I
mentioned to a friend who is a pioneer in the field of simulating various
kinds of animal behavior that I was very pleased to find a new book
by an ethologist that voiced the opinion that animals had emotions and intelligence. This is of course in contrast to the
last 70 plus years of the behaviorists who put animals in little
boxes and maintain that animals are merely stimulus-response
machines.
My
friend let me know in no uncertain terms that I did not have even the
slightest right to my opinions, that any behavior by scientists was
acceptable, and that the lay person (if that is what I am) did not
have the slightest right to criticize any scientist in the field of
animal behavior in any way. If a scientist believes that a dog or a
horse is merely a machine without feelings then that is what I should
accept as any belief I had must necessarily be anecdotal and without
the slightest validity.
I
want to go on record here and disagree with my friend. Torturing and
demeaning animals is not acceptable to me. I understand the need for
animal models in certain kinds of medicine (e.g. cancer research) in
the absence of an alternative but failing to acknowledge intelligence
in animals is not. It is nothing more than an extension of the
racism (species-ism?) that was once popular in mainstream science
which worked so hard to measure skull shape and size to prove that
the non-white “races” were inferior to the Aryan ideal and
deserved to be enslaved.
Whether
or not animals are human, humans are certainly animals. Our species
is part of a continuous spectrum of the evolved animal life on this
planet and the failure to acknowledge the intelligence and, yes, even
the probable awareness and consciousness of many animals, is sheer
arrogance. Yes, I realize this is science, yes I realize that
consciousness and intelligence is not at all well defined and has all
the pitfalls that this implies. But that is not what we are talking
about here. Failing to recognize intelligence, intent, memory and
yes even culture in some of our fellow creatures is just bizarre.
The
book I am referring to is “Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart
Animals Are?” by the well-known ethologist Franz de Waal.
Find
it here:
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