August 21: Smart

Phi Delta Gamma Inductees, 2006

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Genus: Homo
Species: sapiens

I was tempted to post about octopi, or parrots, or whales, or dolphins (again) or even other primates. But I think that this serves two purposes: First, in reaffirming that humans are animals, and pointing out that while we like to think of ourselves as somehow superior to other species, that's a pretty subjective judgement.

For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reasons.

~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

It seems people are fond of saying that we're the smartest thing on the planet. Many of the same people are fond of saying that our intelligence makes us more than animals. So what is it that we do have that makes us any different or smarter than other creatures?

We use tools, but so do other primates... so do birds. We build. So do insects and birds. Other animals have social hierarchies more complex than ours, and all of those constructs are effective for their niche in their environment.

One of the longstanding arguments has been related to language. One of the linguists I studied with used to say that there were no actual animal languages because animals cannot recombine the same sounds in different ways to produce different meanings, and that a single sound holds a single meaning. Language, as defined by linguists at the time, is the use of a limited number of symbols or sounds in varying combinations to convey meaning of culturally relevant concepts.

This particular linguist stated very strongly that since animals did not combine the same sounds in different ways to produce different meanings, any apparent language was mere mimicry.

From the human standpoint, we have to take objection to this because certain forms of language which have been understood as human language for years (if not centuries) cannot be included in the definition of human language under this particular definition. The one that comes most quickly to mind is American Sign Language, which uses one gesture to produce one "word" or idea packet. Among other primates, my linguistics prof pointed out, use of ASL was mimicry of the trainer or researcher and any original communications using combinations of the signs to describe concepts not part of the training schema were written off as accidental.

We're just now learning about communication in animals other than humans, and with so many forms of communication being non-verbal in the human sense, nor relating to physical gestures as humans do, people have been unaware of the level of communication between many animals. The subtlety of communication with scent has been something we are only now starting to look into, or the use of color and polarization in cuttlefish and other squid.

The problem with examining how "smart" a creature is has been that we have judged other creatures against ourselves. Since we don't live in the same environments, we don't have the same "cultural values"... those things that are important to communicate between cuttlefish will not be the same as those things important to communicate between people, and in a different environment and different physiology, we certainly shouldn't expect the cuttlefish to learn verbal english.

Perhaps our 'specieocentric' views make us considerably less smart than we think we are. If we distance ourselves from other animals on the planet on the basis of speech, we may be creating only a naive and artificial distinction.

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A footnote here:

I can't think of "smart" without thinking of this fun (and amusing) ad:



(Mantis Shrimp)
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Malacostraca
Order: Stomatopoda


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