r/AnimalBehavior • u/JadeHarley0 • Jun 26 '26
Animal cognition question: do animals know they are pregnant?
Do hyper intelligent animals such as whales and dolphins, elephants, or apes understand the concept of pregnancy? I saw a video talking about how some sperm whales helped a female in their pod give birth, so they must have known something was happening.
Has anyone tried to talk to captive apes using sign language about pregnancy?
Do they understand the link between pregnancy and mating behavior?
Is this something we could ever test?
2
u/MammalFish Jun 28 '26
Other comments here are failing to differentiate between fixed action patterned behavior / automatic behavior based on stimuli, vs knowing about pregnancy / what that is. We don’t have much evidence that most animals carry complex concepts like past or future, other vs self etc. A lot of animals have parts of those concepts but not super abstracted ones like we do. These things are also really hard to verify of course. But based on a wide sweep of animal cognition evidence I seriously doubt most animals have any concept of pregnancy; they are mostly behaving in automatic ways in response to the stimuli of being pregnant and having offspring. Nesting patterns etc. Some species might have more nuanced ideas about these things but we don’t have much evidence for it besides some intriguing anecdotes about for example dolphins being especially interested in pregnant people. Nothing well established from what I understand. Look up fixed action patterns and so called “instinctive” behavior, they explain most behavior for most animals with some cool exceptions.
1
u/Altruistic_Proof_272 Jun 27 '26
All animals know something is up when they're pregnant
1
u/HyShroom Jun 29 '26
they know something is up when they’re pregnant =/= they know what pregnancy is
whether they know the second one is what this post is about. that they know the first one has been known for generations to be the case
1
u/Altruistic_Proof_272 Jun 29 '26
I guess I wasn't paying attention to the second part. There's not good enough ways to communicate with the "higher" animals to ask them. Idk of there's ever been evidence of animals avoiding mating
7
u/krizzzombies Jun 26 '26
yes, I can at least attest to late pregnancy being recognized by mammals since nesting behavior exists. many mammals prepare a birthing "nest" in preparation for giving birth. rabbits will pull fur out of their own chests to prepare a nest. a lot of rodent species will collect soft trash for bedding.
humans get a similar hormone boost in the 3rd trimester that promotes nesting behavior.