Opinion: When dogs recall toys, and horses plan ahead, are animals so different from us?

[Judi Lynn]

When dogs recall toys, and horses plan ahead, are animals so different from us?
Martha Gill

We’re warned not to assign human qualities to other species, but evidence of their complex abilities is mounting

Sat 7 Sep 2024 12.00 EDT
Last modified on Sat 7 Sep 2024 16.08 EDT

The details differ, but really it’s the same story, turning up every few weeks, for around a decade now. The revelation – and it’s always presented with a dramatic flourish – is this: animals are much more like us than we thought.

Last week, it was that dogs could remember the names of their old toys – even when they hadn’t seen them for two years. Language acquisition, that “uniquely human” thing, was being encroached on, the researchers said: dogs could store words in their memory. Last month, it was that horses could strategise and plan ahead, overturning the assumption that they “simply respond to stimuli in the moment”. And in April, it was that there’s a “realistic possibility of consciousness” in reptiles, fish and even insects – according to a declaration signed by some 40 scientists. One of the studies backing the claims recorded bumblebees playing with wooden balls. The behaviour had no obvious connection to mating or survival, the authors thought. It was for fun.

The mental territory we can claim to be “uniquely human” is shrinking at an alarming rate. Wasps can distinguish faces, dolphins call one another by name, pigs use tools, zebra finches dream, parrots go on Zoom, and sometimes crayfish get anxious. Chimps, meanwhile, exist in complex cultures, rather like ours, with fashion trends. In one recorded instance, a high-ranking female chimp started wearing grass in her ears. Within a week, all the female chimps were doing it.

Does this seem obvious? It did to Darwin, who, along with other naturalists, once assumed that animals, like us, were individuals with some form of consciousness. “Can we feel sure that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as shewn by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures of the chase?” he wrote in The Descent of Man.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/07/when-dogs-recall-toys-and-horses-plan-ahead-are-animals-so-different-from-us