Customer Reviews

Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think

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As George Page pointed out in his New York Times review,most scientists fail when they try to write a popular account of the science they practice. Marc Hauser's book "Wild Minds" does not fail. It is not, unlike most books, filled with jargon. Nor is it condescending. It is a non-technical, but intelligent treatment of an important problem: what animals think and how they think. In the first part of the book, Hauser shows that all animals have brains with three distinctive capacities or what he calls "tools". these are the capacity to recognize objects, count how many there are, and navigate through space. In part two he describes several specialized tools that only some animals have. Specifically, the ability to learn from others,recognize themselves(i.e., a sense of self), and deceive others. In part three, he takes these tools explores how they play a role in systems of communication and possibly, developing a moral society. The examples are well chosen, and vivid. This is a book of passion, and a more than welcome addition to the field.

As an earlier reviewer stated, the book "Wild Minds" is uninspired. But, it is interesting and well worth reading. One essentially learns how the animal brain has evolved for survival in a species specific manner. Because the animal must survive in a geometric world, the brain functions in accordance with this world; animals come into the world with a certain mental toolkit. This toolkit places certain limitations or restrictions on the specie's ability to adapt however.

One of the most interesting lessons of Hauser's writing is the result of recent research that shows how the brain learns on its own, so to speak, prior to and without consciousness. Hauser's examples drawn from animal experiments are fascinating to contemplate, but he ultimately tells us that we can never really know what an animal thinks or feels. He ends by presenting solid arguments for animals, despite the appearance of altruistic behavior, not having any kind of moral sense.

In the end Hauser acknowledges that we can only seek to understand how an animal's mind functions as far as how it will behave. We will never know how it thinks or feels! Given this, we may wonder about the subtitle which seems to mislead in order to sell books. If you are interested in "what animals really think," you will not find it here. If you are interested in how animal brains function (including the human)in regard to their behavioral adaptations and limitations, as a result of their evolutionary heritage as geared to survival in their environment, you probably will find the book of some interest.

Hauser has written a remarkably accessible introduction to comparative psychology. While containing the main points one might expect in a textbook outline, he does an excellent job of presenting this information in an interesting narrative form.

Hauser begins with an introductory chapter that presents his basic approach and cautions against anthropomorphisms.

Chapters two through four comprise a unit that focuses on those mental capacities shared by animals and human beings. Both can identify objects and predict their movement. Both can distinguish quantity. Both can navigate through space. Perhaps it takes a course in cognitive psychology to appreciate these commonalities, but I believe that Hauser does an excellent job of presenting research results for lay consumption. His presentation of animal and human infant studies of the expectancy-violation principle is alone worth the cost of the book.

The second section, chapters five through seven, focus on mental capacities which seem to be qualitatively common in animals and humans, but quantitatively distinct. Hauser presents a well-balanced account of the evidence for self-awareness, teaching, and deception among animals.

The final section contains two chapters on mental capacities that appear to be almost unique to human beings - language and morality. Hauser's careful review of animal communication is amazing, as is his locus of morality in the ability to inhibit selfish tendencies to maintain social conventions.

I recommend this book without reservation. No reader will regret spending time with this book. It is quite stimulating.

There are typically two types of books on the market in the area of animal cognition. On the one hand are those who merely offer their own impressions of what is going on in the animal mind. These impressions are fine, but they don't offer any reason why one impression is better than the next. Books that fall under this category are Elizabeth Marshall Thomas' "Hidden Life of Dogs", Jeffrey Masson's "When Elephants Weep" and most recently George Page's "Inside the Animal Mind". Page's book attempts to bring in modern science, but since he doesn't understand the issues, he fails miserably. On the other hand are books that tend to be dry and academic, and often argue that animals lack any kind of intelligence. What Hauser's book brings to this field is a keen understanding of the science, experience as a researcher who has worked in the wild and in captivity, and a love of animals. I highly recommend this book.

Wild minds is an accessible book for anyone. The main point of the book is to explore animal minds not by anthropomorphizing our furry friends, but rather thinking critically about what goes on inside their heads. Hauser reviews a wealth of different areas of animal cogntion and points out the similarities and differences between species. One excellent point made by Hauser is that each species is endowed with its own mental tool kit. Therefore, creating a hierarchy based on "intelligence" may not be entirely correct. We must recognize each species as the product of its own unique evolutionary history. I recommend this book to anyone curious about what other animals think.

This book, written by a scientist, is readily accessible to the general public. What Hauser has done for the field of animal cognition, Steven Pinker has done for the field of human cognition. Hauser brings to this problem the great advantage of having studied animals in the wild and in the lab. However, rather than dismiss anecdotes, he embraces them, and then argues that we should take such observations as starting points for further investigation. His theory about animal minds, and in particular, the idea that all animals are equipped with a toolkit for survival, is fascinating, and should have profound implications for how we think about both human animal thought. I particularly liked how he leads the reader down a path of discovery without being condescending or pedantic.

Vervet monkeys make one cry when a cheetah approaches; a different cry when an eagle flies overhead, and yet another cry when a human is near. It's a pity Marc Hauser makes no attempt, Edgar-Rice-Burroughs-style, to transliterate that last cry: I'd like to know the vervet word for "human".

But though Hauser acknowledges the many species that exchange sounds that are very close to being "words", he argues convincingly that they do not have language. That's disappointing, of course, for those of us with that Dr Doolittle urge for closer communication with animals, but clearly how things are. And despite the subtitle "What animals really hink" Hauser concludes that we are too different ever to truly know that: not only will we never settle down with a lion or dog and exchange views about politics and sex and art; but much of their behaviour will remain enigmatic to us. We simply can't imagine or empathise our way into knowing what they are thinking. Many people, anthropomorphising wildly, like to imagine that they can. But there are always alternative explanations for animal behaviour, and no way of checking which is the correct one. Nor do animals have a "moral sense", as is argued in the final section of the book. Though animals do cooperate, and will sacrifice themselves or their interests for the benefit of others. On that question I'm not so sure that the animal form of "ethics" is really qualitively different from the human, despite the cultural ideas we heap up around concepts of "morality". But that's an argument about human thought, and therefore outside the scope of the book.

In some ways the earliest parts of the book are the most interest. Animals don't have language, but they do have tools for understanding the world: dividing reality into classes of objects, engaging in rudimentary mathematics, and creating mental maps of the physical world.

This section of the book could be usefully read by anyone still believing, along with the previous generation of French philosophers, that a chair, for example, is a linguistic construct rather than an object of a certain kind. Animals deal with reality in ways that strongly suggest that their perception of the world, and their organisation of the world into different classes of things, by edibility, animate or inert, sharp or soft, green or blue, and so on, is at the fundamental building-block level similar to ours. Clearly there is a world without language, let alone text.

The book doesn't show us, as its sub-title claims, "What animals really think", but it does contain a great deal of fascinating information on how animals organise their information about the world, the kind of guesses they make about the behaviour of others, the cries and signals that became the building-blocks of our languages, and much else besides. And it's not the most misleading title in this genre: consider the "Penguin English Dictionary". A splendid resource, certainly, but penguins don't seem to respond to any of it ... Anyway, you can't use Hauser's book to "talk to the animals either", but at least you wll know more about why you can't. Recommended.

Cheers!

Laon

Marc Hauser has done an extraorindary service to the field of animal cognition. The book is great fun to read whether you are an expert in the field or not. Hauser does not dismiss anecdotal observations, but rather uses them to show why we need to collect more systematic observations and experiments to find out what animals think. It is refreshing to see a scientist explain things so clearly. This is a must read for anyone interested in the animal mind.

Studies of human cognition inevitably raise the question: "Are other animals 'conscious'?". This immediately leads to a more perplexing question: "What is consciousness?". With the concept still but vaguely defined in human terms, asking it of the other animals evokes a host of difficulties. Hauser, to his credit, makes a worthwhile attempt to deal with both questions. In this sweeping survey, he declares that simplistic approaches to how the various primates deal with life are misplaced. There is a range of animal awareness out there, shaped by the forces of natural selection. Each species must be studied carefully and intensively, both in controlled and wild conditions. And the work, he insists, has barely started.

He combines his field experience with the work of many researchers in revealing facets of consciousness. Hauser's study was stimulated by a young monkey giving him a hug. He calls these elements "mental tool kits". By this he explains that similar conditions generate similar responses in the animal. This suggests there are probably areas in the brain common across many species. When conditions change, however, the response may vary wildly, indicating dissimilarity in capacity. A startling contrast is the range of food storage sites among different species. A dog may bury a bone in the garden, but a Clark's Nutcracker can stash up to thirty thousand seeds in six thousand locations - and find most of them the following Spring. Hauser calls this ability "cognitive mapping" - a special talent derived over long evolutionary time. Other animals have the role of "space travelers", although Clark's must hold some kind of record.

"Self-awareness" is an all-encompassing term. In the largest and most significant part of the book, Hauser dodges the vague, but common, phrase, replacing it with "self-recognition". This term is a more measurable aspect of cognition. Experiments with mirrors demonstrate that some primates know who they're looking at, while others see intruders or remain indifferent. Strangely, some birds seem to recognise themselves in reflected images. Expressing self-awareness means communicating. For us, that's done with speech or writing. With other creatures, other forms of expression must be inferred from observation. Deception is a commonly used test. An animal aware of itself, and aware of others as well, is likely to derive the other's intent. When another's intention can be directed, and the deceiver gains from that guiding, individuality seems enhanced. How far we can take such analyses is one of Hauser's calls for more research.

Language and thought are far too closely aligned in the minds of most researchers, Hauser believes. That link restricts "real" thoughts to those that can express them in words - in short, only humans. Hauser counters that thought is something we can interpret from actions - and the greater the variance in action, the better. He looks back at our evolutionary beginnings through the eyes of today's primates. Thought, he argues was there - language was a gloss that came later. The implication is that researchers need to try fresh approaches to studying how "wild minds" can be better understood. The result is the growth of a new discipline, cognitive ethology which encompasses a wide range of species who have, or might possess, thoughts we can identify. This book is a major step in furthering that new field. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

His style is a little flat: a scientist writing for popular audience and trying really hard not to talk down. But he organizes the subject really well and clearly, with chapters on tools, numbers, spatial navegation, sense of self, language, moral reasoning. Each one synthesizes a large amount of scientific research on both animals and children, with interesting anecdotes.

The preface makes it clear he's writing against sentimental popular books on the subject that treat animal as being like humans inside, and themselves attack "the scientists." But this book gives a dreary image of the scientists. Each chapter describes some amazing abilities of different animals, describes some exhausting, repetitive experiments to document (it often seems) a small part of what was already suspected, and then concludes that as to the most important part -- "what animals really think" -- science doesn't know. But (drearily), they probably aren't conscious.

He should be clearer than he is in summarizing what the experiments have shown, and in particular about the differences in cognitive performance (not "real thought") btw adult and infant humans, primates (his main interest), birds (who get less attention), rats (still less), and social insects (who make a few star turns).