W.W. NORTON, MAY 2016 Much of my career has been devoted to watching and testing animals, especially some of the smartest ones, such as chimpanzees and bonobos. But I’ve also spent time observing human skeptics, some of them also very smart. Having devoted all of their attention to small-brained species, such as rats and pigeons, some researchers believe that animal behavior boils down to either instinct or rudimentary forms of learning. But even with regard to their favorite animals, this conclusion is probably wrong, as scientists typically put these organisms in situations that fail to stimulate their full behavioral potential.
Because I greatly admire the intelligence of animals, I decided to write a book, Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?, that both celebrates the smartness of animals and dissects the challenges facing scientists who study them. Are we innovative and open-minded enough? Nowadays, a growing number of researchers appreciate and explore animal cognition, conducting experiments to illuminate striking capacities, from planning for the future to theory-of-mind political tactics. The latter was my first interest, which I explored in my 1982 book Chimpanzee Politics.
The study of animal cognition predates my own interests by decades. Even during the darkest hours of behaviorism in the early 20th century, there were brave exceptions, such as Edward Tolman, Wolfgang Köhler, Nadia Kohts, and Robert Yerkes, ...
