The idea of human superiority over other living creatures has deep roots in religions practised by billions of people. Hinduism and Buddhism recognize a hierarchy that puts humans at the top. The Abrahamic tradition can point to a Bible verse giving humans “dominion” over all animals.
This notion of supremacy does come with theological caveats. Some Hindu gods have animal form, for example, to represent virtues. And dominion is often interpreted to mean the exercise of stewardship over animals. Still, the reality is that humans have spent millennia treating animals as property, objects to be bent to their owner’s will.
But that approach is increasingly at odds with the growing body of knowledge about the capabilities of animals. The distance between them and us not as great as one might think.
Denying animal intelligence is a blind spot that can no longer be squared with what people now know. However, it’s a complicated issue. Acknowledging that animals are beings, and not just things, can lead to awkward philosophical and practical questions.
Is it okay to eat creatures that possess remarkable problem-solving skills? Can farmers separate mother animals from their young even though they know this causes distress? Should a divorce court treat as property, no different than a desk, a pet that demonstrates more affection for one party?
What people have come to understand should prompt changes from the local zoo to the dinner table.
INTELLIGENCE
The problem of the problem-solving octopus
Consider how much public knowledge of octopi has changed. Mainstream books such as The Soul of an Octopus and films such as My Octopus Teacher have forced a reassessment of an animal that is routinely killed by suffocation and then eaten in a pool of butter.
An ability to reason was once thought to divide humans and animals. But many of the traits that supposedly differentiate people have been proved to be not unique to humans.
In fact, rather than questioning the relationship with animals, the better question might be whether there even are two fundamentally distinct groups: animals and humans. Because it’s increasingly obvious this division is so not clear-cut.
Animals can demonstrate a sense of self and empathy. They seek fun. They can use tools, communicate and pass knowledge to the next generation. They mourn.
In the last few months alone, studies have demonstrated that bonobos display imagination, female turtles harassed by males walk off cliffs and chacma baboons feel sibling rivalry. Meanwhile, chimpanzees have been shown to revise their beliefs when confronted with new information – which is more than can be said for some humans.
The philosopher Jeremy Bentham famously said that the key question when considering animal welfare was not whether they could talk or reason, but whether they could suffer. That was a radical idea at the time but the idea of animals feeling pain is no longer controversial. The debate has gone far beyond that, into the realm of their emotional world.
MONKEY DO
Primate behaviour that’s a close cousin to our own
It’s common for primates to display behaviour that is recognizably close to how humans act.
Chimpanzees engage in violent raiding parties, fighting in packs against other troops. But they also use body language to communicate, hugging another chimp if the situation requires.
Mandrills may cover their eyes as a way of saying ‘do not disturb.’ Some monkeys will beg for food using an open hand. Gorillas, unhappy at being observed, may turn their back on a photographer.
None of this should come as a surprise. Great apes are the closest animal relative of humans. Chimps, for example, share almost 99 per cent of human DNA.
This is not to say that a monkey Molière is just around the corner. Only humans are thought to possess theory of mind, the ability to understand that other beings have their own unique thoughts, feelings and perspectives. This is the basis of civilization and art.
At their most brilliant, humans are unsurpassed. But not all humans are brilliant, and those who are not smart are not considered any less human.
THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
Elephants are renowned for their recall
Another supposed dividing line was the human ability to think through time, considering the past and imagining the future. Animals, by contrast, were thought to live in a perpetual present. The basis for that idea has also weakened.
Elephants are one example of a species that seem to live in more than the present.
Research published last year showed that elephants go out of their way on journeys to incorporate the most energy-efficient and resource-rich terrain, a cost-benefit analysis that indicates thinking about the future.
The sense of what makes humans distinctive has long been a work in progress, and so has the conventional knowledge of animals. Some of the earlier ideas were, to put it mildly, embarrassing.
There was a time when unicorns were believed to be real. They crop up repeatedly in Renaissance art, riffing on their purported ability to be tamed only by a virgin, and the pioneering naturalist Conrad Gessner included them in his landmark encyclopedia of animals. In the 17th century their supposed horns were still being studied by scientists.
These creatures were eventually determined to be a fable, a story perhaps in part based on the spiraling curve of the narwhal.
Detail from a page of Historia Animalium, by Conrad Gessner, in an edition published in 1602.PUBLIC DOMAIN
This is what’s so valuable about the scientific method. It allows people to take in new information as it becomes available to construct the best theory possible with the knowledge at hand. New facts allow new conclusions.
Which is why it would take serious hubris for humans to ignore how much, and how quickly, what is known about animals has changed.
THE ITCHY COW
Bovines and other tool-using animals
It was a ground-breaking discovery in 1960 when primate researcher Jane Goodall observed a chimp using a twig to retrieve termites it wanted to eat. This use of tools had been, at the time, believed to be a key differentiator between humans and animals.
In response, anthropologist Louis Leakey famously said “now we must redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.”
An animal that can use a tool is one that is able to think ahead. This behaviour goes beyond simple instinct and requires the animal to do something that, in itself, achieves nothing. But that gets it closer to the goal. And it now turns out that tool-using primates were only the start. Dolphins, sea otters and crows also use tools.
Those animals may have been joined by a new species last year in British Columbia.
Researcher Kyle Artelle was hesitant to say definitively that this was tool using. It’s unclear how the wolf figured out the process, which confounded observers.
“This really seemed to be a wolf that knew exactly what she was doing, this wasn’t random play,” he told The Canadian Press.
“She now has this understanding … crab traps are attached to lines are attached to buoys. If you pull them all to shore you can get a food reward. And there’s multiple steps involved in that.”
Also recently, news emerged of an Austrian cow that had figured out how to scratch herself.
The observation has forced scientists to reassess their conclusions about the intelligence of bovines, a species not popularly viewed as being particularly bright.
FROM PROPERTY TO BEINGS
A necessary evolution – in thinking
The narrowing gulf between humans and the rest of the animal world should similarly force reconsideration of treating them as property.
Many people already refuse to eat species with which they feel an emotional attachment, be they dogs or horses. But if people acknowledge that more species than previously thought have complex inner lives – including what can be called emotions of their own – that line will have to be drawn in new places. And not just at the table.
The growing knowledge of animal intelligence has led to efforts to secure legal status for great apes. Doing so could give them rights, such as to life and liberty, enjoyed by humans.
Jane Goodall pant-hooting with Uruhara in 1996 at Sweetwaters sanctuary, Kenya.Michael Neugebauer
It’s unclear whether those efforts will succeed. But most should agree that, just as highly intelligent animals should not be on dinner plates, they should also not be kept in captivity to provide entertainment. Ideally, they should be allowed to live with the minimum of human intrusion.
Does this mean zoos should be made illegal and farms shut down? That remains an extreme position. But there’s definitely room to improve the lives of animals.
How people spend their money can force change. Pressuring government can bring about better animal welfare laws. But the biggest step anyone can make is in some ways the simplest, the most obvious – and most humbling.
Look into the eyes of a beloved pet and acknowledge its sentience. That pet is not a human being but it is someone, not just something. And then think about all the other animals who deserve the same status – as uncomfortable as the ensuing questions might be.