cognition

When it comes to thinking about animal thought, people have widely differing viewpoints. Some believe that their pets feel love, happiness, curiosity, sadness, and many other emotions. Yet others believe that people with these viewpoints are simply anthropomorphizing animals: placing human feelings on non-human animals. Carl Safina, who is an accomplished author (writing novels such as Song for the Blue Ocean) and host of PBS’s Saving the Ocean, is also a knowledgeable marine biologist and overall nature and animal expert. In his Ted Talk What are Animals Thinking and Feeling, he provides great inside into animal cognition.

Safina shows an overlap between human capacities (like love and curiosity) and those possessed by non-human animals. He shows how crayfish respond to the same anxiety medication as humans, how otters use tools, and how the lives of whales follow that of a career path. But Safina does not even scratch the surface in his short talk about the immense number of impressive animal capabilities. This article and video shows how crows not only use, but actually make their own tools. Check out this article, which demonstrates how elephants, chimpanzees, and magpies have funeral practices for their dead: demonstrating that they feel grief. This study from Japan’s Kwansei Gakuin University demonstrates the incredible empathetic capacity of rats. As Safina says, the qualities that we think make humanity distinct are actually shared by many other animals.

To watch Safina’s Ted Talk in its entirety, click here. What do you think? What animal stories do you have of your own? Animals have complex understandings, emotional capacities, and thought processes, and we are just beginning to understand them.