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Are humans as special as we think we are? Read More
I've got a proposal
How about the ability to respond emotionally to music. I know a few other species have communication that could be described as being something like music (whales, for instance), but do they respond to it emotionally? Bees "dance" in some way, but only to show other bees where the flowers are. Are there other species that respond to music by dancing?
dancing bees and musical whales
This is a great, if difficult, question to answer: how do we gauge "emotion" in a non-verbal animal? Even non-behaviorist scientists will tell you that observing an animal's behavior is the best way to determine its internal experience, but it is not perfectly reliable. Still, we do see behavioral changes in some animals when they hear music -- and certainly many bird or whale songs, as you mention, are "musical" -- and elicit dramatic responses from other members of the species. I'm reminded of one study which showing that common carp grew more when exposed to music (including Mozart).
The bee "dance" is a misnomer, insofar as it seems to be communicative, not celebratory. Do other animals dance? Recently there has been a great hullaballoo about the cockatoo named Snowball of YouTube fame: and a recent study found that this bird and the gray parrot Alex (mentioned in the post) both seem to move rhythmically to music at varying tempos. That might be sufficient to state that dancing is not exclusively human. Evidence of other animals spontaneously (i.e., not by training) dancing is absent -- but then again, neither has it been investigated, yet.
Moooo
Years ago, when I lived in Bucks County Pennsylvania, a neighbor of mine had a 100-head dairy farm. A graduate of the agricultural college at the state university, he took it all very seriously and conducted a number of quite sophisticated experiments with his herd. Since all the milk produced went into the local cooperative, it was carefully measured and that made it difficult to argue when he said that cows like music. Indeed, playing a classical selection in his 18th century barn during the milking process always resulted in a significantly increased yield. It occurred to me that - taken seriously - he might have become the Konrad Lorenz of cows.
Steve Mason
PT Blogger
Moooo+
Indeed! And on the subject of cows, Darwin describes them doing what perhaps could be called a "dance": "Even cows when they frisk about from pleasure, throw up their tails in ridiculous fashion." (The expression of emotions in man and animals, p. 116)
respnse
Reason. Intentionality. These are two fundamental differences between Humans and Animals.
Reason and intentionality
Interesting proposals. There is good research showing intentionality in animals from piping plovers to gorillas to dogs -- if by "intentionality" it is meant "acting intentionally." Most of these studies are on intentional communication. More difficult to prove is an understanding of intentionality of others--this might fall under the "theory of mind" rubric.
"Reason" is a harder proposal to address, because we need to operationally define our terms -- i.e., define them so that we can look for them empirically. If by "reason" it is meant "thinking" or "forming judgments", there are plenty of examples of animal behavior that could parsimoniously be explained by the term. A recent Science article reported that monkeys' brains register very particular activity when they have made a poor choice. This seems almost a "meta"reason: thinking about past judgments...
Control of Fire and Cooking
seem to be unique human behaviors, but perhaps could be considered tool use...
Interesting suggestion:
Interesting suggestion: Richard Wrangham has famously argued that fire, and cooking, were essential evolutionary steps in the development of modern humans. If we consider cooking as "food preparation", why, there are other animals who qualify, however. But I cannot argue about the use of fire; that seems human. Is it the thing we want to tie our "humanness" too, though? It seems more an effect of a greater phenomenon -- like tool use, as you suggest, or culture -- rather than The Thing Itself. Use of typewriters is also unique to human (cats walking on typewriters aside), but I would hesitate to call it the criterion for humanness.
The question is, what do we have in common?
I think that when we finally stop focusing our efforts on discovering what sets us apart, and focus more of our attention on the things we share in common (such as the discovery of spindle cells in chimpanzee and whale brains) with the other beings on our planet, we will have truly evolved.
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