Editing Animal cognition (section)

== Experimental evidence against animal cognition ==
Several experiments cannot be readily reconciled with the belief that some animal species are intelligent, insightful, or possess a theory of mind.

[[Jean-Henri Fabre]]<ref>{{Cite book| vauthors = Fabre JH | date = 1919 | title = The Hunting Wasps | location = New York | publisher = Dodd, Mead and Company | isbn = 978-1587760280}}</ref> (1823–1915), setting the stage for all subsequent experiments of this kind, argued that insects "obey their compelling instinct, without realizing what they do". For instance, to understand that she can grab her paralyzed prey by a leg instead of an antenna is utterly beyond the powers of a sand wasp. "Her actions are like a series of echoes each awakening the next in a settled order, which allows none to sound until the previous one has sounded." Fabre's numerous experiments led him, in turn, to the view that scientists often try to "exalt animals" instead of objectively studying them.

[[C. Lloyd Morgan]]'s<ref>{{Cite book| vauthors = Morgan CL | date = 1920 | title = Animal Behaviour | edition = Second | location = London | publisher = Edward Arnold}}</ref> (1852–1936) observations suggested to him that prima facie intelligent behavior in animals is often the result of either instincts or trial and error. For instance, most visitors watching Morgan's dog smoothly lifting a latch with the back of its head (and thereby opening a garden gate and escaping) were convinced that the dog's actions involved thinking. Morgan, however, carefully observed the dog's prior, random, purposeless actions and argued that they involved "continued trial and failure, until a happy effect is reached", rather than "methodical planning".

[[Edward Thorndike|E. L. Thorndike]]<ref name="cats">{{Cite book| vauthors = Thorndike EL | date = 1911 | title = Animal Intelligence. | location = New York | publisher = Macmillan}}</ref> (1874–1949) placed hungry cats and dogs in enclosures "from which they could escape by some simple act, such as pulling at a loop of cord". Their behavior suggested to him that they did not "possess the power of rationality". Most books about animal behavior, Thorndike wrote, "do not give us a psychology, but rather a eulogy of animals".

Although [[The Mentality of Apes|Wolfgang Köhler's]]<ref>{{Cite book| vauthors = Köhler W | date = 1925 | title = The mentality of apes, transl. |edition= 2nd German | veditors = Winter E | location = London | publisher = Kegan, Trench | quote = Original was Intelligenzprüfungen an Anthropoiden, Berlin 1917. 2nd German edition was titled Intelligenzprüfungen an Menschenaffen, Berlin: Springer 1921. | isbn = 978-0871401083}}</ref> experiments are often cited as providing support for the animal cognition hypothesis, his book is replete with counterexamples. For instance, he placed chimpanzees in a situation where they could only get bananas by removing a box.  The chimpanzee, Köhler observed, "has special difficulty in solving such problems; he often draws into a situation the strangest and most distant tools, and adopts the most peculiar methods, rather than remove a simple obstacle which could be displaced with perfect ease".

Daniel J. Povinelli and Timothy Eddy<ref>{{Cite book| vauthors = Povinelli DJ, Eddy TJ | date = 1996 | title = What young chimpanzees know about seeing | series = Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development | volume = 61 | pages = 1–189}}</ref> of the University of Louisiana showed that young chimpanzees, when given a choice between two food providers, were just as likely to beg food from a person who could see the begging gesture as from a person who could not, thereby raising the possibility that young chimpanzees do not understand that people see.

Moty Nissani<ref>{{Cite journal| vauthors = Nissani M |date=2005|title=Do Asian elephants apply causal reasoning to tool use tasks? 31: 91–96|journal=Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes|volume=31|pages=91–96}}</ref> of Wayne State University trained Burmese logging elephants to lift a lid in order to retrieve food from a bucket. The lid was then placed on the ground alongside the bucket (where it no longer obstructed access to the food) while the treat was simultaneously placed inside the bucket. All elephants continued to toss the lid before retrieving the reward, thus suggesting that elephants do not grasp simple causal relationships.