Do animals think? Create ideas in their heads, picture objects in their minds when it is not there in front of them, in a way that humans can? These questions relate to what is called consciousness. This term is so hard to define that some may say that it is therefore impossible to measure. Each human has some idea of what consciousness is because every human is believed to be conscious, but how do you go about finding out whether an animal is conscious or not? The debate on the existence of the animal consciousness always starts with the question; what is consciousness? (Macphail, 1998).
Lesley Roger’s (1998) definition: ‘To most people, to be conscious means to be aware of oneself as well as to be aware of others,…to be able to think about things not present in the immediate environment is also to be considered to be an aspect of consciousness and so is the ability to feel and express human-like emotions.’
Donald R. Griffin (2001) in his book ‘Animal Minds’ provides the definition of animal consciousness from Immelmann and Beer’s book (1989): Dictionary of Ethology; ‘immediate awareness of things, events, and relations’
With these definitions in mind, how is consciousness measured without depending too much on the human experience of consciousness?
If it is believed that human consciousness is what separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom then isn’t it fair to say that if animals are conscious, that their degree of consciousness is very different to humans and therefore even harder to measure? It may not be the case that we must measure on a ‘there or not’ basis but measuring consciousness should be focused on what level of consciousness does the animal have? Taking into account Occum’s shaving brush theory; do not reject the more complex explanation as it may be nearest the reality.
The debate on animal consciousness may have started with a philosopher called Jeremy Bentham who challenged the theory of ‘Cartesian Dualism’ A behaviouristic theory created by Descartes. Cartesian Dualism states that an animal’s mind and body are separate entities therefore the physical reaction that an animal displays when it comes in contact with a stimulus that a human may normally deem dangerous and painful is not painful to them and the reaction is just innate, a reaction that is not related to the animal actually feeling pain. This theory provided the necessary acceptance to vivisection and other practices that may be seen as inappropriate and cause suffering today. (Hawthorn, 2006)
Bentham said ‘the question is not can they reason but can they suffer?’ Bentham was not against vivisection which gave light to anatomical research but this revolutionary thinking, viewing animals in a different way may have been the starting point to the idea of animals having the ability to think, or have complex cognitive abilities leading to the theory of the animal consciousness.
One study has provided evidence to support the Cartesian dualism theory which shows scientists that they cannot rely on the aspect that animals can feel pain as evidence to whether is conscious or not (Lund, 2002).
A dog had its spinal cord severed from its brain and when one of its limbs came into contact with a dangerous stimulus, the limb reacted in the same way as if the spinal cord was still connected to the brain (which was the immediate withdrawal from the dangerous stimuli) but the scientists knew that the animal could feel no pain. What if there are animals whose reaction is the same, but they cannot feel pain and the reaction is an innate behaviour? This shows that an animal’s reaction to what is perceived to be pain, cannot be used as evidence to prove consciousness exists in animals (Lund, 2002).
Clive D. L. Wynne (2001) describes theory of mind through the use of a human experience example which states how somebody could give directions (to their house) to another individual by placing themselves in the other person’s shoes, imagining the other person’s perspective and explaining how to get to the house from that position. The individual has a theory of the other person’s mind. Scientists believe that by observing an animal’s behaviour this could be a measure for consciousness if an animal can display in some way that they have ‘theory of mind’.
An animal may be displaying theory of mind when it runs, when another member of its species shouts an alarm call for a specific predator; the animal may understand the perspective of the animal alarm calling by imagining what that animal is seeing which would be the predator which is perceived as a threat to the animal’s survival. This could be seen as evidence to suggest that some animals have a degree of consciousness (Wynne, 2001).
There are times when the human does perform actions that some may see as an auto-pilot response because they unconsciously act in some way due to a routine being established, sometimes a person will find themselves driving down a familiar route, and realise they don’t remember how they got to a destination because they haven’t paid attention, and their subconscious learnt behaviour has taken over, what if this is what it is like for animals all the time, a subconscious that they themselves are unaware of take control of their body, making their decisions as such without the input of a conscious mind (Rettner, 2010).
Communication among animals has always been an interest among scientists from many fields, communication in many forms appears across the spectrum in the wild community, in the forms of sounds, movements, colours, smells, as well as many more (Gron, 2008). Most people would see vocal responses as the main form of communication among humans, a defined language has developed over thousands of years for our speaking abilities, vocal communication has been observed in other species such as Gelada Baboons and birds, although as far as human scientists are concerned these noises do not form a language, but the lack of a language does not seem to limit communicative skills. Some birds use visual colourings on their body to demonstrate their readiness for breeding, pheromones in a lionesses urine demonstrate her coming into season, lip flipping in Geladas show that they are being aggressive and are threatening another individual (Gron, 2008).
These signals in some way or another communicate intentions or what humans believe are feelings, this could be applied to the animal kingdom as well, observations in many species have shown that these signals can be interpreted and the same or similar behaviours are performed after these displays have occurred which suggests that these animals understand each other and to do this, isn’t a high cognitive ability needed leading to the idea, once again, that the animal must be conscious of these communicative signals to interpret and reply. The same communicative skills can be seen when a baby learns from its mother through observing her (Griffin, 2001).
Orangutans build nests and teach their young how to do this, without their mother’s guidance over the years that they stay together; the offspring will not know how to perform this behaviour, which may be vital to their survival. This learning and applying behaviour could also be seen as evidence for a conscious mind.
The bees dancing communicative behaviour although, provides reason against the use of communication to suggest the presence of a conscious mind because the dancing behaviour is an innate response that a bee uses to communicate the location of nectar. James L. Gould (2002) in his scientific investigation ‘Can Honey Bees Create Cognitive Maps?’ describes the dancing as ‘the best example of intricate innate programming to be seen in nature’ he says that the language is only second to that used of the human being. This influences the rise to more questions on whether any evidence that has been explored can really provide us with a clue to animals being conscious or not (Gould, 2002).
Capuchin monkeys have shown that they will deceive their own family members by alarm calling to preoccupy them while the individual will sneak away to feed, meaning that the animal will not have to share its food with the other family members. Deception is also known as a measure of consciousness (Rogers, 1997). Primate species among of species have shown a cognitive learning ability to enhance their own benefit through deceiving other animals whether they be of their own species or another, a prey species may use deception as a way to survive a predatory attack. Deception itself requires the ability to predict what another animal is going to do for the deception to work, therefore the Capuchin monkey who falsely alarm called for a predator which was not actually there must have the ability to predict the other animals’ response (Rogers, 1997).
Primate species have shown amazing abilities in learning to use tools, Chimpanzees have been observed using rocks to crack open hard shells of nuts, this has happened repeatedly in the same individuals which may display application of memory, which can be key in providing evidence of a level of consciousness in the primate species. The animal obviously has an intention and through the use of the tool from previously trial and error has successfully used the tool to achieve his goal (Bell, 2008).
Emotion is something that humans display and respond to throughout everyday life, we respond to our own emotions and interpret others’ emotions through their body language and other communications (Mendl et al, 2010). Whether animals experience emotion is yet another question falling under the same category as consciousness, it is believed to be part of what consciousness is, so if we are to believe that animals are conscious, then we must understand that animals feel emotion as well to some degree, whether they are the same or similar emotions to humans has not been studied enough, but without experiencing ourselves animal emotion (if it exists) then we may never understand it (Mendl et al, 2010).
As humans it seems that having emotions has helped us to survive in some way, helping us make decisions and problem solve, emotional responses are linked with physiological responses for example fear causes the release of adrenaline to ready us for a fight or flight response, this could also have the same affect on animals, they may experience fear, helping to release the necessary chemicals or stimulate another response to help in situations such as a predatory threat (Koch and Crick, 1999). It is believed that some animals do feel pain and as a result emotions may arise from this pain, emotions triggering the learnt response not to connect with the painful stimuli again, this fear could be key to survival. Fear may not be the only emotion that animals could have developed, sadness could have developed which influences animals to want to establish bonds with each other, in social animals, animals may feel sad when one of its kin dies, supposed emotional responses in Elephants have been observed and some anthropomorphic observations suggest that they mourn in a similar way that people do (Lorenzi, 2005).
If the evidence for animal emotion was to be somehow backed up by neurophysiological research indefinitely, then it is likely that animal welfare efforts would increase dramatically due to the ever shortening distance between animal and human differences, which originally seemed very large. With animal minds being explored further every day, the proof for or against the animal conscious may come to a definite end nearer than what is believed.
Along with behavioural evidence for the existence of consciousness in animals or non-human organisms, the brain structure has been explored for more clues into the consciousness argument (Eccles, 1992). Darwin proposed the theory that consciousness developed in a primitive form around 200 million years ago when mammals started to evolve out of the reptilian phase. This theory is backed up by the change in the brain structure that mammals went through; the development of the neocortex provided a structure difference between reptiles and mammals. This has given an evolutionary advantage to mammals over the reptiles (Eccles, 1992).
Humans also possess a large neocortex, which is larger than any mammal in relation to their bodies. This could provide us with the structural difference between other mammals and ourselves to suggest that all mammals have a degree of consciousness because of the presence of a neocortex but not a level that matches the human consciousness, because humans have the largest and the most folds (Krubitzer, 1995). As shown in Figure 3. The amount of folds on the neocortex provides a larger surface area and therefore more room for more cognitive information to be passed across the brain and at higher speed, maybe relating to how quick an organism can learn in situations unfamiliar to them, for example experiencing the threat of an unknown predator (Krubitzer, 1995).
(Figure 3, Folding differences in mammal brains, Bownds, 2010)
It is even believed that with a larger brain, and therefore a higher number of neurons links with more detailed memories an organism may have, this may increase its learning capacity, causing an organism only to experience something once before learning how to do something like using a tool, or how to react to a certain situation for example escaping from a specific predator. Studies in rats have also shown that the amount of experience an animal has affects the size of the brain; rats kept in a highly enriched environment had much larger brains than of dull, ‘impoverished’ environments (Rogers, 1997).
Unfortunately there is little evidence beyond this to suggest the exact cells within the neocortex, which makes up 40% of the full brain, that control the conscious mind, consequently there is no real test available to prove that the existence of the neocortex means that all mammal species are conscious in one way or another. Francis Crick and Christof Koch have worked together over many years to try and link the primary visual cortex (located in the neocortex) and association with visual experience in reality for an animal. They believe that not all the cells of the neocortex contribute directly to consciousness and are active all at the same time; further research must be carried out. (Macphail, 1998)
In Conclusion, there is evidence to support both sides, although it is widely understood that it is hard to comprehend that the versatility of some animal behaviour can all be seen as genetically programmed responses because of the huge amount of novel challenges that animals face every day, new situations that they must adapt too, without conscious learning and application of learning how can they adapt to these new environments furthermore how can humans rule out the possibility of an animal consciousness when humans have evolved to have one, humans must have developed a consciousness because it is useful in some way for our survival, therefore how can it not be evolutionary useful to other animals who have similar functions and dangers in their lifestyle? (Macphail, 1998).
The dancing behaviour in bees is an innate behaviour and this evidence that the animal can survive with this innate response shows that maybe conscious living is not needed in all animals but humans are conscious, this could be because we have adapted to a lifestyle that requires large amounts of cognitive problem solving, when other species do not need this, although this does not mean we can dismiss the idea that some species are conscious also but in a different format because they may have needed to adapt to have a conscious mind but at a lower level (Gould, 2002).
Much of the evidence presented in this paper is from the observations of mammals which suggests that maybe only mammal species are conscious, or that not enough observational work has been done on non-mammals to prove that they have a conscious mind or not.
Griffin, 2001 quoted a man named Terrace, 1987 stating that he once ended a discussion with ‘now that there are strong grounds to dispute Descartes’ contention that animals lack the ability to think, we have to ask just how animals do think’
