Prime Time Replay:


Dr. Diana Reiss
on Animal Intelligence

(second appearance)



MsgId: *brain_storm(1)
Date: Fri Nov 8 21:53:16 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

Good evening and welcome to Brainstorms. I'm your host, Dr. Keith Harary, and our guest tonight is animal communication expert Dr. Diana Reiss, back by popular demand!

Diana Reiss holds a Ph.D. in Speech and Communication Science from Temple University and is an internationally recognized researcher in animal cognition and communication. In 1982, she developed a laboratory at Marine World in California, where she investigated the nature of dolphin communication and cognitive abilities.

She is currently on the full time faculty in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers University and is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. She has also taught at Yale University and San Francisco State University. She is currently conducting research programs at Marine World Africa USA and the New York Aquarium. Her general academic interests apart from dolphin vocal learning include investigating the nature of animal minds as well as the development of communication systems in the animal world.

Welcome Diana!

MsgId: *brain_storm(6)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:00:44 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: Thank you Keith. Glad to be here!
MsgId: *brain_storm(7)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:01:54 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: As always, we'll be using our initials to identify ourselves online. KH for Keith Harary, and DR for Diana Reiss. First question, Diana, what do you say to people who ask you if animals are capable of rational thought?
MsgId: *brain_storm(8)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:03:36 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: Well, when someone asks whether animals are capable of rational thought, in order to answer this question we need to have some way of empirically measuring their thoughts, and of course we can't do this. At least, we can't do this at the present time. An inherent problem in understanding an animal's mind is that it is inaccessible to scientific evaluation. All we have is their behavior. Of course, this is the traditional behaviorist's view.

Historically, from the time of Aristotle in the 4th Century BC, philosophers have equated rational thought -- "ratio" -- with language or speech -- "oratio." We could measure rational thought in others because they could talk about it and we shared a language. In the 17th Century, Descartes also equated logical or rational thought with language. I speak therefore I am. He argued that humans were the only species capable of logical thought because they had language. Today, contemporary philosophers of science and animal cognition are finding new ways to learn about the minds of animals by designing innovative new approaches in which they can observe the behavior of animals and learn more about their cognitive abilities. For many, the concept of rational thought includes planning ahead, anticipatory behavior, an awareness of ones own behavior, and the contingencies of ones behavior. There is evidence in the animal world that some species, to a greater or lesser degree, do show some of these capabilities.

MsgId: *brain_storm(13)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:12:29 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: I know that many of our readers have contacted us and asked us to touch upon the subject of animal emotions. Is there evidence that animals experience emotions?
MsgId: *brain_storm(14)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:14:29 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: This is an interesting question because among biologists and psychologists who study animal behavior, it is generally well accepted that animals do show emotional displays -- of fear, anger, excitement, and this idea was introduced to the popular audience by Charles Darwin. In fact, many of the signals that we record from animals in their actual behavior appear to be emotional reactions to things happening in their environment. This doesn't mean that they have the same emotions we have, because we have no way of knowing if fear is the same for a chimp as it is for a human being, or a dog.

There are some species, like dolphins, that have been reported to show depressed behavior when a tank-mate dies, for example. The behavior includes the animal not eating and moping around, which is often similar to what we see in humans who are grieving. These are the surface behaviors, however, and we can't (at present) really know for sure what that means in terms of emotional states. We don't know if they feel grief the way that we feel grief.

This doesn't mean that they're not grieving, but we can't prove that they are.

MsgId: *brain_storm(18)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:21:44 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: Is there any evidence that animals communicate with one another (within species) about aspects of their environment rather than just their emotional reactions?
MsgId: *brain_storm(19)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:25:39 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: Actually, there have been several reports from both field and laboratory research suggesting that animals are, in fact, capable to varying degrees of symbolic and/or referential communication. For example, the famous "waggle dance" of bees was reported early in the century by von Frisch. After long studies of honeybee colonies he reported that a scout that has found a good food source would under certain conditions transmit information about the distance and location of the food source to members of the hive.

If the food was relatively close to the hive, they did a round dance inside the hive in front of other bees. However, if the food source was at greater distances from the hive, they would do a figure eight shaped dance. In this dance, they would do a portion of the dance that represented information about the angle of the food source relative to the sun and the distance. Because the bees could communicate in this way about things not present in their immediate environment, this provided the first evidence for displacement by another animal, which means communicating about things not immediately present in ones environment.

Additionally, the bees did not always communicate about food sources. They only showed this kind of communication when food was not plentiful in the environment. Other reports have indicated that Vervet monkeys have predator alarm calls. This means that Vervet monkeys emit specific and different calls in response to different predators such as leopards, eagles, and pythons in their environment. Again, they even show audience effects, which means that a Vervet will only emit this call when there is a predator in the environment and there are other members of its group around. It seems to function as a warning call to other members of the group.

MsgId: *brain_storm(22)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:35:29 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: So in general then, you would say that communication is found in other animals?
MsgId: *brain_storm(23)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:39:02 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: Absolutely. In fact, communication is a widespread phenomenon throughout the animal world. Most if not all animals communicate using a variety of different signals in different modalities. For example, the flashing of fireflies is the signal they use to locate one another for mating. Rodents communicate using high and low frequency signals. Some species of fish use changes in their electrical fields for communication. Some species have signals that are not perceivable to humans without specialized detection equipment such as high-frequency signals used by bats and dolphins in echo-location. There is an enormous variety of different kinds of signals used to communicate in the animal world. Any one species can use a constellation of different modalities and signals in their communication.
MsgId: *brain_storm(24)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:40:06 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: What about interspecies communication. Is there evidence that one kind of species actively communicates with another?
MsgId: *brain_storm(25)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:43:20 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: There are some studies that indicate for example that birds of different species can learn parts of each others songs. This seems to be due to social interactions between the birds. It was originally thought, for example, that White-Crowned Sparrows could only learn their own species songs. Now we have evidence that when they are held with another species and socially interact they indeed are using elements of the others' songs. There is also evidence that certain species in the jungles of the world will attend to alarm calls used by other species. This has to be more clearly researched. This is also a whole area of interspecies communication between humans and animals that has been conducted at several laboratories.

These studies include attempts at teaching species of gorillas and chimps, dolphins, and African Grey Parrots, communication codes. These studies have been controversial to say the least! However, they have yielded fascinating information about the capabilities of these species. Members of these various species have indeed learned artificial codes. The controversy seems to lie in the question of whether or not these codes qualify as languages. Of course, it is we humans who are trying to set the criteria for what constitutes language.

MsgId: *brain_storm(27)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:47:34 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: Is there any way to determine if the kind of communication you have been talking about is merely instinctive, or if it actually involves learning and rational thought?
MsgId: *brain_storm(28)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:51:19 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: That's a very complicated question to answer because we are really talking about all the different species, so I can't answer one way or the other at this point. However, before I even attempt an answer here about animals, let's clarify something. Human language is probably due to both genetic and environmental factors -- learning. This is called the epigenetic view. We have evidence in the animal world that humans, birds and dolphins learn their vocal repetoires. We can determine if animals learn their vocal signals by studies of animals in isolation. Clearly the studies of animals producing and/or comprehending artificial codes taught to them by experimenters is not due to genetic factors. These are not natural codes for them.
MsgId: *brain_storm(30)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:54:02 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: Is there any evidence that certain species are more intelligent than others? Also, are certain individual animals more intelligent than others of their own species?
MsgId: *brain_storm(31)
Date: Fri Nov 8 22:57:14 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: The question you pose, of course, requires us to define what we mean by intelligence. There is no scientific consensus about what that means. I tend to like Ross Ashby's definition that intelligence is the power of appropriate selection in human, animal or machine because it forces us to think about the animal in its specific environment. What would be appropriate behavior for a chimp may be quite different from what would be appropriate for a human being or an elephant. Therefore, in order to assess intelligence we have to study the animals in their own environment.

However, another approach is to give comparable cognitive tests to different species and see how they perform. For example, at Yerkes Primate Center, it has been reported that Pygmy Chimpanzees could learn symbolic associations and could learn to comprehend spoken English through observation, whereas Common Chimpanzees needed explicit training to acquire similar abilities.

MsgId: *brain_storm(34)
Date: Fri Nov 8 23:00:16 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: Well, the hour just flew by. One last question, just for humor's sake. Is it really true that elephants never forget?
MsgId: *brain_storm(35)
Date: Fri Nov 8 23:02:22 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: Very funny! While there are experiments that show elephants to have very good memories for a task they have learned in the past, in order to say that elephants never forget we would have to do experiments showing that from the time they learned a task to the time they died they never forgot. But that would be pushing it. By the way, I was always taught to never say never, because there is always that one chance -- but that's a topic for another discussion.
MsgId: *brain_storm(36)
Date: Fri Nov 8 23:03:21 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: Unfortunately, we're out of time for tonight's show. Thank you, Dr. Reiss, for being our first return guest here on Brainstorms.
MsgId: *brain_storm(37)
Date: Fri Nov 8 23:03:45 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

DR: It's been a pleasure.
MsgId: *brain_storm(38)
Date: Fri Nov 8 23:05:22 EST 1996
From: Keith_Harary_Ph.D._with_Diana_Reiss_Ph.D. At: 206.80.176.77

KH: I'm your host, Dr. Keith Harary. Thank you for joining us on tonight's edition of Brainstorms. We hope you will join us again next week for another fascinating discussion with a leading researcher exploring the boundaries of the mind, the brain, and human behavior. Good night for Brainstorms.


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