Human & Animal (04/11/2008)

 

Human & Animal

Do animals have Fun?

I once watched a gull from a cliff top in Wales. It launched itself from its perch high on a sun drenched ledge and like riding a swing swooped down and away out to sea, before rising, wheeling around and riding back to its perch, using the light sea breeze to lift it that last bit. At first I thought it had fallen off the perch, and was returning to get settled again, but it missed its footing and began the ride once more. When it returned it missed its footing yet again and went soaring once more on its high aerial swing. It was at this point that I wondered whether this was really all an accident or whether this creature was actually doing this just for the fun of it. Sure enough it didn't perch the next time either and went again on its exhilarating round. As I watched I was struck, actually lifted in my spirits, by how much gleeful enjoyment it was having and I couldn't believe I had never thought of this before. It takes a very cold-hearted behavioural ecologist to ignore the signs that most "higher" animals can enjoy themselves. You see a dog playing with it's stick, or a cat playing with a fake mouse, or fox cubs tumbling in spontaneous wrestling matches, or a bird on a post singing away, or even just an animal lying in the sun and it takes very blinkered vision not to see that they are enjoying themselves. In the harsh economy of survival there is time even for animals to enjoy themselves.

While there is no doubt that animals differ enormously in the faculties they have and levels of development of those faculties it does seem on closer examination that a little too much has been made of the differences between animals and Man. To consider animals as having leisure time, a break from the routine of feeding and general survival, is to me already encroaching on the precious domain of humans.

The Distraction of Evolution

Many people will leap to the evolutionary perspective and argue that if animals do have anything we might can "enjoyment" it is simply an evolved strategy for survival in their environment. For example enjoyment might be considered a reward for success and therefore a reinforcement to encourage the animal to learn and adopt this strategy in future. Bird song for example might be explained in terms of mate attraction or territorial display. An animal resting in the sun might be viewed as maximising its energy budget by not wasting energy. All these might be true in the long run, the answer to why the world is the way it is. However to the organism doing the learning, singing or relaxing this is all literally academic. None of this distracts from the suggestion that the animal is a living creature that is experiencing a moment in its life. This is seemingly the preserve of conscious human agents, but where is any evidence forever thinking that animals are not the same?

Animals and Consciousness

The problem is that we don't get animals talking to us about what they did today. Being silent we can look into their eyes forever and never have any evidence that there is anyone looking back. But isn't this true of a dumb person also, what evidence do we need to decide that there is "someone" there?

Imagine that you are in a field and a cow says "excuse me but could you scratch my shoulder?" we would immediately assume that the cow was conscious and it was a "somebody". If there was a panel of 10 buttons meaning things like "give me some grass" and a button which said "scratch my shoulder" and the cow pressed it, it's not quite as convincing but we would still think that there was "something" there, particularly when we scratched its shoulder and it presses the button "thank you". If there were just 2 buttons "give me food" and "give me a scratch" and the cow "asked" for a scratch by pressing a button, and showed in some way satisfaction that it had got what it "wanted" - its not as good as a deep discussion with a partner - but there is still the sense that there is "something" there. If you took a knife and approached the cow and it looked scared and tried to get away then even at this crudest one-dimensional level you would still think that there was "something" there. The cow might not show appreciation when we decide to put the knife away and leave it to feeding, but we do know its happier not dying. The whole animal kingdom operates at this level or above. Even an ant or slug will try to run away from things it doesn't "like", its the argument Buddhists use for their respect for all living things.

In the above paragraph, in my opinion, the stage when the cow goes from being smart to stupid is when it stops responding to me. If it can answer me in some way then I feel that I have engaged with it and it is a "something", the point basically when it stops saying "thank you". There is little doubt that few animals, if any, have the ability to ever learn the respect of their fellows in this direct interactive way, it takes humans long enough! However there is another less direct way in which animals can show their appreciation. If they like what you have done for them they are likely to learn it and come back for more. A dog when it learns that you will throw a stick for it remembers your scent (rather than face) and will be more playful in future, if you hurt it the opposite will happen. If you gain pleasure from the dogs company then it's a reciprocal relationship and you'll come back also! Its certainly not as sophisticated as human relationships, but the principals of enjoyment and reciprocity are present just the same in both human and animal.

In conclusion of the above the question of consciousness couldn't be determined absolutely since it is such a subjective and vague term. It does seem to involve the level of reciprocal interaction possible. Consciousness ranges from the most borderline machine like behaviour of attraction and avoidance like in ants and amoebae, right through to us who have the same crude behaviour, but also levels of almost unlimited mutual awareness. I can see no reason in this discussion to separate animals from humans based on consciousness, since it is a continuum on which even people vary - consider the consciousness of a new born child with that of the child's mother.

Dreams

Something, which may come as a surprise, is that animals dream. The part of the brain which controls movement is normally put into paralysis during sleep so that animals and humans do not move in their sleep. If this paralysis is stopped then animals act out their dreams. You can have dogs chasing sticks in their sleep, cats chasing imaginary mice and maybe even birds even singing to imaginary mates (don't know if this has been tested). Quite what the animal might be experiencing we will never know, anymore than in a human patient who forgot their dream on waking, but it is already bizarre to find oneself speculating on the possible contents of the dreams and maybe even mind of an animal!

Do Animals Fear Man?

The recent discover of an untouched "lost world" in the Indonesian jungle highlighted an often forgotten thing. Animals do not innately view humans as anything other than other animals. The animals discovered had no fear of humans allowing the biologists to pick them up without any struggle. The only difference between these animals and the ones we know is that they have never met humans before. Their fear of humans must then have developed due to contact with humans, and in particular an aggressive attitude we must have always had to them. To me - a human - it has always intrigued me why animals should be afraid of me when I have absolutely no wish to harm them. The reason it seems is that not every creature which looks like me is a "human". Some are animals themselves whose more biological instincts of eating and hunting are dominant. The choice to be human or animal seems to be a recent one then, one that most animals haven't learnt we can make.


The take home point discussed here, like with so much of this webpage, is the sense that Life is a whole of which Human and Animal are just parts, or perspectives. There is no reason not to see Mankind as an integral part of an all-encompassing Nature and existence alongside those creatures once marginalised as just animals.