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Full-Text Articles in Organisms

Cetaceans And Primates: Convergence In Intelligence And Self-Awareness, Lori Marino Apr 2015

Cetaceans And Primates: Convergence In Intelligence And Self-Awareness, Lori Marino

Lori Marino, PhD

Cetaceans (dolphins, porpoises and whales) have been of greatest interest to the astrobiology community and to those interested in consciousness and selfawareness in animals. This interest has grown primarily from knowledge of the intelligence, language and large complex brains that many cetaceans possess. The study of cetacean and primate brain evolution and cognition can inform us about the contingencies and parameters associated with the evolution of complex intelligence in general, and, the evolution of consciousness. Striking differences in cortical organization in the brains of cetaceans and primates along with shared cognitive capacities such as self-awareness, culture, and symbolic concept comprehension, …


Sociology And Anthrozoology: Symbolic Interactionist Contributions, Leslie Irvine Apr 2015

Sociology And Anthrozoology: Symbolic Interactionist Contributions, Leslie Irvine

Leslie Irvine, PhD

This essay examines the sociological contributions to anthrozoology, focusing on research from the United States that employs a symbolic interactionist perspective. In particular, the work of Arluke and Sanders highlights the importance of understanding the meanings that animals hold for people. Using a selective review of their research, this essay outlines how a focus on understanding meaning can inform anthrozoological research. Arluke’s research on animal abuse reveals how harm must be defined in context. Sanders’s research on canine–human relationships documents how people come to understand companion dogs as persons. Both bodies of work rely on careful observation and listening to …


Beyond Anthropomorphism: Attributing Psychological Properties To Animals, Kristin Andrews Apr 2015

Beyond Anthropomorphism: Attributing Psychological Properties To Animals, Kristin Andrews

Kristin Andrews, PhD

In the context of animal cognitive research, “anthropomorphism” is defined as the attribution of uniquely human mental characteristics to non-human animals. Those who worry about anthropomorphism in research are confronted with the question of which properties are uniquely human. As animals, humans and non-human animals1 share a number of biological, morphological, relational, and spatial properties. In addition, it is widely accepted and humans and animals share some psychological properties such as the ability to fear or desire. These claims about the properties animals share with humans are often the products of empirical work.


Great Ape Mindreading: What’S At Stake?, Kristin Andrews Apr 2015

Great Ape Mindreading: What’S At Stake?, Kristin Andrews

Kristin Andrews, PhD

Humans and other great apes are similar in so many ways. We share an extended immaturity and intense infant-caregiver relationships, group living situations, cultural transmission of technology, and many emotions and cognitive capacities. Yet the communities of nonhuman apes are also very different from human communities. Humans build lasting tools, and store them to use later. We build permanent sleeping and living structures. We cook our food. We have courts of law and prisons and ethics books. There are vast technological differences between humans and nonhuman great apes. What is it that accounts for such a difference? On one account, …


Confronting Language, Representation, And Belief: A Limited Defense Of Mental Continuity, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic Apr 2015

Confronting Language, Representation, And Belief: A Limited Defense Of Mental Continuity, Kristin Andrews, Ljiljana Radenovic

Kristin Andrews, PhD

According to the mental continuity claim (MCC), human mental faculties are physical and beneficial to human survival, so they must have evolved gradually from ancestral forms and we should expect to see their precursors across species. Materialism of mind coupled with Darwin’s evolutionary theory leads directly to such claims and even today arguments for animal mental properties are often presented with the MCC as a premise. However, the MCC has been often challenged among contemporary scholars. It is usually argued that only humans use language and that language as such has no precursors in the animal kingdom. Moreover, language is …


Chimpanzee Theory Of Mind: Looking In All The Wrong Places?, Kristin Andrews Apr 2015

Chimpanzee Theory Of Mind: Looking In All The Wrong Places?, Kristin Andrews

Kristin Andrews, PhD

I respond to an argument presented by Daniel Povinelli and Jennifer Vonk that the current generation of experiments on chimpanzee theory of mind cannot decide whether chimpanzees have the ability to reason about mental states. I argue that Povinelli and Vonk’s proposed experiment is subject to their own criticisms and that there should be a more radical shift away from experiments that ask subjects to predict behavior. Further, I argue that Povinelli and Vonk’s theoretical commitments should lead them to accept this new approach, and that experiments which offer subjects the opportunity to look for explanations for anomalous behavior should …


Empathy In Other Apes, Kristin Andrews, Lori Gruen Apr 2015

Empathy In Other Apes, Kristin Andrews, Lori Gruen

Kristin Andrews, PhD

A number of scholars have offered behavioral and physiological arguments in favor of the existence of empathy in other species (see Bekoff & Pierce 2009, Flack & de Waal 2000, Plutchik 1987). While the evidence is compelling, claims about empathy in nonhuman apes face two different challenges. The first challenge comes from a set of empirical findings that suggest great apes are not able to think about other’s beliefs. The argument here is based on a view that empathy is associated with folk psychological understanding of others’ mental states, or mindreading, and the existence of mindreading among the other apes …


Vocal Recognition In Mexican Free-Tailed Bats: Do Pups Recognize Mothers?, Jonathan Balcombe, Gary F. Mccracken Jun 2014

Vocal Recognition In Mexican Free-Tailed Bats: Do Pups Recognize Mothers?, Jonathan Balcombe, Gary F. Mccracken

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Mother Mexican free-tailed bats, Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana, produce 'directive' calls while searching for pups inside cave maternity roosts. These calls consist of highly repetitive pulses of sound uttered in rapid sequence. Calls are sufficiently intense that they are perceptible above the substantial background noise within roosts at distances of at least 1m. Calls are stereotyped within individuals, and statistically discriminable between individuals. These characteristics are expected for vocalizations that function for mother-pup reunions, and are shared with directive calls described previously in other bats. Mother T. b. mexicana directive calls are statistically no less discriminable than are the isolation calls …


Vocal Recognition Of Pups By Mother Mexican Free-Tailed Bats, Tadarida Brasiliensis Mexicana, Jonathan P. Balcombe May 2014

Vocal Recognition Of Pups By Mother Mexican Free-Tailed Bats, Tadarida Brasiliensis Mexicana, Jonathan P. Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

The ability of Mexican free-tailed bat mothers and pups to recognize vocalizations of their presumptive kin (pup isolation calls and mother echolocation calls, respectively) was tested using playbacks of recorded calls. Captive individuals were presented with calls of two bats, one presumptive kin and the other a stranger, from opposite sides of a circular wire arena. Response was determined by amount of time spent on each side of the arena, time spent in contact with a cloth bat model in front of each speaker, and number of separate contacts with each model. For the latter two measures, mothers showed a …


Vocal Recognition Of Pups By Mother Mexican Free-Tailed Bats, Tadarida Brasiliensis Mexicana, Jonathan P. Balcombe May 1990

Vocal Recognition Of Pups By Mother Mexican Free-Tailed Bats, Tadarida Brasiliensis Mexicana, Jonathan P. Balcombe

Sentience Collection

The ability of Mexican free-tailed bat mothers and pups to recognize vocalizations of their presumptive kin (pup isolation calls and mother echolocation calls, respectively) was tested using playbacks of recorded calls. Captive individuals were presented with calls of two bats, one presumptive kin and the other a stranger, from opposite sides of a circular wire arena. Response was determined by amount of time spent on each side of the arena, time spent in contact with a cloth bat model in front of each speaker, and number of separate contacts with each model. For the latter two measures, mothers showed a …