Animal Intelligence Quotes

“Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can’t be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all?”
― Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

“If chimpanzees have consciousness, if they are capable of abstractions, do they not have what until now has been described as "human rights"? How smart does a chimpanzee have to be before killing him constitutes murder? What further properties must he show before religious missionaries must
consider him worthy of attempts at conversion?”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“By standard intelligence texts, the dogs have failed at the puzzle. I believe, by contrast that they have succeeded magnificently. They have applied a novel tool to the task. We are that tool. Dogs have learned this--and they see us as fine general-purpose tools, too: useful for protection, acquiring food, providing companionship. We solve the puzzles of closed doors and empty water dishes. In the folk psychology of dogs, we humans are brilliant enough to extract hopelessly tangled leashes from around trees; we can conjure up an endless bounty of foodstuffs and things to chew. How savvy we are in dogs' eyes! It's a clever strategy to turn to us after all. The question of the cognitive abilities of dogs is thereby transformed; dogs are terrific at using humans to solve problems, but not as good at solving problems when we're not around.”
― Alexandra Horowitz, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know

“Like other mammals, they are capable of strong emotions. They have certainly committed no crimes. I do not claim to have the answer, but I think it is
certainly worthwhile to raise the question: Why, exactly, all over the civilized world, in virtually every major city, are apes in prison?”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“I don't believe vegans (or vegetarians) who still get their (packaged, preservative/chemical-ridden) food from industrial food systems have any righteous ground to stand on, nor do I think a deep look at the sentient life of plants or the true environmental impact of agriculture permits them any comfortable distance from cruelty. Everything in this world eats something else to survive, and that something else, whether running on blood or chlorophyll, would always rather continue to live rather than become sustenance for another. No animal wants to be penned up and milked, or caged and harvested, and you've never seen plants growing in regimented lines of their own accord.”
― Brian Awehali

“I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“[Dolphins] produce signature whistles, which are high-pitched sounds with a modulation that is unique for each individual [...]. Females keep the same melody for the rest of their lives, whereas males adjust theirs to those of their closest buddies, so that the calls within a male alliance sound alike. (p. 262)”
― Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

“Our difficulties in understanding or effectuating
communication with other animals may arise from our reluctance to grasp unfamiliar ways of dealing with the world.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Human spoken language seems to be
adventitious. The exploitation of organ systems with other functions for communication in humans is also indicative of the comparatively recent evolution of our linguistic abilities.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“In addition to Ameslan, chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates are being taught a variety of other gestural languages. And it is just this transition from tongue to hand that has permitted humans to regain the ability-lost, according to Josephus, since Eden-to communicate with the animals.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Thus we do not yet have experience with the
adult language abilities of monkeys and apes. One of the most intriguing questions is whether a verbally accomplished chimpanzee mother will be able to communicate language to her offspring. It seems very likely that this should be possible and that a community of chimps initially competent in gestural
language could pass down the language to subsequent generations.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“The cognitive abilities of chimpanzees force us, I think, to raise searching questions about the boundaries of the community of beings to which special ethical considerations are due.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Would the Gardners and the workers at the Yerkes Primate Center be remembered dimly as legendary folk heroes or gods of another species? Would there be myths, like those of Prometheus, Thoth, or Cannes, about divine beings who had given the gift of language to the apes?”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Why are there no nonhuman primates with an existing complex gestural language? One possible answer, it seems to me, is that humans have systematically exterminated those other primates who displayed signs of intelligence.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“I firmly disagree with anyone who says humans are the most advanced, or the most intelligent species on the planet. In fact, only three animals have ever threatened to kill me: humans, their dogs, and a particularly aggressive species of house spider.”
― Israel Morrow, Gods of the Flesh: A Skeptic's Journey Through Sex, Politics and Religion

“Honeybees possess amazing numerical skills that rival those of many vertebrates. Honeybees have a reputation of being insect geniuses: not only can they enumerate and order numbers, but they also possess elaborate working memory to ponder about upcoming decisions, understand abstract concepts such as 'sameness' and 'difference', and learn intricate skills from other bees. And they achieve all of this with fewer than one million neurons.”
― Andreas Nieder, A Brain for Numbers: The Biology of the Number Instinct

“What confounds this dilemma further is that individual animals within a species have varying cognitive abilities. To quote the Yosemite National Park ranger who, when asked why it was proving so hard to make a garbage bin that bears couldn’t break into, said, “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
― Tom Mustill, How to Speak Whale: The Power and Wonder of Listening to Animals

“Some humans theorize that intelligent species go extinct before they can expand into outer space. If they’re correct, then the hush of the night sky is the silence of a graveyard.”
― Ted Chiang, The Great Silence

“Brahman Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they are strengthening the building blocks of reality.”
― Ted Chiang, The Great Silence

“There is no single form of cognition, and there is no point in ranking cognitions from simple to complex. A species's cognition is generally as good as what it needs for its survival. (p. 200)”
― Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

“According to Hindu mythology, the universe was created with a sound: "om." It is a syllable that contains within it everything that ever was and everything that will be. When the Arecibo telescope is pointed at the space between stars, it hears a faint hum. Astronomers call that the cosmic microwave background. It's the residual radiation of the Big Bang, the explosion that created the universe fourteen billion years ago. But you can also think of it as a barely audible reverberation of that original "om." That syllable was so resonant that the night sky will keep vibrating for as long as the universe exists. When Arecibo is not listening to anything else, it hears the voice of creation.”
― Ted Chiang, The Great Silence

“We are still not able to estimate the extent to which animals dance, sing, play; to give proper respect to their plasticity, enthusiasm, or wisdom.”
― Oxana Timofeeva, Solar Politics