It is generally accepted that there is one intelligent species on Earth - man. But in science there are no generally accepted criteria for what is considered reason. With some approaches, it may turn out that there are more intelligent species. For example, experiments with self-recognition in a mirror show that three species of monkeys, dolphins and, as scientists have established this fall, elephants have the rudiments of self-awareness. Stanislav Kozlovsky, an employee of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, tells about what these experiments give for understanding the nature and origin of mind.
What are the criteria for reasonable and are they there?
- Reason is a fairly broad concept. And there are many criteria for reason. One of the criteria of intelligence, the presence of a psyche is sensitivity. Reason in this case is understood as a synonym for the word psyche. Experiments were carried out with worms, they were put in a T-shaped maze and taught to curl up when they crawl through this maze, only to the right side. And the worms have learned! There are also more complex criteria. So a person has self-consciousness, a person realizes himself as a person, he understands what I am and what everything else is. It is difficult for animals to ask them if they have a sense of I. And such a test was invented in 1960: Gordon Gallup took a chimpanzee and, under anesthesia, marked their fur with red paint in the area of the ear, on the cheek.
When the chimpanzees woke up after anesthesia, they were taken to a mirror, and they had already seen the mirror, were familiar with it. They saw their reflection in the mirror and immediately began to grab onto the places that they had marked with paint.
They realized that something was wrong. What are the spots on my face? It was immediately evident that if a monkey looks in the mirror and grabs at itself, then it perceives itself, remembers how it looked before, sees a reflection in the mirror and realizes that it is she. Since this article appeared, similar experiments have been carried out on macaques. It turned out that macaques do not perceive their reflection, they perceive an opponent there, try to bite him. It is impossible to develop some kind of self-recognition.
In the late 70s, there were reports that such recognition of oneself in the mirror was observed in orangutans and gorillas, but other monkeys - gibbons, macaques, capuchins - did not recognize themselves in the mirror. Then they began to conduct experiments on other animals. They spent on pigeons, on cats, on dogs, even on elephants, but nothing worked, they did not recognize themselves.
When a dog sees itself in the mirror, it thinks that it is another dog. But since he does not feel any smell, he quickly loses interest in reflection. By the way, recently there was a message in the news: in Canada, it was in the Vancouver area, suddenly many cars began to show broken mirrors. Began to think, what is it, some maniac wound up in the city? And suddenly someone noticed that the woodpecker flies up to the mirrors and begins to methodically break them with its beak. We turned to ornithologists, the ornithologists said that the woodpecker sees its rival in the mirror and begins to fight with him and as a result, breaking the mirror, wins him.
In the future, the question arose whether dolphins have self-awareness. There is a coefficient of encephalization - the ratio of brain mass to body mass. There are many animals in which the absolute mass of the brain is much greater than that of humans, for example, the brain of a sperm whale weighs 7-8 kilograms. But if we compare the ratio of brain mass to body mass, then in the first place will be a person, and monkeys, according to the coefficient of encephalization, line up in the same sequence as they show as a result of recognizing themselves in the mirror and according to many other tests. When this coefficient was calculated for dolphins, it turned out that dolphins are between chimpanzees and humans.
Promotional video:
The question arose: can they perceive themselves in the mirror. In 2001, they made such an experiment: there was a mirror in the aquarium and several marks, about a dozen, were applied to the dolphins. There were invisible marks, that is, they felt that something was attached, but in the reflection these marks were not visible, and the marks are visible. Both dolphins could see only in the reflection of the mirror. When dolphins swam up to the mirror, they began to turn around, substituting areas with marks to the mirror. Then we analyzed the video, it turned out that they really do recognize themselves, that is, they turn in exactly the places where the marks are. It became clear that in addition to chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas, another species of animals has appeared - these are dolphins, which recognize themselves in the mirror. From this it is concluded that they have some kind of self-awareness. And just recently an article appeared,that elephants can recognize themselves in the mirror.
There have been experiments that seem to indicate that elephants do not recognize themselves in the mirror. When they began to analyze these experiments with elephants, it turned out that earlier either they were given colored marks, but the elephants did not distinguish colors. Either the elephants were given a small mirror, because they were afraid that suddenly they would break it, get hurt, or they put it so far away that they could not reach it. This time, the zoo put a large plastic mirror right in the cage with elephants. We began to observe them.
The elephants immediately went to the mirror, began to see what this interesting thing had appeared in their cage, began to look behind the mirror, got up on their hind legs, tried to look behind the fence on which the mirror hung. Then they began to walk around the mirror, spinning, spinning, trying to look in unexpectedly, to see if there is something there or not when they are not looking there. Then they began to examine their body, turn in places that they usually do not see. And in the end, after the elephants got used to the mirror, a control experiment was carried out. The elephant was given several marks, one was actually visible. Then the elephant walked for a while, did not feel anything, did not touch this cross. Then she went to the mirror and immediately began trying to reach the cross with her trunk, trying to understand what was on her face, trying to erase it. Thus, it was proved thatthat elephants recognize themselves in the mirror.
That is, today on Earth, in addition to humans, there are five other species that have some kind of self-awareness, recognize themselves in the mirror and perceive their own body - these are chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, dolphins and elephants. Earlier it was said that the criterion of the human mind is self-awareness. This means that now it is no longer a criterion for human reason. Can you somehow draw a line between what is called reason and what is just a form of self-knowledge?
- Probably not. Here, the border is rather blurred. If we take a person with mental retardation and compare a healthy monkey with him (not a very correct comparison), but it turns out that the monkey performs better on the tests than the person with idiocy. She, at least, can serve herself, she can eat on her own, performs the simplest intellectual tasks, while such a person cannot. Similarly, children, they recognize themselves in the mirror at the age of about two years, before that, if they paint their nose with paint, they do not recognize themselves in the mirror.
We can say that the mind is inherent in humans only at some stage, and animals also develop to some stage, and then stop. But this border, this stop is laid at the level of genes, or is it rather a question of social structure, history and practice?
- In fact, it is very difficult to say. Firstly, our brain is different from that of animals, the human brain is quite a complex structure, it is much more complex than the brain of animals. Although the brain mass of an elephant and a person differs, a person has 1350 grams, and an elephant's brain mass is 4800 grams on average, but if we compare them, it turns out that half of the elephant's brain is occupied by the cerebellum, which is responsible for coordinating movements. Perhaps the brains of animals have not developed. But different types of animals, such as dolphins, elephants, monkeys, in principle, come to the fact that the mind is manifested in them.
It turns out that animals, being in a complex infrastructure created by man, can develop in themselves some rudiments of intelligence that go further than in nature?
- In fact yes. In an enriched environment, the brain tends to develop much faster. The following experiment was carried out: they took two groups of rats, one was from birth in a cage, where there was an enriched environment, there were many toys for these rats, various swings, rattles. The other group had a regular cage with food and nothing else. It turned out that rats that lived in an enriched environment had more neurons, there were more connections between them. Hence, it is concluded that an enriched environment influences brain development.
And such a seditious question: were such observations conducted over a person?
- These are the so-called children of Mowgli. There are already several descriptions in science, when children were raised by animals, and then when they returned to human society at the age of 4-6 years, it was almost impossible to turn them into a human. That is, they can neither talk, nor serve themselves, walk on all fours, bark. I don't remember, some emperor conducted such an experiment. He believed that there was a pro-language of all mankind. That is, in childhood, people are taught other languages, but there is an innate language. He took the children, put them in the tower and began to look at what language they would begin to speak. The servants were forbidden to talk to them. As a result, only idiots grew up.
Human civilization itself differs from animals in that we can pass on knowledge from generation to generation. Man arose as a species 200-400 thousand years ago, but according to various estimates, human civilization itself is about 20 thousand years old. The question arises: where were people before, why did they not develop? Apparently, due to the fact that language arose, the transfer of experience arose, and an explosive growth of civilization took place.
We can say that biology provides a person with the possibility of the existence of reason, but does not guarantee that it will arise, this still requires social conditions
- Of course, without social conditions a person would not develop. But man creates social conditions for himself.
Alexander Sergeev