Animal Intelligence Essay -- Papers

Animal Intelligence Intelligence is defined as the ability to find out and apply knowledge. Psychologists have exploited this concept in many ways to try and determine whether non-human animals argon capable of intelligence. From cordial learning it is logical to assume that, since non-human animals be able to both acquire and use new behaviors, they must be intelligent in any(prenominal) way. Heyes stated that there are 6 types of behaviour which suggest intelligence. These are imitation, self-recognition, social relationship formation, role-taking, deception and perspective taking. These 6 behaviours are referred to as the theory of mind (ToM). Imitation is the ability to copy an some others behaviour, this may be because the behaviour is adaptive. Kawai (1965) studied Japanese macaques and found that due to one monkeys actions (Imo), a large amount of the macaque population acquired a useful behaviour in a 5-year period. Kawai reported that Imo would wash her sweet potatoes before consumption, later other macaque monkeys showed the same behaviour. Kawai thus suggested that the rest of the monkeys had imitated Imos behaviour. Galef suggested that this behaviour was due to social learning. disposed the time period, of 5 years, it is possible that other monkeys had learned this potato slipstream behaviour by themselves instead of imitating Imo. The observers in this experiment provided the sweet potatoes, and would even off more attention to the monkeys that washed the potatoes. This attention would be a reinforcing stimulus of the behaviour causing other monkeys to copy it. Although there is not plentiful supportive evidence for imitation, some behaviours ca... ...ceive the trainer in white and be attention to instructions given by the trainer in green. The chimpanzee successfully got the food most of the time. This supports the idea that non-human animals are capable of deceit. The charac teristics of this behaviour are very like a conditioned behaviour. It is nearly unworkable to say whether non-human animals are intelligent. Most studies, in this field of psychology, were carried out on primates, and it is thought that these animals are naturally superior. It seems most behaviour in the investigate discussed in this essay can be explained through association learning, hence not actually a result of intelligence. It is difficult to falsify whether animals are intelligent or not because, although they are able to solve problems they just show some aspects to suggest ToM.