craighead George, naturalist author, Official Site
Kallen is currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Journalism at the University of Oregon and, of course, writing a blog.
Samper said,
March 19, 2008 @ 12:14 am
hum, and interesting idea, but are you arguing for, or against humanization of animals?
Nate said,
March 23, 2008 @ 6:01 am
Well, there’s things to be said on both sides of the issue, I guess. If you read into an animals emotions (as far as science goes) you can easily get into untestable territory, because an animal can’t tell you emotions (except Koko and other signing apes). On the other hand, it’s pretty obvious to me that animals have perhaps a degree of emotions, but I can’t prove it scientifically, so I agree with emotions being left out of the scientific circles until people can prove that they exist. However, I’d like to see animals treated as if they had emotions until evidence that they don’t comes up.
Jyvyn said,
March 26, 2008 @ 11:22 pm
It isn’t unrealistic to equate humans and animals if one believes in evolution. I think the only thing humans have done is establish an ethnocentric view of their species, using social complexity as the meter stick. Yes, humans have created cities to provide industry and homes for billions of bipeds worldwide. That’s not to say that honey bees build colonies from pollen and nectar to suit their own survival and efficiency needs. And it turns out that, almost innately, bees figured out the most efficient geometry for cell-building: hexagonal prisms.
There are tribes in South America and Africa that build (ethnocentrically-speaking) primitive homes and function on low-level communication (again, we are arbitrarily defining communication in terms of business negotiations, references to the future, and the need for an artificially created monetary system.) If we redefine communication to not be about abstract human-created systems and redefine primitive to simply mean resourceful, functional, and ecologically-friendly, then all of a sudden, the tribes in South America and Africa are something that us city-dwellers can only hope to be. Meanwhile, we’re struggling to fight global warming (which, might I remind you, was created by the city dwellers, not the tribe folk), and we’re quickly running out of resources. Now, with this new perspective established, are gorilla and honey bee civilizations really inferior to human civilization? I think humans have made this distinction for species superiority and domination. Albeit, that’s not about to change with our guns and cities we’ve invisibly constructed. Nonetheless, the lack of intelligence of our own species is likely going to bring the human race to its feet. Every day, hundreds of species go extinct. We just don’t acknowledge that one of these days, that species is going to be humans.
I’d say it’s extremely arrogant and species-centric to say only humans have emotions. Furthermore, to create a distinction between human emotions and animal emotions, as if our emotions were deeper and superior to the emotions of other creatures. I bet there are species out there that have deeper comprehension of emotion than humans. I bet out there are species out there that can compute emotions quicker than humans (ever spent a week in the dumps? ever been mad at someone for hours?)
Taylor Dewey said,
March 31, 2008 @ 7:33 am
@ Jyvyn:
A well thought out comment! I especially liked the part about the arbitrary meter-stick humans have applied. In the context of what Kallen is trying to say, i’m not sure it relevant. Like any branch of science, we are supposed to be impartial observers. If we apply emotions to animals (accurate or not) we also apply assumptions about behavior based on our own understanding on those emotions. Keep in mind, we could design software to interpret emotion based on facial feature and voice patterns; intepretation of the emotion is key, and relatively unknown for other species.
Perhaps, though, there are some branches of zoology that could benefit from a more anthropocentric view of animal behavior. I know Jane Goodall was probably a pioneer in this idea: throwing away many scientific “principles” to gain a better understanding of primate society.