making a difference

Making a differenceDo Animals Think?by Clive D. L. WynnePrinceton University Press: 2004. 288 pp.$26.95, £17.95

Sara J. Shettleworth

Dogs that learn words the way a child doesand crows that make tools catch our interestbecause their behaviour seems so unexpect-edly human-like. Many books on animalmind and behaviour for general readersfeed an appetite for seeing animals as beinglike us, either by detailing the way experi-ments reveal animals’ abilities to count,form concepts and so on, or by describingthe behaviour of some particular animals,often primates. Donald Griffin’s AnimalThinking (Harvard University Press, 1984)or Marc Hauser’s Wild Minds (Henry Holt,2000) come to mind as examples of the firstgenre, and books by Frans de Waal, such asThe Ape and the Sushi Master (Basic Books,2001), are examples of the second.

Do Animals Think? most resembles booksof the first genre, but with a difference. In this critical account of selected research,Clive Wynne takes aim at over-sentimentalanthropomorphism,particularly on the partof animal-rights advocates. He argues thatthe degree to which animals are like us cannot be the measure of how much they are worthy of our respect and protection. Totake one of Wynne’s examples, it is fine totake pleasure from watching dolphins leapsimply because they look so joyful, but it isimportant to know the facts about dolphinbehaviour and to realize that — contrary to what some sources quoted in the bookwould have you believe — they have neitherself-awareness nor a complex language, nor perhaps take joy in leaping. How can a con-cern for animals exist alongside an objectiveunderstanding that their minds and behav-iour are in many respects very unlike ours?

To capture his theme that animals are likeus in some ways but not in others, Wynneadopts the not entirely successful simile ofa sandwich with two layers of difference

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surrounding a layer of similarity. The outerlayers are species-specific sensory systemsand abilities such as the echolocation of bats,the still mysterious homing of pigeons, andthe linguistic abilities of humans. The fillingis cross-species similarity in basic instinctsand simple learning abilities.

The book is structured like a sandwich,too. Chapters on humans’ attitudes to ani-mals and how they can be justified surrounda seven-layered ‘filling’ made up of chaptersdevoted to the animals themselves, with thesensory, communicative and social systemsof honeybees, bats, pigeons and dolphinsalternating with chapters on contemporaryresearch into animal minds. This juxtaposi-tion of psychological topics, such as tests ofreasoning (from Wolfgang Kohler onwards),tool use, imitation,ape language,mirror self-recognition and theory of mind, togetherwith accounts of the behaviour and life histo-ries of bats, dolphins and bees, is an effec-tive device for underlining the ‘otherness’ ofanimal lives and minds.

All this material is presented in a clear,informal and entertaining way, enlivened by historical asides, among which I mostenjoyed the speculations on why Kohler wasstudying chimpanzees on Tenerife in the firstplace and the passages from an Elizabethanbee-keeping manual. But, at risk of over-straining the comparison, this sandwichcontains some substantial chunks of meatthat some readers will have trouble swallow-ing. Wynne emphasizes that misconceptionsby non-specialists and overly anthropomor-phic interpretations by researchers are rife inareas where animals’ behaviour seems mostto resemble human behaviour.Moreover,thedegree of resemblance between animal andhuman behaviour is too easily exaggerated,he says. For instance, population-specific

forms of tool use and other learned behav-iours in chimpanzees are rightly seen as aform of culture, but it should not be forgot-ten that even an hour’s observation of anygroup of humans would reveal vastly morecomplex culturally transmitted behaviours.

Many comparative psychologists who,like Wynne, do experimental research withanimals will probably applaud his criticalapproach to such topics as theory of mindand animal language, and will not find his conclusions controversial. But the finalprovocative chapter, on why we should careabout animals, is unsatisfactory. Wynnerejects first, and in some detail, the idea that animals should have rights. His specificdismissal of the Great Ape Project, whichbelieves that great apes should enjoy thesame rights as humans, will raise some hack-les. The absence of sound evidence that evenchimpanzees have the cognitive capacity forlegal responsibility makes the animal-rightsposition, in his view, as untenable as that ofthe sixteenth-century villagers who tried ratsfor eating their crops. The utilitarian viewthat the recognition of animals’ capacity forsuffering gives us a guide fares little better,primarily because, Wynne argues, a calculusof suffering is ultimately impossible to applyin detail.

What we’re left with,after what is hardly acomplete survey of contemporary views, isthat it is simply self-evident that we shouldvalue and protect animals whether or notthey are in any way like us. Perhaps otherswill take up the challenge of developing acoherent account of how concern for ani-mals is consistent with a dispassionate viewof their minds and behaviour. ■

Sara J. Shettleworth is in the Departments ofPsychology and Zoology, University of Toronto,Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.

Jumping for joy? The sight of dolphins leaping out of the water can tempt us to be anthropomorphic.

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The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature’s Creative Ability to Order theUniverse by Paul Davies Templeton Foundation Press, $16.95A return to print for this 1988 classic.

Ben Franklin Stilled The Waves by Charles Tanford Oxford University Press, £9.99, $16.95A charming historical voyage, ending in thediscovery of the lipid bilayer surrounding cells.

Reissued classics

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