Many of us accept the animals as a part of our world that despite can fell pain and have some emotions can't actually think.
But what the scientists say about that!?
After years of debate, ingenious new studies of dolphins, apes and other brainy beasts are convincing many scientists that the answer is yes - animals can think.
Our dodge — a not unreasonable one — has always been that animals are ours to do with as we please simply because they don't suffer the way we do. They don't think, not in any meaningful way. They don't worry. They have no sense of the future or their own mortality. They may pair-bond, but they don't love. For all we know, they may not even be conscious. "The reason animals do not speak as we do is not that they lack the organs," René Descartes once said, "but that they have no thoughts." After years of debate, ingenious new studies of dolphins, apes and other brainy beasts are convincing many scientists that the answer is yes - animals can think.
But one by one, the berms we've built between ourselves and the beasts are being washed away. Humans are the only animals that use tools, we used to say. But what about the birds and apes that we now know do as well? Humans are the only ones who are empathic and generous, then. But what about the monkeys that practice charity and the elephants that mourn their dead? Humans are the only ones who experience joy and a knowledge of the future. But what about the U.K. study just last month showing that pigs raised in comfortable environments exhibit optimism, moving expectantly toward a new sound instead of retreating warily from it?
If animals can reason — even if it's in a way we'd consider crude — the unavoidable question becomes, Can they feel? Do they experience empathy or compassion? Can they love or care or hope or grieve? And what does it say about how we treat them? For science, it would be safest simply to walk away from a question so booby-trapped with imponderables. But science can't help itself, and at least some investigators are exploring these ideas too.
It's well established that elephants appear to mourn their dead, lingering over a herd mate's body with what looks like sorrow. They show similar interest — even what appears to be respect — when they encounter elephant bones, gently examining them, paying special attention to the skull and tusks. Apes also remain close to a dead troop mate for days.
Empathy for living members of the same species is not unheard of either. "When rats are in pain and wriggling, other rats that are watching will wriggle in parallel," says Marc Hauser, professor of psychology and anthropological biology at Harvard. "You don't need neurobiology to tell you that suggests awareness." A 2008 study by primatologist Frans de Waal and others at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta showed that when capuchin monkeys were offered a choice between two tokens — one that would buy two slices of apple and one that would buy one slice each for them and a partner monkey — they chose the generous option, provided the partner was a relative or at least familiar. The Yerkes team believes that part of the capuchins' behavior was due to a simple sense of pleasure they experience in giving, an idea consistent with studies of the human brain that reveal activity in the reward centers after subjects give to charity.
Animal-liberationist Singer believes that such evidence of noble impulses among animals is a perfectly fine argument in defense of their right to live dignified lives, but it's not a necessary one. Indeed, one of his central premises is that to the extent that humans and animals can experience their worlds, they are equals. "Similar amounts of pain are equally bad," he says, "whether felt by a human or a mouse."
Source: * http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2008867-1,00.html
Source: * http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2008867-1,00.html
So the animals can think and feel like us, but we lead them in one point - the very high ego.
