DO ANIMALS THINK OR REFLECT?

DO ANIMALS THINK OR REFLECT?

Many people believe that animals don’t think while some believe that animals think but do not reflect. Some other people even say that animals don’t think or reflect but only use their instinct of self-preservation to act. That is, they use their instinct to search for food to eat when hungry or to run away when faced with danger. Let us take a peep into the life of some domestic animals to give us an idea about what goes on in the minds of animals.

What is, “to think?” What do we mean by “think”? The advanced learner’s dictionary defines “think” as “to use the mind in an active way to form connected ideas; to have a particular idea, opinion, or belief about something or somebody. Similarly, the same dictionary defines “reflect” as “to consider or think deeply about something.”

We have five objective sense faculties: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. Through these objective senses, we are conscious or aware of our environment. That is, we use our objective consciousness to know our environment. The faculties use the medium of the brain to interpret to us what the stimuli from the five objective senses mean to us. That is, to give us the correct idea emanating from the stimuli.

When we think, the consciousness is inverted to be responsive to such mental functions as reason, memory, imagination, and recall, etc. It also helps to give us an idea about the stimuli sensed or give us an idea about what we want. Besides, it assists us in assessing the reasonableness of our proposed action. More than that, it assists us in picking up ideas from the memory to analyze the stimuli received from any of the five objective senses. It can also assist us to arrive at a satisfying conclusion about a plan, or about the direction along which we should go. The individual uses the subjective phase of the objective mind to do this. The mind is the medium. It uses the brain as a tool to achieve this.

Do animals have a mind that they use to carry out these actions of thinking and reflecting?

Let us examine the behavior and actions of some animals to give us an understanding of this concept. For our explanation, we wouldn’t choose common pets like dogs and cats that are generally known to be very intimate with humans and could be assumed to possess thinking ability. We would take goats and fowl in the free range system as our examples.

I hereby narrate some common occurrences in the rural areas. In the rural communities, people are closer to nature than in the cities. Most houses are not fenced. There is free movement from one house to another. Most domestic animals such as chicken, goats, and sheep are not sometimes confined in cages or pens. They have free range. They eat or drink anywhere they find food or water through the free range system.

In the rural community, a goat sometimes loses track of the whereabouts of one of its kids while foraging for food and water. The mother goat called the doe or the nanny, continues searching for the missing kid. It searches everywhere, crying as a signal to the kid to come out from where it is, as it runs about looking for the kid. After a long time of searching without success, you will notice the grief on its face and its voice begins to crack while crying. The voice cracks indicating its grief. It may be crying frantically without eating for a long time while searching for its kid. The distress cry is noticeable and may be disturbing to the people around the environment where it cries.

What is the source of the high level of love, emotion, and worry exhibited? Its thoughts are centered on the whereabouts of its kid just like human beings show concern and love for their children. It arises from reflection on the possible loss of its kid and the thought that somebody or a predator might have harmed the kid. After a long search, when the kid finally surfaces, you’ll notice its extreme joy at the reunion when it cuddles the kid, and the kid jumps on the doe to suck milk from the mammary gland of the nanny.

Another example is when a goat from another compound sometimes comes to somebody else’s compound to eat his farm products such as yam, corn, cassava, or vegetables. On seeing the goat, the landlord takes a whip or stick to drive it away. Unlike other domestic animals, the goat is a stubborn animal that is not easily deterred by a whip; it comes back a day or two later. It attempts to enter the compound. On seeing the owner of the house, it stops and continues looking at him, but is afraid to enter. What is the goat doing?

The goat recalls that it was driven away with a stick two days earlier. It doesn’t want to have a repeat of the same bad experience. It’s afraid to enter. It knows that the owner doesn’t want it to enter and eat the farm products in his compound, the farm products which it craves for. It’s afraid that it could be beaten with a stick again. So, it waits, looking at the owner, and sometimes looking in another direction with intent to distract the owner’s attention from itself, so it could surreptitiously enter unnoticed. The goat is not only thinking, but it’s also reflecting.

For a second example, let’s look at the behavior of the fowl in a free-range system. It moves about with the children, foraging for food. When it discovers plenty of food somewhere such as a large group of small ants, it gives a signal: “Koh, Koh, Koh… Koh, Koh, Koh…” to invite the chicks to come and eat.

Conversely, when faced with danger such as when the eagle hovers around to pick one of the chicks and fly off, that is, “to kidnap” the chick, the mother hen reacts quickly. The hen, on seeing the eagle hover around, knows that danger is looming. So she signals to the children to come and take shelter. It lets out a distress cry, a signal that’s different from an invitation for food. It stretches its neck forward and shouts loudly; “Ko ko ko koronyi, ko ko ko koronyi, Ko ko ko koronyi…” as many times as possible to the children. The chicks, understanding that the language indicates danger, immediately run to hide in a corner or run towards the hen, to hide within its wings while the hen opens her wings to accommodate her children for protection. The hen continues the distress cry and only stops crying when the eagle flies away. That means that danger has been averted. Very emotional! It’s a result of a high level of thinking and reflection on the best action that is required to protect its children in the face of looming danger!

Other domestic animals such as dogs, cats, and parrots behave in their own special way, though with different levels of thinking and reflecting. Undomesticated/bush animals behave in a similar pattern probably with the same or more or less degree of ability to reflect.

Dolphins are among the most intelligent animals on earth. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. They are highly social creatures, hunt cooperatively, communicate their emotions, and develop cultures that are unique from one community to the next.

The parrot, in particular, has a high level of ability for reflection. It has the ability to speak the human language. The African gray parrots, best known for their ability to repeat words and phrases after only hearing them once or twice, their intelligence goes much deeper than simple mimicry. Our experience with our pet parrots clearly shows that parrots use their intelligence to form new phrases and sentences audible to humans. They greet people in our language both in the mornings and evenings.

Though, according to Hauser, there is a great cognitive gap between humans and animals, it is generally agreed that there is no uniform standard for evaluating intelligence across species, and therefore, there is no easy way to accurately compare animal’s intelligence to humans.

According to contributions to the influential field of comparative psychology, Dr. David Smith and his fellow researchers at the University of Buffalo, in March 2012, reached a consensus among themselves that animals share functional parallels with humans’ conscious metacognition – that is, our ability to reflect upon our mental processes, and guide and optimize them. Metacognition is defined simply as awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes.

To find food, seek shelter, and avoid predators on a daily basis, animals use their cognitive capacities.

The Scientists’ contribution supports the views and explanations expressed in this text.

Why some people opine that animals don’t think or reflect, is because they have not studied the behavior of animals to enable them to understand their behavior or to appreciate this attribute in them. Another reason is that man by nature believes that he is superior to lower forms of life in everything – thinking, knowledge, intelligence, life and living, mind and spirituality, assuming that he, is the only special creation of God, and no other form of life, is.

Yes, the human being is superior to other forms of life, but like humans, other forms of life also exhibit the same basic functions of life exhibited by humans – irritability, nutrition, reproduction, excretion, and respiration. So, to enable animals to function well for their security and well-being, they need to be able to use the ability to think and reflect.

God or Nature, is in all and is fair to all forms of life, humans and animals alike.

In our next probe on animals, we will try to examine the behavior of some other animals in order to let you know that animals have souls like human beings.

Akin Akinfe.