Donald Griffin

Donald Redfield Griffin (August 3, 1915 – November

7, 2003) was an American professor of zoology at Donald Redfield Griffin
various universities who conducted seminal research in
animal behavior, animal navigation, acoustic
orientation and sensory biophysics. In 1938, while an
undergraduate at Harvard University, he began
studying the navigational method of bats, which he
identified as animal echolocation in 1944. In The
Question of Animal Awareness (1976), he argued that
animals are conscious like humans. Griffin was the
originator of the concept of mentophobia: the denial of
the consciousness of other animals by scientists.[1]

Biography
Griffin was born on August 3, 1915, in Southampton, Born August 3, 1915
New York, and attended Harvard University, where he Southampton, New York
was awarded bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. Died November 7, 2003 (aged 88)
After serving on the faculty of Cornell University he Lexington, Massachusetts
became a professor at his alma mater and later worked Nationality American
at Rockefeller University.[2]
Alma mater Harvard University

While at Harvard in the late 1930s, Griffin worked Known for Animal echolocation, animal
with Robert Galambos on studies of animal consciousness
echolocation. Griffin conducted preliminary tests Spouse Jocelyn Crane
​
during the summer of 1939 when he was a research ​(m. 1965; died 1998)​
fellow at the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Awards Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1958)
Biological Research Station in Rensselaerville, New
Scientific career
York. He set up a minimal bat flight facility in a room
measuring 9 by 7 feet (2.7 by 2.1 m) in a barn and then Fields Zoology
measured the ability of bats to avoid obstacles by
having them fly through a barrier of metal wires suspended from a ceiling.[3]

The remaining work was done at Harvard's Physical Laboratories. Using sound capture technology that
had been developed by physicist G. W. Pierce, Galambos and Pierce were able to determine that bats
generate and hear sounds an octave higher than can be heard by humans and other animals. Experiments
they conducted used methods developed by Hallowell Davis to monitor the brains of bats and their
hearing responses as they navigated their way past wires suspended from a laboratory ceiling. They
showed how bats used echolocation to accurately avoid obstacles, which they were unable to do if their
mouths or ears were kept shut.[4] Griffin coined the term "echolocation" in 1944 to describe the
phenomenon, which many physiologists of the day could not believe was possible.[2] During World War
II, Griffin worked for National Defense Research Committee, where he supported the approval of the bat
bomb.[5]

At a time when animal thinking was a topic deemed unfit for serious research, Griffin became a pioneer
in the field of cognitive ethology, starting research in 1978 that studied how animals think. His
observations of the sophisticated abilities of animals to gather food and interact with their environment
and each other led him to conclude that animals were conscious, thinking beings, not the mere
automatons that had been postulated. In its obituary, The New York Times credited Griffin as "the only
reason that animal thinking was given consideration at all". While critics argue that cognitive ethology is
anthropomorphic and subjective, those in the field have studied the ways that animals form concepts and
mental states based on their interactions with their environment, showing how animals base their actions
and anticipate the responses of other sentient beings.[2] He was elected a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1952.[6] In 1958 he was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from
the National Academy of Sciences.[7] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1971.[8]

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.[2]

Griffin was the Director of the Institute for Research in Animal Behavior, in the 1960s, which was formed
as a collaboration between Rockefeller University and the New York Zoological Society (now Wildlife
Conservation Society). In 1965 following on from research on bats conducted at the New York
Zoological Society's field station in Trinidad and Tobago, he married Jocelyn Crane.

A resident of Lexington, Massachusetts, since his 1986 departure from Rockefeller University, Griffin
died at his home there at age 88 on November 7, 2003. He was survived by two daughters and a son from
his first marriage.[2]

Publications
Listening in the Dark (1958)
Echoes of Bats and Men (1959) Anchor Books (Doubleday). LCCN 59--12051 (https://www.l
oc.gov/item/59-12051)
Animal Structure and Function (1962) Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Bird Migration: The Biology and Physics of Orientation Behaviour (1965) London:
Heinemann
Animal Structure and Function (1970, 2nd ed. co-authored with Alvin Novick) Holt, Rinehart
and Winston
Question of Animal Awareness (1976) ISBN 0-86576-002-0
Animal Thinking (1985) Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-03713-8
Animal Minds (1992)
Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness (2001) ISBN 0-226-30865-0
"Windows on nonhuman minds (https://www.academia.edu/9443536/Griffin_Windows_on_n
onhuman_minds_2009_)," in Michel Weber and Anderson Weekes (eds.), Process
Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind (http
s://www.academia.edu/279961/Process_Approaches_to_Consciousness_in_Psychology_N
euroscience_and_Philosophy_of_Mind) (Whitehead Psychology Nexus Studies II), Albany,
 New York, State University of New York Press, 2009, pp. 219 sq. [This is one of the last
publications of D. R. Griffin, received in March 2002.]

References
1. Ricard, Matthieu (2016). A Plea for the Animals: The Moral, Philosophical, and Evolutionary
Imperative to Treat All Beings with Compassion (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/960042213)
(First English ed.). Boulder: Shambhala. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-8348-4054-6.
OCLC 960042213 (https://search.worldcat.org/oclc/960042213).
2. Yoon, Carol Kaesuk. "Donald R. Griffin, 88, Dies; Argued Animals Can Think" (https://www.n
ytimes.com/2003/11/14/nyregion/donald-r-griffin-88-dies-argued-animals-can-think.html),
The New York Times, November 14, 2003. Accessed July 16, 2010.
3. Griffin, Donald; Galambos, Robert (April 1941). "The Sensory Basis of Obstacle Avoidance
by Flying Bats". The Journal of Experimental Zoology. 86 (3): 481–505.
Bibcode:1941JEZ....86..481G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1941JEZ....86..481G).
doi:10.1002/jez.1400860310 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2Fjez.1400860310).
4. Martin, Douglas. "Robert Galambos, Neuroscientist Who Showed How Bats Navigate, Dies
at 96" (https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/science/16galambos.html), The New York
Times, July 15, 2010. Accessed July 16, 2010.
5. Drumm, Patrick; Christopher Ovre (April 2011). "A batman to the rescue" (http://www.apa.or
g/monitor/2011/04/batman.aspx). Monitor on Psychology. 42 (4): 24. Retrieved 31 October
2013.
6. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter G" (https://www.amacad.org/multimedia/pdfs/public
ations/bookofmembers/ChapterG.pdf) (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Retrieved 21 July 2019.
7. "Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal" (https://web.archive.org/web/20101229194403/http://www.naso
nline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_elliot). National Academy of Sciences.
Archived from the original (http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS
_elliot) on 29 December 2010. Retrieved 15 February 2011.
8. "APS Member History" (https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Donald+Griffi
n&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advance
d). search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-08-29.

External links
National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir (http://www.nasonline.org/publications/b
iographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/griffin-donald.pdf)

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