Animals Intelligence – A Set Of Unique Abilities
Some people believe that the animal has intelligence. Moreover, they are endowed with precisely human intelligence. Why did they start comparing the abilities of the animal and human? Reading quotations such as “If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit. ” I am confused by the fact that a human believes that having anyone outstanding ability, the animal can be endowed with intelligence. What, in my opinion, is highly doubted.
The word “intellect” was invented by human and it defines a human. “Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be described as the ability to perceive or infer information and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context. ” It includes the ability to adapt to new situations, the ability to learn and remember based on experience, understanding and applying abstract concepts, and using one’s knowledge to control a person’s environment. No one animal on the Earth can display all these abilities at once. So why did humans decide that the animal has intelligence?
We know many cases showing us that animals can show certain mental abilities, for example, Clever Hans. A horse which, as its owner believed, can count. After a series of tests carried out on a horse in the visibility range of its owner and beyond, the expert concludes that Clever Hans is not able to count. But what is striking, he discovered his other ability, which distinguishes him from other individuals of his own species. He read the body movement and facial expressions, which it’s master unconsciously gave and understood at what point he needed to beat with a hoof. This description of his unique talent. Unique among its relatives. Mistakenly compare the ability of a monkey with the ability of a horse or fish, they all live in different elements. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. ” Quote attributed to Albert Einstein and visually showed us our mistake. Comparing two different individuals, we doom one of them to a complete failure. Fish by nature does not know how to climb a tree and nothing to compare it with a monkey.
Another fact is that the ability of one individual can many times exceed the ability of others of their own species. Thus, human evolved from a monkey. Weak primates remained monkeys, while more intellectually strong primates evolved into humans. Noticing such features, we can say that animals have intelligence. But we must be careful in understanding it as an animal intelligence or even isolate it into a group such as feline intelligence, canine intelligence, and so on.
I was the proud owner of a cat whose abilities exceeded the abilities of other cats and cats that lived in my family. He felt people very well – their mood, intentions, he knew for sure who’s bad and who is for good. He did his dirty business into shoes to people who, in his opinion, were bad. And one day he did it directly to the hat of our friend. He was not stopped by the fact that the shoes were outside the door. He also felt parents on distance. He waked up, immediately rushed through the whole apartment to the door at the moment when mother or father were in the elevator getting to the 9th floor and dutifully wait near the door when they came in. His behavior was a sign for us to clean up the apartment or to mask pranks. He had a strong feeling of days of the weeks. He always woke my mom 10 minutes before the alarm rings and never woke on the weekend. I consider him a really smart cat, but I would not give him human intelligence.
People mistakenly humanize animals by attributing human abilities to them. In fact, animals have certain unique abilities, and animals who spend more time among the people and who more predisposed for that can show sometimes the behavior very similar to human beings. I guess we can call it animal’ intelligence but it would not be fair to compare it directly to humans, it’s better to compare them among each other. Also, each group of animals has his own type of intelligence, so we cannot compare the rabbit’s intelligence with cat, fish or horse.
