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Animals: Thinking and Feeling?

...JR

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J
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So, I've been watching Cosmos all afternoon and while watching the episode "The persistence of memory" Carl Sagan mentioned that animals have feelings, but what separates us from them is that we have thoughts. He went on to say that animals, such as reptiles, don't think, but instead follow genetically inherited behavior patterns.

For some reason, I never really thought that animals have feelings and I did think they thought on some level, but that they simply could not "think ahead".

Could anyone provide evidence or some good links to support Mr. Sagan's claim on feelings and lack of thought? Is this still accepted, or have new studies found otherwise?

any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks
 
Only personal experience, subjectively interpreted. To me, it seems animals have both feelings and thoughts.

Hans
 
Any dog owner will attest...

One of the more famous examples is apes that have been taught sign langauge...I'll look for link...
 
Reptiles, amphibians, fish and animals below that do not have a cerebral cortex; with rare exception, they have all the senses people have ....visual, auditory, touch, taste and smell but without a cortex it is impossible for them to think and all their perceived thinking behaviors are really based on sensory input and response. Some do have sensory receptors mammals including people don't have: pit organs which sense temperature from a distance in Pit Vipers and Boid snakes, and lateral line systems is fish for example. The absence of a cortex in reptiles and lower animals is what Sagan was undoubtedly alluding to ... the so-called "reptilian brain."

When their keeper approaches the cage of a newly acquired snake it doesn't do anything. The cage is opened and the snake gets a mouse thrown at it which it devours. It is not long before everytime the keeper approaches the tank the snake arouses and rears up to the top of the cage to meet him, sensing that a meal is coming. Is this memory and thought by the snake or
purely a conditioned reflex? In a snake probably a reflex, but you can't rule out memory and thought processes when similar behavior is exhibited by a dog or a monkey although Pavlov did prove they too can be conditioned to reflexively respond to stimuli.


In my own opinion, since they do have a cortex, mammals besides people
are capable of thought. From what you say above it looks like Sagan was saying reptiles don't have the equipment for thought but he didn't rule it out in say dogs, cats or chimpanzees. Is this correct? Or did he say all animals except man are incapable of thought?
 
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Once on a desert rig, the rig dog (a Saluki), persistently came to me, grabbing my foot and trying to get my attention. I stopped and tried to pat him, but he backed away, ran a few yards, stopped, whined, looked away, then came back and grabbed my boot again.

I wondered what was going on. A passing man said to me that there were strange dogs on the location and the dog wanted help to chase them.
Thinking he was joking, I urged the dog on and followed him.

The guy was not joking. There were several dogs sniffing around storage containers. The dog took off towards them, looking back to be sure I was following. When I ran after him, he went for the interlopers and chased them off.

It seems clear to me that while his "desire" to get the interlopers off "his territory" may have been innate, he had enough wit not to attack a pack of dogs on his own. He actively sought help. Now this may also be instinctive behaviour- dogs are pack hunters- but he had no other dogs to turn to for help. He was able to adapt his instinctive behaviour to get human assistance. Once confident of backup, he went into action.

This may all be ascribed to instinct- but it is an extremely complex and flexible form of instinct that permits such behaviour. At what point does consciousness enter the equation? Or is consciousness actually necessary for thought to occur? I have my doubts about this. It seems to me that mosthuman mental information processing is unconscious'and a lot of action is taken based on unconscious decision. How often do we dither over a decision, unable to make up our minds, and then find ourselves acting without apparently deciding? Happens to me frequently. I suspect that is the primary action mechanism in many mammals.
 
SteveGrenard said:
Reptiles, amphibians, fish and animals below that do not have a cerebral cortex; with rare exception, they have all the senses people have ....visual, auditory, touch, taste and smell but without a cortex it is impossible for them to think and all their perceived thinking behaviors are really based on sensory input and response. Some do have sensory receptors mammals including people don't have: pit organs which sense temperature from a distance in Pit Vipers and Boid snakes, and lateral line systems is fish for example. The absence of a cortex in reptiles and lower animals is what Sagan was undoubtedly alluding to ... the so-called "reptilian brain."

When their keeper approaches the cage of a newly acquired snake it doesn't do anything. The cage is opened and the snake gets a mouse thrown at it which it devours. It is not long before everytime the keeper approaches the tank the snake arouses and rears up to the top of the cage to meet him, sensing that a meal is coming. Is this memory and thought by the snake or
purely a conditioned reflex? In a snake probably a reflex, but you can't rule out memory and thought processes when similar behavior is exhibited by a dog or a monkey although Pavlov did prove they too can be conditioned to reflexively respond to stimuli.


In my own opinion, since they do have a cortex, mammals besides people
are capable of thought. From what you say above it looks like Sagan was saying reptiles don't have the equipment for thought but he didn't rule it out in say dogs, cats or chimpanzees. Is this correct? Or did he say all animals except man are incapable of thought?
Click to expand...


this definitely helped clear things up, and I'm not sure if he was referring to all animals or not, I'll have to rewatch it later when I'm out of work. If anyone feels like watching the episode in question feel free to check it out:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5805364229668610197&q=carl+sagan


and so then now I have this question, are other animals capable of the abstract/thinking in the future sort of thinking that we are, or is this one of the things that separates us from them?
 
This is all personal experience and therefore not scientific at all, but I have worked with many different types of animals my whole life and even though some are very smart, they don't have the same type of thought that we do.

If Amapola (the real Amapola, the one in my avatar, not me) is really thirsty and I give her half a gallon of water, she can't look at it and figure out that that is not enough water. (The average horse drinks 8 - 10 gallons per day.) She just drinks what I give her, and is thirsty again. Horses have amazing memories and certainly that is part of intelligence, yet many people think they are "stupid" because they will run back into a burning barn. It's because they remember being safe there, and in a panic will return to someplace they think is safe. We would not do that, we could understand that the barn is not safe anymore once it catches on fire. We can measure our hunger against the amount of food present and work out if there is enough, ahead of time. We can also understand things like time passing, but I doubt that this means anything to a horse, sheep, goat, bird etc.

I am not trying to say they are not worthy, or something - I spend almost every waking minute caring for animals. They certainly do have feelings, they can be in a good or bad mood, they get scared, they get reassured and they can even have dreams. Sometimes I think they are far smarter than some of the people I run in to.... :rolleyes: ....at least, they can be far easier to work with. Even so they just don't have the same type of thoughts that we do, in any event not in my experience.
 
Like most things in nature, it's near impossible to classify things neatly without very clear definitions. I read a recent article which said anything with a nervous system is capable of 'thought', however the definition of thought they insinuated seemed to imply some sort of nervous system algorithm that took in stimuli, compared them, and came up with an outcome.

Hence, you need to really describe 'thought'. Abstract contemplation of a future is rather complicated, however how could you conclusively test for it?

Humans are by far the most advanced thinkers, capable of doing it to a much finer degree than any other animal. However, on a spectrum, it's hard to find lines to categorise.

Athon
 
Be careful that you define what you mean by feelings. For example, pain is a feeling. Certainly animals feel pain. Fear is a feeling, and I suspect that animals feel fear.

~~ Paul
 
I agree we need to define what we mean by "thought" if we are going to dissect Sagan's remark.
 
One of my budgies showed inventive thought. One of his toys broke (a mirror with a vat attached to it he used as a stool, so he could rest while admiring himself I guess). So I bought him another mirror but without a vat (couldn't find one). When I came back a few hours later, he had pulled one of his other vats and put it himself next to the mirror, in the same configuration as the other toy. This was either a very smart budgie, or a very narcissistic one! :D
 
Pardalis said:
This was either a very smart budgie, or a very narcissistic one! :D
Click to expand...
One of my cats loves to gaze at herself in mirrors. She doesn't do the usual cat thing and look for the cat behind the mirror or attack the mirror. I have a stand mirror that she tilts down so she can look. She tilts the mirror on my desk so it's easier for her to see herself. I've seen her exhibiting all these behaviors. She's a very vain cat! :)
 
My dog drags his dog bowl to his bed in another room so that my other dog can't get it. He only does this when my other dog is around. This is evidence he plans ahead. He does it with rawhides also.




Is it possible reptiles have another means of thinking different than that of Mammals? Just because mammals require a cortex to think that doesn't mean reptiles do.
 
How about non-vertebrates? Some of these have very complex brains and show a lot of complex behavior that could be attributed to thought. For example, octopus, squids and cuttlefish all have very interesting behavior that, in some species, seems to indicate intelligence. On another forum, one of the posters had a pet octopus that would watch her clean the tank, and if she dropped anything, it would grab it and hand it back.

For vertebrates, I recently saw a video of a pod of orcas teaching their young how to hunt seals by washing them off ice floes, then, after washing one off a chunk of ice and playing with it for a while, they put it back on the ice. It was thought that this was the only group of orcas to use this method, and that it had been handed down from generation to generation. Another video showed some orcas hunting in the surf and playing with a baby seal. After a while, the seal was worn out, so one of the orcas pushed it on shore. In both instances, they seemed to be practicing their hunting or training their young, and were not hungry.

To me, it seems there isn’t really a line between the animals that think and those that don’t. Some have more complex thought and some have mostly hard-wired behavior, and some, like octopus, probably think in ways that are very alien to us. As far as feelings go (I'm assuming you mean emotions, not sensory input), I think the animals that have social behavior, like primates and canids, are more likely to have what we would consider emotions.
 
My cat prefers to wait for her main course before enjoying her claret:

That must indicate forward planning
 

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On topic of reptiles and thoughts:

I have an iguana and a russian tortoise. Frankly, neither show what one might call intelligent behavior past basic routines. (Aka: the tortoise will follow you around begging for food and the free-roaming lizard is toilet-trained towards a pile of newspapers. For some weeks, the lizard also made a lengthy voyage toward the cat's food bowl in the next room, a habit that he's thankfully been scared out of.) The ig can be handled with no problem, and will go as far as wander over to watch TV/computer screen in terms of socialization, which isn't much....

I've heard of iguanas engaging in play-like behavior and getting very attached to the owners, but mine seems to be content to lie on his perch, devour greens by the pound and wage a glaring war with the cat.

Granted, the ig does act as a beautiful piece of interior decoration and an ice breaker during parties...
 
AK-Dave said:
As far as feelings go (I'm assuming you mean emotions, not sensory input), I think the animals that have social behavior, like primates and canids, are more likely to have what we would consider emotions.
Click to expand...

Emotional expressions only have advantages in a social setting. While happiness, sadness, fear etc. are all beneficial in influencing behavioural patterns, expressing them so others can sympathise and learn from the situation too is pretty much a social thing.

(Oh, and I so want a pet octopus!)

Athon
 
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