Editing Animal cognition (section)

== Methods ==
The acceleration of research on animal cognition in the last 50 years or so has led to a rapid expansion in the variety of species studied and methods employed.  The remarkable behavior of large-brained animals such as [[primates]] and [[cetacea]] have claimed special attention, but all sorts of animals large and small (birds, fish, ants, bees, and others) have been brought into the laboratory or observed in carefully controlled field studies.  In the laboratory,  animals push levers, pull strings, dig for food, swim in water mazes, or respond to images on computer screens to get information for discrimination, [[attention]], [[memory]], and [[categorization]] experiments.<ref name="Wass">{{cite book | veditors = Wasserman EA, Zentall TR | title = Comparative cognition: Experimental explorations of animal intelligence. | publisher = Oxford University Press | location = USA | date = 2006 | page = 8 ff}}</ref>  Careful field studies explore memory for food caches, navigation by stars,<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Foster JJ, Smolka J, Nilsson DE, Dacke M | title = How animals follow the stars | journal = Proceedings. Biological Sciences | volume = 285 | issue = 1871 | pages = 20172322 | date = January 2018 | pmid = 29367394 | pmc = 5805938 | doi = 10.1098/rspb.2017.2322}}</ref> communication, tool use, identification of [[Conspecificity|conspecifics]], and many other matters. Studies often focus on the behavior of animals in their natural environments and discuss the putative function of the behavior for the propagation and survival of the species. These developments reflect an increased cross-fertilization from related fields such as [[ethology]] and [[behavioral ecology]].  Contributions from [[behavioral neuroscience]] are beginning to clarify the physiological substrate of some inferred mental process.

Some researchers have made effective use of a [[Jean Piaget|Piagetian]] methodology, taking tasks which human children are known to master at different stages of development and investigating which of them can be performed by particular species. Others have been inspired by concerns for [[animal welfare]] and the management of domestic species; for example, [[Temple Grandin]] has harnessed her unique expertise in animal welfare and the ethical treatment of farm livestock to highlight underlying similarities between humans and other animals.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Grandin T, Johnson C | title = Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals. | publisher = Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | date = January 2010}}</ref> From a methodological point of view, one of the main risks in this sort of work is [[anthropomorphism]], the tendency to interpret an animal's behavior in terms of human [[feeling]]s, thoughts, and motivations.<ref name="Shettleworth" />