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A review by chrstphrdlz
Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
3.0
I felt like this book could have been a lot shorter. This book can be summarized in a few points:
1. We define intelligence in a human centric way and there are a lot of ways that animals are "smarter" then us when we take a broader definition of intelligence.
2. Similar traits (including intelligence) can evolve separately (analogy) in different species.
3. The way we experiment on animals to show that they do not possess a quality of intelligence sometimes has an unfair bias against a species. For example, there was an experiment where they put a human sized mirror in an elephant exhibit and the elephants did not notice their own reflection. However, when they placed an "elephant sized mirror" in the exhibit, the elephants noticed their own reflection.
1. We define intelligence in a human centric way and there are a lot of ways that animals are "smarter" then us when we take a broader definition of intelligence.
2. Similar traits (including intelligence) can evolve separately (analogy) in different species.
3. The way we experiment on animals to show that they do not possess a quality of intelligence sometimes has an unfair bias against a species. For example, there was an experiment where they put a human sized mirror in an elephant exhibit and the elephants did not notice their own reflection. However, when they placed an "elephant sized mirror" in the exhibit, the elephants noticed their own reflection.