Millions of years ago, the first humans appeared. Their knowledge in the use of tools for hunting, clothing and building homes passed through the generations and today, humans are capable of doing the things that would be deemed impossible a thousand years ago. We became smart because our ancestors were able to adapt to their environment and developed the necessary skills for our survival. That is called intelligence. We eat other beings because we refuse to believe that they are intelligent.

What constitutes intelligence? How do humans learn? "Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information "Meaning, trial and error. The first time you burn yourself is the last time you will stick your hand in a fire.

How do animals learn? Are they mindless robots who are programmed at birth to behave in a certain manner or do they evolve themselves into smart beings in the same way that we do – through observation, being taught , fear, incentives, trial and error ?

Of course they learn the same way. Whether domestic or wild, from guinea pig to lion, they learn every day. Just as young children are helpless, when young birds leave the nest, they need time to learn to find food and avoid predators. Both species are more likely to starve or be killed till their learning increases.

Learning extends across all species. Even to the microscopic vinegar worm which feeds on bacteria. If it eats a disease-causing strain, it becomes ill. Worms are not born with an aversion to the dangerous bacteria. They learn, with time , to tell the difference and avoid becoming sick. Bacteria can alter behavior to help their survival. If a microbe senses a toxin, it swim away. If it senses a new food, it can switch genes on and off to alter its metabolism. E. coli, for instance, is amazingly good in adapting itself.

Insects are good at learning. Biologists at Mc Master University realized that the fruit fly learns how to associate certain odours with food and other odours with predators. They also discovered that young male flies learns by hit and miss to court females by reading their signs correctly.

Researchers presented the insects with a choice of orange or pineapple jelly to eat. Both smell delicious. But the flies that land on the orange jelly discover that it is spiked with bitter quinine. At egg laying time, researchers presented the flies with orange and pineapple jelly plates. The flies chose pineapple.

Rats learn very fast. Not just how to find their way out of mazes and to pull levers to reward themselves. If you release metal-caged laboratory bred mice into the wild , they soon learn how to dig, find food, mates and safe hiding places for a group. In a study at the University of Georgia researchers were astonished to discover that rats display evidence of metacognition: they know what they know and what they don’t know. Metacognition, supposedly a human ability only, is exemplified by students who have answered exam questions. They have a pretty good sense of what their grade is likely to be. In the Georgia study, rats were asked to show their ability to distinguish between a sound tone lasting from 2 to 8 seconds, by pressing one or another lever. If the rat guessed correctly, it was rewarded with a large meal; if it judged incorrectly, it got nothing. For each trial, the rat could, after hearing the tone, opt to either take the test and press the short or long lever, or poke its nose through a side of the chamber designated the, "I don’t know" option, at which point it would get a tiny snack. As the test got more complicated , the rats made clear they knew their limits. When they knew the tone they expressed confidence in their judgment by indicating they wanted to take the lever test and earn their full-course dinner. But as the tones became mixed the rats began opting for the third option which gave them tiny morsels instead of pressing potentially wrong levers.

The popular belief that fish have a memory span of 3 seconds is just to make you feel better when you eat them. Scientists have discovered that fish are adept learners, with distinct personalities that change as they pick up information about the world. The study by the University of Liverpool, found that individual trout display very different personalities — some are bold and inquisitive; others are shy and passive. These traits, however, change in response to particular experiences, as the fish learn how best to cope with their environment. Bolder fish are much more likely to approach and eat unfamiliar forms of prey and tend to eat more which may make them more vulnerable to anglers. Shy trout, by contrast, will leave strange-looking food alone protecting themselves from the risk of being caught. Each adjusts its behaviour according to what they see from others’ experiences, becoming shyer or bolder.

Like us animals learn how to learn—that is, once they have mastered a particular task, they can more quickly learn future tasks that have the same design but rely on different stimuli. Like us they apply accumulated knowledge to new situations. The classic example is the chimpanzee in a room with a few sticks and boxes in one corner and a banana hanging from the ceiling. The chimpanzee climbs on top of the boxes and reaches for the banana with a stick. Crows, dolphins, elephants, and parrots are creative problem-solvers as well.

If intelligence is not the ability to do tricks by rote but grasp ideas and experiences and apply them to one’s own survival, then all animals are intelligent. Your goldfish swims to the surface looking for food when you move near its tank. Young creatures who live by the sea need to learn how to fish so seals, sea lions and polar bears will learn from their parents how to dive into the water and come up with a fish. A mother deer teaches her fawn to fear man by herself demonstrating such fear at the sight or scent of man.

Intelligence is the ability to reason, to solve a new problem by using previous experiences. The most famous kind of trial and error method is the maze.

Mazes are based on the idea that an animal that is placed in an entrance must find the exit. As it proceeds, it finds a series of branches. The animal must make a choice at each branch or fork. If it chooses the wrong one, it comes to a dead end. Then it must go back to take the other path. The reward at the end is food . Experiments have shown that ants can master very complicated mazes, as well as frogs, turtles, rats, cockroaches and crabs. Another way to study trial and error is to place an animal in a box. Food is placed outside and the animal can reach the food only by unlocking a door. Then the animal must open the same door to get back into the box. The problem is figuring out a lock to open a door. Raccoons can open really complicated locks. Monkeys can also open locks. Both figure out the mechanism much faster than humans.

Where does this ability to learn and modify behavior come from ? One of the answers could lie in the 1992 discovery of the mirror neuron. A mirror neuron is a brain cell, a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. The same neurons are fired, for instance, when I eat and when I see another eating. Mirror neurons enable us to recognize and understand what another is doing. Some scientists consider this to be one of the most important recent discoveries in neuroscience. First supposed to be only in the human brain, they have now been found in primates – and will probably turn up in every single tested animal or insect.

There will always be people who see animals as only slightly more flexible than machines- but that again, is a reflection of their own intelligence.

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