Words&Dirt

If humans want to survive and flourish in the Anthropocene, we will need to overcome the habits of thought that have wrought destruction on our collective psyche and the natural world. One of our most misguided and longstanding myths is the notion that humanity’s mental faculties should be considered qualitatively different from those of nonhuman animals. This view has always been wrong, but only over the last few decades have we acquired the scientific evidence to prove what many animal specialists have long suspected: Most animals are intelligent, emotional, and deeply social creatures. The delightful and irrefutable truth is that the spectrum of intelligence that has evolved on Earth is much vaster and more nuanced than previous generations could have imagined.

While the need for specialization is an indispensable feature of the scientific endeavor, it is often interdisciplinary thinkers who excel at bringing the findings of science into the public sphere. This role is at least as important as the painstaking research from which scientific conclusions are derived, and Frans de Waal has occupied both worlds with remarkable poise over his distinguished career. His most recent book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, is a grand achievement. The findings and ideas presented here might be old news to people on the cutting edge of animal research, but to the average reader they will appear startling, even miraculous.

Upon diving into this text, I was immediately consumed by the pleasurable experience of trying to grasp the mental and emotional lives of nonhuman animals. de Waal’s exuberance for all aspects of animal research is invigorating and enlightening––the best salve for the unfounded ego trip we often indulge in our desperation to emphasize human uniqueness. He appeals at every turn to empirical evidence, delimiting areas where speculation is still necessary or research is too nascent to warrant strong conclusions.

I’m certainly no animal specialist, but I’m very familiar with some of the other fields addressed here (consciousness, embodied cognition, linguistics, social psychology). Not once did any of de Waal’s observations lead me to believe he doesn’t have a firm enough grasp of these tricky topics to properly integrate them with findings from his own academic specialization. The result is a rare thing in the world of popular science books: A highly readable, balanced, and completely engaging synthesis of scientific perspectives that expands our understanding of the natural world while also shedding profound light on human capacities and limitations.

Of the many technical terms de Waal uses to tell his story, the two most important are “Umwelt” and “ethology.” Umwelt is a German word that “stresses an organism’s self-centered, subjective world, which represents only a small tranche of all available worlds” (8). In order to acknowledge the depth of animal intelligence, we must first admit that each animal has its own specific Umwelt––a coherent world of sensory experience that may or may not overlap with our own. Evidence shows it is folly to assume that the Umwelts of nonhuman animals are somehow less rich or complex than the human Umwelt.  This may not come as a surprise when considering mammals that we’ve long respected for their cleverness––dolphins and chimps, for example––but de Waal shows that we’ve also overlooked the remarkable abilities of animals traditionally thought to lack the capacity for higher intelligence, such as birds and rodents.

In order to begin unraveling the plethora of Umwelts that make up the animal kingdom, de Waal suggests we turn to a field of study known as “ethology”: “The biological approach to animal and human behavior…that emphasizes species-typical behavior as an adaptation to the natural environment” (320). This is a fancy way of saying we need to study animals on their own terms, without pre-forming our own ideas of intelligent behavior and then expecting animals to conform to anthropocentric definitions. Each animal’s body has evolved over millions of years to interact with the natural environment in highly specialized ways; if we don’t take the body-environment relationship into account, we cannot properly analyze how or why animals do what they do.

de Waal asserts that the ethological perspective is currently our best paradigm for studying and modeling animal Umwelts. When we do this successfully, we discover “magic wells”––the peculiar and splendid gifts bestowed on each species by evolution. The more magic wells we discover, the larger and more pluralistic our definition of intelligence becomes. The behaviorist and “black box” theories of past eras no longer apply, replaced by a continuum of intelligence rooted in our common evolutionary heritage:

All this requires that we circumvent the fragile human ego and treat cognition like any other biological phenomenon. If cognition’s basic features derive from gradual descent with modification, then notions of leaps, bounds, and sparks are out of order. Instead of a gap, we face a gently sloping beach created by the steady pounding of millions of waves. Even if human intellect is higher up on the beach, it was shaped by the same forces battering the same shore. (163)

It’s important to note that accepting the commonalities in the cognitive development of humans and nonhuman animals does not require us to reduce all instances of intelligence to one “type” or “mode” of thinking. There is still room for a special kind of “animal otherness”:

Every species deals flexibly with the environment and develops solutions to the problems it poses. Each one does it differently. We had better use the plural to refer to their capacities, therefore, and speak of intelligences and cognitions. This will help us avoid comparing cognition on a single scale…It seems highly unfair to ask if a squirrel can count to ten if counting is not really what a squirrel’s life is about. The squirrel is very good at retrieving hidden nuts, though, and some birds are absolute experts…There are lots of wonderful cognitive adaptations out there that we don’t have or need. This is why ranking cognition on a single dimension is a pointless exercise. Cognitive evolution is marked by many peaks of specialization. (12, emphasis his)

Reality is a mental construct. This is what makes the elephant, the bat, the dolphin, the octopus, and the star-nosed mole so intriguing. They have senses that we either don’t have, or that we have in a much less developed form, making the way they relate to their environment impossible for us to fathom. They construct their own realities. We may attach less significance to these, simply because they are so alien, but they are obviously all-important to these animals. (238)

Intelligence, therefore, is not a unitary concept; it cannot be reduced to a set of general principles. Anyone wanting to know if a certain behavior or adaptation is “intelligent” must be sensitive to ecological circumstances. The question is not “Is an animal smart?” but rather “How does an animal achieve its goals within specific environmental contexts, and how plastic is its ability to learn and adapt to new challenges?”

The reconfiguration of intelligence as a pluralistic concept is a worthy project for which de Waal offers plenty of supporting evidence, both theoretical and practical. This book overflows with mind-expanding examples from across the animal kingdom––data derived from controlled experiments as well as observations of animals in the wild. de Waal suggests we should value spontaneous behavior over experimental control, because watching animals follow their own inclinations is often the key to figuring out their particular type(s) of intelligent behavior (50, 137). An overhaul of experimental methodology has been necessary in some fields in order to locate and explore animal intelligence; the smartest scientists and labs have been on this path long enough to prove its efficacy.

One of the most surprising aspects of Are We Smart Enough? is that a primatologist seems to understand the thorny topic of consciousness better than a good number of philosophers and neuroscientists. de Waal knows that––at least for now––the only way to talk intelligently about consciousness is to say very little about it while still acknowledging the biological mechanisms that almost certainly bring consciousness about:

There is sound evidence that mental processes associated with consciousness in humans, such as how we relate to the past and future, occur in other species as well. Strictly speaking, this doesn’t prove consciousness, but science is increasingly favoring continuity over discontinuity. This is certainly true for comparisons between humans and other primates, but extends to other mammals and birds, especially since bird brains turn out to resemble those of mammals more than previously thought. All vertebrate brains are homologous.

Although we cannot directly measure consciousness, other species show evidence of having precisely those capacities traditionally viewed as its indicators. To maintain that they possess these capacities in the absence of consciousness introduces an unnecessary dichotomy. It suggests that they do what we do but in fundamentally different ways. From an evolutionary standpoint, this sounds illogical. And logic is one of those other capacities we pride ourselves on. (234)

If we weave together the different threads that might contribute to consciousness, we will find that––just like intelligence––any honest definition of consciousness must admit a plurality of natural forms. Many species are capable of problem-solving (including tool use), complex social hierarchies, future projection, and episodic (and perhaps even autobiographical) memory. The depth and flexibility with which various animals engage in these activities is staggering, and there is no single indicator or binary switch that will delineate between conscious and nonconscious beings.

If there is a missing piece to this book, it is de Waal’s silence regarding the rapid destruction of the biosphere that has reached a fever pitch in recent decades. I’m sure he has taken up this topic elsewhere, but here we get no indication of his level of concern regarding the “magic wells” we will lose access to (or never get the chance to discover) if we keep annihilating the our planet’s natural habitats. It seems a safe assumption, however, that de Waal is more upset by this trend than most of us. He is also mute when it comes to the question of how humans can continue to justify our profligate torture and consumption of animal flesh in light of evidence that even “stupid” animals might be much smarter than previously thought.

Although de Waal calls for a “moratorium on human uniqueness claims,” I think there is at least one moment when he belies this otherwise reasonable stance (158). In his final chapter, de Waal reveals (perhaps inadvertently) a practice that I think can still be identified as one that sets humanity apart from other animals:

Every species has a different story to tell. Each organism has its own ecology and lifestyle, its own Umwelt, which dictates what it needs to know in order to make a living. (267)

Indeed. While it is fair to suggest that each species can “tell its own story” simply by enacting its innate and learned behaviors, there is another level of storytelling going on here. As far as we know, we are the only animal that goes out of its way to study and propagate information about other animals in any sort of rigorous and consistent fashion. Moreover, any vibrant science community eventually learns to apply narrative schemas to scientific findings in order to render them accessible to nonspecialists. Storytelling is an essential component of how humans “make a living”; we crave stories as a form of metaphorical sustenance. de Waal is himself a marvelous storyteller, which helps account for why this book is so wonderful.

If humanity has a special role to play moving forward, it seems two-fold: On the one hand, we must continue to build models of the natural world and adapt those models into stories that educate and inspire current and future generations. On the other hand, we must preserve and nourish existing ecosystems so the grand project of modern naturalism can continue.

So, are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? I think de Waal’s answer would be a cautious affirmation. It would come as no surprise, however, if a quick admonishment followed: We might be smart enough, but it won’t matter much if more of us don’t start acting like it.

Rating: 10/10