Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Animal Intelligence
Today while scrolling through tumblr, I found a blog post that really made me think about this class. The post stated "It bothers me that the intelligence of animals is measured by how willing they are to obey the commands of a human." Though this is only an opinion, I thought it really highlighted the way humans determine if an animal is intelligent. For example, animals such Koko the gorilla are highly intelligent and are able to communicate using human language and symbols. However, researchers looked poorly on her intelligence because she was not able to hold a conversation that made sense. Here, the researchers are basing Koko's intelligence on her ability to communicate with humans and respond the way they want her to. However, no matter her ability to communicate with us, Koko is still highly intelligent compared to other gorillas. I believe that when we measure an animal's intelligence, we should base it on how smart they are compared to their own species instead of comparing them to humans. Humans believe they have a superiority over animals, so when we measure their intelligence compared to us we are always going to believe that we are the smartest.
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I really liked this post. I find it very interesting how humans have the need to quantify and calculate everything. This is especially true when it comes to intelligence. We have many ways of calculating human intelligence. These include IQ tests, standardized testing as well as a host of other tests to determine regularity. It makes sense that humans would try to test animals for intelligence, but the problem is that humans only know how to test for human intelligence. Since humans are the only animals that think like humans these tests are obviously fruitless. Animals don'y have the ability to hold conversation because they don't need to. They didn't evolve to communicate in that way. If you live in the wild high level communication is less useful than in a human social setting. We humans have to talk to each other to understand motivations and action. In the wild all motivations are the same. Eat, reproduce and survive. Since humans have a more diverse idea of what they "need" it makes sense that our communication skills have grown to serve that need.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this post. I find it very interesting how humans have the need to quantify and calculate everything. This is especially true when it comes to intelligence. We have many ways of calculating human intelligence. These include IQ tests, standardized testing as well as a host of other tests to determine regularity. It makes sense that humans would try to test animals for intelligence, but the problem is that humans only know how to test for human intelligence. Since humans are the only animals that think like humans these tests are obviously fruitless. Animals don'y have the ability to hold conversation because they don't need to. They didn't evolve to communicate in that way. If you live in the wild high level communication is less useful than in a human social setting. We humans have to talk to each other to understand motivations and action. In the wild all motivations are the same. Eat, reproduce and survive. Since humans have a more diverse idea of what they "need" it makes sense that our communication skills have grown to serve that need.
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