New Thoughts On Animal Thinking

Prof Aliza le Roux, head of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at the University of the Free State’s QwaQwa campus, says the latest ideas in animal behaviour hold farreaching implications for livestock farmers.

- Roelof Bezuidenhout

We are learning more and more about how animals experience their unique worlds. My own studies have focused mainly on cognition in mammals such as bat-eared foxes and primates. For example, bat-eared foxes carry cow dung to their dens so that their offspring can feed on the insects and larvae in it, a brilliant feeding solution for a species that usually doesn’t eat anything bigger than a termite. I’ve also looked at how gelada monkeys cheat one another by hiding their infidelities from others in the troop.

These findings are applicable to behaviour in other species. One can write volumes about what we know, but there is just as much we don’t know. For too long, we believed in behaviourism, or the idea that because we cannot measure animal cognition or emotions, they simply do not exist. This negates what people who keep animals have always known. Anyone who has a favourite dog, cat, horse or even sheep knows that the animal has some personality, emotions and intelligence.

MEASURING THE INVISIBLE

Over the years, researchers have developed techniques that enable them to measure the ‘invisible’ side of animals. We now know for certain that they have individual personalities, are intelligent, and experience emotions, although these are not exactly the same as ours. We can no longer accept that emotion and intelligence are totally absent in animals.

When her child dies, a baboon mother will carry it around for days and sometimes behave as though she is grieving. The chances are good that the hormones acting on her body are the same as ours when we are sad. While her offspring was alive, she nursed it in the same way a human parent would care for a child, with the same type of hormones guiding her behaviour. To us, it looks like love, and it probably feels rather like love to her.