Animal Minds

A scientist explores the possibility that animals have thoughts and feelings, demonstrating that some animals engage in foraging, predatory tactics, tool use, and other "human" traits. By the author of The Question of Animal Awareness.

Vervet monkeys use special calls to mislead their neighbors. Beavers plug up leaks in dams, cutting pieces of wood to fit a particular hole. Honeybees employ symbolic gestures to communicate the direction and distance their sisters must fly to reach food. These are just a few of the striking examples of versatile animal behavior which, to Harvard zoologist Griffin ( Animal Thinking ), suggest that animals are cognizant of objects and events and experience conscious thoughts. In an involving, important, scholarly report that should force a reconsideration of animal studies, Griffin reviews animals' remarkable adaptability to novel challenges and their apparent ability to communicate thoughts to others. Drawing on a wealth of published research, he infers manipulative behavior in apes and foxes, fear in mantis shrimp, deception in fireflies and dreams in sleeping birds. This well-documented, understated argument presents a challenge to the reductionism of many behaviorists and cognitive psychologists.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In his latest elaboration on the theme of animal thought and consciousness, Griffin (an associate of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology) is intent on laying to rest the ghosts of behaviorism. Griffin sees the vehement denials of consciousness to any but human animals on the part of contemporary ethologists and cognitive psychologists as the lingering heritage of reductionist thinking in psychology. In order to put psychology on a sound scientific basis, the behaviorists argued, all speculation on what went on inside the black box in the head had to be banned. As in his Animal Thinking (1984), here Griffin elaborates many examples to suggest that a lot does go on even in the ``minds'' of bees and ants. So, rather than prove that animal awareness and self-awareness exist, he cites numerous examples of what might be considered surrogates of consciousness--plans, deceptions, communications, tool uses, etc. The result is a wonderful catalogue of animal behaviors. Some are familiar: chimps fashioning sticks to poke termites from nests; otters using stones to break open shells. Others are less familiar: bees changing their dance in light of a sister bee's signals of an even better source of food; a vervet monkey giving the cry that signifies ``leopard'' to rout the competition from disputed turf. Since there's so little understanding about the neural substrate of human consciousness, it's unlikely that arguments from animal observations will convince die-hard reductionists. Instead, Griffin, whose observations of echolation in bats have earned him high honors in animal science, can be credited with opening a path that invites others to blaze new trails in the quest for consciousness in all animals, human and otherwise. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Griffin is eminently qualified to write about the latest developments in the field of animal cognition. His previous books on the subject include The Question of Animal Awareness ( LJ 12/1/76) and Animal Thinking ( LJ 5/15/84). Griffin intends Animal Minds to "be a representative sampling of the wide range of scientific and scholarly opinion about animal minds," and he succeeds admirably. He contends that the significance of animal consciousness falls into three categories--philosophical, ethical, and scientific--and he provides extensive discussion and examples of each type. Some of the most interesting and thought-provoking examples are to be found in the chapters on communication as evidence of thinking and on deception and manipulation. While this is definitely not casual reading and will appeal primarily to students and professionals in animal cognition, the dedicated general reader will find much to think about here.
- Edell Marie Peters, Brookfield P.L., Wis .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.