Inside the Minds of Animals
Jeffrey Kluger,
Nov 17, 2010
Interesting account of the cognitive capacities of animals. We've known for some time that animals can use tools, and have evidence of vocabulary and language in primates. But can animals plan, work cooperatively, count numbers, have emotions, have empathy for others, and have a sense of self? The evidence is that they can, and there is work describing how their brains work to produce this capacity. Birds, for example, know to place stones in water to raise the level so they can drink it. How? "hile the specialized cells in each section of mammalian basal ganglia do equally specialized work, the undifferentiated ones in birds' brains multitask, doing all those jobs at once. The result is the same - information is processed - but birds do it more efficiently."
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