Proposed New Paradigm in Animal Cogition -- From Observation and Experimentation to Making Contact

[jordan179]

I was watching a Nova special on corvids, and it mentioned that the meaning of over 250 distinct calls in one species of crow had been deciphered. And I got to thinking about the implications of this, combined with our recent discoveries of syntactical language in prairie dogs and natural sign language in bonobos. I concluded that we should make

Comments

[polaris93]

It occurs to me that those who became renowned for living off the land and dealing with animals, e.g., the American naturalist David Crockett, the mountain men of the 18th and 19th century, etc., had to learn as much as they could of the psychology and sociology of the wild animals around them in order to avoid being attacked by them, catch their dinner, and otherwise survive and even thrive in the wild. Journals they left behind, letters exchanged by others discussing them, etc. show that these explorers and trappers were well aware that wild animals were intelligent, often enough to out think a man trying to stalk them or avoid them, and that their social interactions with one another included exchanges of information, either between parents and children or peer-to-peer exchanges. In short, culture. Ditto 18th- and19th-century whalers. Data coming from their letters and journals and from observers of them could provide excellent data on the animals they had to deal with.

[korgmeister]

I think cats are stealing a march on us in this field.