When you are hungry and a fragrant-smelling dish suddenly appears in front of you, you automatically salivate, this is not surprising, this is how a person is arranged. However, when the same thing happens in a dog, we will definitely mention the reflex. Scientists have clearly drawn the line between man and the animal world: the first thinks, and the rest of the creatures live only in the power of reflexes and instincts
It reminds me of a kind of "racism". Recall that slave traders at one time justified their trade by the fact that black natives are not much different from animals. Now people with dark skin fly into space, become presidents, make discoveries, do unique operations, and only the abnormal can say that they are mentally different from the rest of humanity.
I think that the time is not far off when the scientific world nevertheless recognizes that animals, like humans, are capable of thinking. Yes, our smaller brothers do not use tools, do not write books and do not speak on mobile phones, they just don’t need all this, they live in their own world, adapting to its conditions and not claiming more. But they can think! This is evidenced by many examples.
Dog Rico, border collie breed, is known throughout Germany. Back in 1999, he participated in a TV show and won over all viewers with his unique abilities. The thing is, Rico teaches … words. This smartest dog knows almost 300 words and understands what they mean.
When scientists first encountered this tailed phenomenon, they at first did not believe their eyes and decided that it was all about ordinary training. For three years, scientists at the Max Planck Research Institute studied Rico and found that the dog actually figured out the main thing: each subject has its own name. In addition, the dog is capable of thinking logically. For example, if Rico is asked to bring an unfamiliar toy (he hears its name for the first time), which lies among the already known, he finds it by elimination and performs the task correctly.
The dog teaches … words
Dog Rico, border collie breed, is known throughout Germany. Back in 1999, he participated in a TV show and won over all viewers with his unique abilities. The thing is, Rico teaches … words. This smartest dog knows almost 300 words and understands what they mean.
When scientists first encountered this tailed phenomenon, they at first did not believe their eyes and decided that it was all about ordinary training. For three years, scientists at the Max Planck Research Institute studied Rico and found that the dog actually figured out the main thing: each subject has its own name. In addition, the dog is capable of thinking logically. For example, if Rico is asked to bring an unfamiliar toy (he hears its name for the first time), which lies among the already known, he finds it by elimination and performs the task correctly.
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Scientists admitted that Rico thinks, but cautiously noticed that this is a phenomenon, so to speak, an exception, and other animals are not capable of this. Is Rico actually too smart? I think this is an ordinary dog, the whole point is that they have been working with it for a long time.
The owner Riko began to study with him from a puppy age, giving Riko 2-3 hours every day (Alas, not every child can boast of such attention!). We started training with a box with only 10 toys, then it became already 30-40. Much attention was paid to consolidating the studied material through multiple repetitions. Most likely, almost any dog can be taught this, it just never occurs to anyone to do it.
Feathered Intellectuals
In emphasizing Rico's uniqueness, scientists are wrong. For some reason, they always prefer to do this when it comes to the thinking abilities of animals. No, Rico is not unique, and not only dogs can "wiggle their brains." Similar phenomena are also found among birds.
Back in the late 70s of the twentieth century, Irene Pepperberg began to study the intelligence of parrots. Her 20-year research has challenged the assertion that only humans have intelligence, the ability to think and communicate. Her two African gray parrots, Alex and Griffin, showed remarkable abilities during training. Parrots began to recognize even abstract images of objects, which was previously considered an exceptional human ability. Irene's feathered students not only learned to speak English, but they began to correlate the spoken words with the corresponding objects and even began to recognize a certain number of different colors and shapes.
When Irene showed Alex two triangles - one yellow and the other blue - and asked him what was the same in them. The parrot replied: "Form." When asked what is different in them, the answer was: "Color!"
In the late 1980s, Alex learned the names of over 50 different objects, five shapes and seven colors. He also mastered the concepts of "the same" and "different" - a step that is quite decisive in the intellectual development of a person. They show, for example, to Alex, two objects of different shapes, colors and materials and ask him: "Are there the same?" He answers: "Not one." Thus, he manifests an understanding not only of similarity and difference, but also of a more abstract concept - absence.
Recently, scientists have become more objective about the mental abilities of birds. British researchers have found that many birds have a truly phenomenal memory. They memorize up to a thousand "addresses" of places where they hide their supplies, and they consume them, like people, in accordance with the "expiration date" - first the oldest are used, and only at the end the most recent "stash".
They even know how to speak and compose music
Not only parrots can talk, at one time the press wrote about the unique ventriloquist elephant Batyr, who lived in the Karaganda Zoo. This elephant, having thrust its trunk into its mouth, somehow managed, using the trunk as a resonator, to "simulate" the sounds of human speech. When he was treated, the elephant said: "Batyr is good." Then he usually added: "More … I will …" Alas, the workers of the zoo taught the elephant profanity, so Batyr did not become a world sensation.
Other animals can also speak. In the early 90s, for example, it was reported about the cat Mesi, who could give her name and pronounce a few more words. Of course, we should not consider the ability to speak humanly as the main sign of intelligence, because animals also have their own language. It has long been established that dolphins communicate with each other and their vocabulary is quite extensive. It is worth recalling that dolphins were the first from the animal world to claim the role of intelligent creatures, at one time they wrote a lot about this.
Let's think about dogs again. Oxford scientist Kenneth Lomax studied the phonetics of dogs' voices for more than five years and proved that each sound they make has a meaning, that is, we are talking about the real canine language. The scientist even managed to compile a kind of doggy dictionary, which contained about 300 "words".
What are the dogs talking about? Mostly about food, sex and walking. Well, some of the most primitive representatives of the human race also only talk about this, but for this no one classifies them as unreasonable creatures … I don't know if the Japanese used Lomax's developments, but a couple of years ago they released the dog and cat translators for sale, with they can be used to find out what your pets are talking about.
Animals, it turns out, not only speak their own language, but also compose … music. An article was published in Science magazine, the authors of which are confident that many animal songs are composed in the same musical language that humans use. Whales, for example, use rhythms similar to human music, the length of the phrases and the construction of their "song". These similarities, the authors are convinced, "prove that these marine mammals are avid composers."
They also consider birds to be experienced composers, noting that their songs are comparable in rhythm and frequency to human music, with some birds even adding drums to their creations.
Inventive and … cunning
Even scientists are often astounded by the abilities of animals. On the Japanese island of Honshu, there is a nature reserve where the famous snow monkeys live. These are small macaques that, using hot springs, have adapted to survive even in the harsh snowy winters. While studying these monkeys, scientists have come across their amazing ingenuity.
For example, one of the monkeys, who, apparently, tired of eating sweet potato tubers soiled in the sand, began to wash them in the stream! The most interesting thing is that other monkeys followed her example, only older macaques continued to eat sweet potatoes in the old fashioned way (among people, the elderly also usually negatively perceive various innovations). But it didn't end there. After a while, the macaques began to run several kilometers to the sea and wash the sweet potatoes in salt water! Apparently, they liked the salted tubers more …
The macaque that was the first to wash the sweet potato turned out to be a real inventor. After a while, she again amazed the scientists. For a long time, monkeys ate grains of wheat, which were selected from the sand. The occupation is painstaking, and grains of sand fell into the mouth. So, this monkey guessed to throw this wheat with sand into the sea water. The grains floated up and the grains of sand drowned. The macaque got clean and salted grains … A real gourmet! Needless to say, many other monkeys followed her example.
Animals and cunning are possessed. It is not for nothing that in folk tales the fox always acted as a kind of red cheat. A case is described when a fox climbed into a chicken coop and ate so much that it could not squeeze through the gap back to freedom. What to do? The cheat pretended to be dead … When the hostess opened the chicken coop in the morning, she saw the lifeless carcass of a predator with a swollen belly at the threshold. Her skin was faded, so the woman took the fox by the tail and threw it over the fence. The redhead instantly came to life and ran away …
Are we going to be vegetarians?
If animals really can think, then it is somehow inconvenient to eat them … Almost "cannibalism" of some sort! Maybe you should become a vegetarian? No, I do not urge to eat only cabbage and carrots, this is unrealistic and stupid. Let's just treat our brothers as lesser human beings, in the truest sense of the word. First of all, this applies to our pets, stray cats and dogs. Of course, I would like to encourage hunters to shoot less at animals and birds. Hunt to shoot - go to the shooting range!
I would like to believe that someday scientists will nevertheless say their weighty word and "assign" the status of intelligent beings to the animals, because without their authoritative conclusion, animals will remain the most disenfranchised inhabitants of our beautiful planet.