[00:00.00] Food,warmth,sleep?Their thoughts may be much deeper than that.
[00:05.59]WHAT ANIMALS REALLY THINK by Euqene Linden
[00:10.42]Over the years,I have writte extensiyely
[00:14.55]about animal-intelligence experiments and the controvers that surrounds them.
[00:21.00]Do animals rea11y have thoughts,what we call consciousness?
[00:27.12]Wondering whether there might be better ways
[00:30.43]to a explore animal intelligence than experments designed to teach human signs
[00:37.17]I realized what now seems obvious:if animals can think
[00:42.89]they will probably do their best thinking
[00:46.13]when it serves their own purposes,not when scientists ask them to.
[00:52.48]And so I started talking to vets,animal researchers,zoo keepers.
[00:59.40]Most do not study,animal intelligence,
[01:03.24]but they encounter it,and the lack of it,evey day
[01:07.79]The stories they tell us
[01:10.35]reveal what I'm convinced is a new window on animal intelligence,
[01:16.30]The kind of mental feats animals perform when dealing with captivity
[01:22.26]and the dominant species on the planet-humalls.
[01:27.12]Let's Make a Deal
[01:29.52]Consider the time Charlene Jenry,a conservationist at the Colurnbus Zoo,
[01:36.94]learned that a female gorilla named Colo was handling a suspicious object.
[01:43.24]Arriving on the scene
[01:46.87]Jendry ofered Colo some peanuts,only to be met with a blank stare
[01:52.88]Realizing they were negotiating,Jendry raised the stakes and offered a piece of pineapple
[02:00.42]At this point, while maintaining eye contact,
[02:04.58]Colo opened her hand and revealed a key chain.
[02:08.84]Relieved it was not anything dangerous or valuable,
[02:13.17]Jendry gave Colo the pineapplel
[02:16.33]Careful bargainer that she was,
[02:19.36]Colo then broke the key chain and gave Jendry a link, perhaps figufing
[02:26.13]Why give her the whole thing if I can get a bit of pineapple for each piece
[02:32.06]If an animal can show skill in trading one thing for another,
[02:37.31]why not in handling money.
[02:39.76]one orangutan named Chantek
[02:42.69]did just that in a sign-language study undertaken by anthropologist Ly Miles
[02:49.74]at the University of Tennessee.
[02:52.75]Chantek figured out that if he did tasks like cleaning his room
[02:59.77]he'd earn coins to spend on treats and rides in Miles's cat
[03:05.21]But the orangutan' s understanding of money
[03:08.58]seemed to extend far beyond simple Dealings
[03:12.94]Miles first used plastic chips as coins,
[03:17.17]but Chantek decided he could expand the money supply by breaking chips in two
[03:24.25]When Miles switched to metal chips,
[03:27.46]Chantek found pieces of tin foil and tried to make copies.
[03:32.92]Miles also tried to teach Chantek more virtuous habits such as saving and sharing
[03:39.74]Indeed,when I caught up with the orangutan at Zoo Atlanta,where he now lives
[03:45.36]I saw an example of sharing that anyone might envy
[03:50.27]When Miles gave Chantek some grapes and asked him to share them,
[03:55.36]Chantek promptly ate all the fruit.
[03:58.92]Then, as if he'd just remembered he'd been asked to share,
[04:03.64]he handed Miles the stem.
[04:06.88]Tale of a Whale Why would an animal want to cooperate with a human?
[04:14.22]Behaviorists would say that animals cooperate when they
[04:19.19]learn it is in their interest to do so.
[04:22.53]This is true, but I don't think it goes far enough.
[04:27.57]Gail Laule, a consultant on animal behavior,
[04:32.09]speaks of Orky, a killer whale, she knew
[04:35.93]of all the animals I've worked with, he was the most intelligent,"she says.
[04:41.34]He would assess a situation
[04:43.90]and then do something based on the judgments he made."
[04:48.16]Like the time he helped save a family member.
[04:51.81]When Orky's mate,Corky, gave birth
[04:56.54]the baby did not thrive at first,
[04:59.78]and keepers took the little whale out of the tank by stretcher for emergency care
[05:05.74]Things began to go wrong when they returned the baby whale to the tank
[05:11.28]As the workers halted the stretcher a few meters above the water,
[05:15.77]the baby suddenly began throwing up through its mouth
[05:20.52]The keepers feared it would choke,
[05:23.55]but they could not reach the baby to help it.
[05:26.92]Apparently sizing up the problem,
[05:29.98]Orky swam under the stretcher and allowed one of the men
[05:34.71]to and on his head, something he'd never been trained to do.
[05:39.85]Then,using his tail to keep steady, Orky let thekeeper reach up
[05:47.12]and release the 420-pound baby
[05:50.96]so that it could slide into the water within reach of help.
[05:56.52]Primate Shell Game
[05:59.76]Sometimes evidence of intelligence can be seen in attempts to deceive
[06:05.71]Zoo keeper Helen Shewman of Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo recalls that
[06:11.93]One day she dropped an orange throueh a feeding hole for Melati,an orangutan.
[06:19.35]Instead of moving away to get it
[06:22.98]Melati looked Shewman in the eye and held out her hand
[06:27.47]Thinking the orange must have rolled off somewhere inaccessible,
[06:32.02]Shewman gave her another one
[06:34.76]But when Melati moved off,
[06:37.71]Shewman noticed the original orange was hidden in her other hand.
[06:43.96]Towan, the colony's dominant male, watched this whole trick,
[06:49.63]and the next day he, too, looked Shewman in the eye
[06:53.99]and pretended that he had not yet received an orange.
[06:58.35]"Are you sure you don't have one? She woman asked.
[07:04.31]He continued to hold her gaze steadily and held out his hand.
[07:09.77]Giving in she gave him another one,
[07:14.52]then saw that he had been hiding his orange underneath his foot.
[07:20.08]What is intelligence anyway?
[07:23.14]If life is about survial of a species
[07:27.19]and intelligence is meant to serve that survival
[07:31.24]then we can't compare with pea-brained sea turtles,
[07:35.58]which were here long before us and survived the disaster
[07:41.14]that wiped out the dinosaurs.
[07:43.88]Still, it is comforting to realize
[07:48.04]that other species besides our own can stand back
[07:52.79]and assess the world around them,
[07:55.61]even if their horizons are more limited than ours.
[08:01.07]extensively\ intelligence\ controversy\ surround
[08:16.12]consciousness\ explore\ obvious\ vet
[08:25.97]encounter\ reveal\ convince\ feat
[08:36.00]captivity\ dominant\ species\ make a deal
[08:44.04]conservationist\ female\ gorilla\ suspicious
[08:53.16]peanut\ blan\ negotiate\ stake
[09:01.99]pineapple\ maintain\ relieve\ link
[09:10.19]orangutan\ undertake\ anthropologist\ figure out
[09:21.63]extend\ dealing\ plastic\ chip
[09:30.98]expand\ switch\ foil\ virtuous
[09:39.13]envy\ grape\ promptly\ stem
[09:49.45]whale \ cooperate\ behaviorist\ in sb's interest
[10:06.69]go far\ consultant\ behavior\ assess
[10:14.35]judgment\ mate\ thrive\ at first
[10:25.11]stretcher\ emergency\ go wrong\ halt
[10:35.66]throw up\ apparently\ size up\ release
[10:47.97]slide\ primate\ evidence\ deceive
[10:56.69]inaccessible\ original\ colony\ male
[11:04.35]gaze\ give up\ underneath\ pea-branined
[11:12.26]turtle survive disaster\ wipe out
[11:20.52]dinosaur horizon