27.5 Animal Cognition

KEY CONCEPT Some animals other than humans exhibit behaviors requiring complex cognitive abilities.

27.5 Animal Cognition

Animal intelligence is difficult to define.

• Cognition is the mental process of knowing through perception or reasoning.

• Other factors affecting an animal’s behavior may seem like cognition.

– awareness– ability to judge– ability to solve complex problems

27.5 Animal Cognition

Some animals can solve problems.

• Insight is the ability to solve a problem mentally without repeated trial and error. – observed in primates, dolphins, and corvids– chimpanzee retrieving hanging bananas

27.5 Animal Cognition

• Tool use helps an animal accomplish a task.– some dolphins use sponges to protect and hunt– crows and chimpanzees make probing sticks– capuchin monkeys use rocks to crack nuts

27.5 Animal Cognition

Cognitive ability may provide an adaptive advantage for living in social groups.

• Intelligence in animals seems to be correlated with two characteristics.– relatively large brains for their body size– live in complex social groups

27.5 Animal Cognition

• Cultural behavior spreads through a population by learning, not by selection.– taught to one generation by another– aided by living in close proximity