New Miscellany 2: Animal intelligence (General)

by dhw, Tuesday, June 17, 2025, 12:56 (10 days ago) @ dhw

Animal intelligence: the opossum

DAVID: Your opossum story would require some degree of repetition of observation to make the point. A single observation isn't enough.

dhw: How the heck do you know?

DAVID: From my own learning experiences. Are you all pure theory?

So during your career as a doctor, if your first patient died as a result of your wrong treatment, you needed a few more deaths to get the message. I wonder who invented the theory that you cannot learn from a single experience.

Ant intelligence; colony actions

dhw: […] it is sheer arrogance for humans to assume that the individual members of the ants’ work force don’t know what they’re doing.

DAVID: Nor do we have evidence they do know. (dhw’s bold)

dhw: What do you think tests are for? If any creature is able to work out answers to the new problems which are set for them by humans and which they have never encountered before, then either they are autonomously intelligent or, according to you, your God pops in every time to give them the solutions, or he foresaw the new tests 3.8 billion years ago, and supplied the first cells with all the solutions, to be passed on to the individual animals, birds, fish and insects that are now being tested. Daft!

DAVID: It is still clear each individual ant knows his role to play as part of a colonies reactions.

Yes, indeed, just as each individual human being knows his role to play in whatever job he is doing. Now please explain: when ants (and other creatures) solve new problems designed to test their intelligence, how does that prove they are not intelligent?

DAVID: See new intelligence in animal entry.

Prairie dogs and curlews

QUOTES: They bark to alert neighbors to the presence of predators, with separate calls for dangers coming by land or by air.

To protect themselves, the curlews eavesdrop on the alarms coming from prairie dog colonies…

Previous research has shown birds frequently eavesdrop on other bird species to glean information about potential food sources or approaching danger…

In this crouched position, the birds “rely on the incredible camouflage of their feathers to become essentially invisible on the Plains,” Dreelin said.

DAVID: This is a careful learned behavior which has gotten to be instinctual. We are slowly learning how smart bird brains really are.

You can’t learn anything if you don’t have some form of intelligence. And yes, if you have learned that the cry “There are predators on the way!” means that there are predators on the way, you will instinctively grasp the fact that you are in danger and need to find a way to avoid becoming the prey. You, David, are slowly learning how smart birds and dogs and plants and octopuses etc. can be, but you still refuse to believe that ants and the opossum can also be intelligent. Why? Thank you for all these examples confirming animal intelligence.