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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? QUOTES

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? QUOTES

1 " The initial animosity between divergent approaches can be overcome if we realize that each has something to offer that the other lacks. We may weave them together into a new whole that is stronger than the sum of its parts. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

2 " Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can’t be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all? "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

3 " [T]he term 'nonhuman' grates on me, since it lumps millions of species together by an absence, as if they were missing something. Poor things, they are nonhuman! When students embrace this jargon in their writing, I cannot resist sarcastic corrections in the margin saying that for completeness's sake, they should add that the animals they are talking about are also nonpenguin, nonhyena, and a whole lot more. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

4 " But those stories inspire observations and experiments that do help us sort out what’s going on. The science fiction novelist Isaac Asimov reportedly once said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

5 " While restraint is apparent to anyone in daily contact with animals, Western thought hardly recognizes the ability. Traditionally, animals are depicted as slaves of their emotions. It all goes back to the dichotomy of animals as "wild" and humans as "civilized". Being wild implies being undisciplined, crazy even, without holding back. Being civilized, in contrast, refers to exercising the well-mannered restraint that humans are capable of under favorable circumstances. This dichotomy lurks behind almost every debate about what makes us human, so much so that when humans behave badly, we call them "animals". (p. 222) "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

6 " We are so logic-driven that we can't stand the absence of it. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

7 " There are so many ways to account for negative outcomes that it is safer to doubt one’s methods before doubting one’s subjects. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

8 " Every morning, the male and female [Siamang] burst into spectacular duets. [...] Since the song reflects their marriage, the more beautiful it is, the more their neighbors realize not to mess with them. A close-harmony duet communicates not only "stay out!" but also "we're one!" (p. 177) "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

9 " [Dolphins] produce signature whistles, which are high-pitched sounds with a modulation that is unique for each individual [...]. Females keep the same melody for the rest of their lives, whereas males adjust theirs to those of their closest buddies, so that the calls within a male alliance sound alike. (p. 262) "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

10 " There is no single form of cognition, and there is no point in ranking cognitions from simple to complex. A species's cognition is generally as good as what it needs for its survival. (p. 200) "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

11 " La auténtica empatía humana no se centra en uno mismo, sino que se orienta en el otro. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

12 " En vez de convertir a la humanidad en la medida de todas las cosas, tenemos que evaluar a las otras especies por lo que son ellas mismas. Al hacerlo, estoy seguro de que descubriremos muchos pozos mágicos, incluyendo algunos que por ahora están más allá de nuestra imaginación. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

13 " humans are a strange lot. We have the power to analyze and explore the world around us, yet panic as soon as the evidence threatens to violate our expectations "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

14 " Are we open-minded enough to assume that other species have a mental life? Are we creative enough to investigate it? Can we tease apart the roles of attention, motivation, and cognition? Those three are involved in everything animals do; hence poor performance can be explained by any one of them. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

15 " The key point is that anthropomorphism is not always as problematic as people think. To rail against it for the sake of scientific objectivity often hides a pre-Darwinian mindset, one uncomfortable with the notion of humans as animals. When we are considering species like the apes, which are aptly known as “anthropoids” (humanlike), however, anthropomorphism is in fact a logical choice. Dubbing an ape’s kiss “mouth-to-mouth contact” so as to avoid anthropomorphism deliberately obfuscates the meaning of the behavior. It would be like assigning Earth’s gravity a different name than the moon’s, just because we think Earth is special. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

16 " In other words, what is salient to us—such as our own facial features—may not be salient to other species. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

17 " The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

18 " There are many ways to process, organize, and spread information, and it is only recently that science has become open-minded enough to treat all these different methods with wonder and amazement rather than dismissal and denial. So, "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

19 " One can train dolphins to jump synchronously because they do so in the wild, and one can teach horses to run together at the same pace because wild horses do the same. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

20 " In other words, both macaques and rats volunteer for tests only when they feel confident, suggesting that they know their own knowledge. "

― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?