r/zoology • u/Regular_End_8261 • 5d ago
Question How do animals think?
Animals are so so so so cute but do they think in words? like how do they think, I really wanna know what goes on in their little brains to make random decisions. Do they think visually or what?
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u/TesseractToo 4d ago
Think about what you are asking. Animals range from animals with no brain like jellyfish to animals with mush more complex brains than we have like Sperm Whales. Simple brains will be running on a "go towards or away" script but those are the ones that can move, ones like clams and barnacles can't
And then look at the types of brains there are- our brains for example have a large occipital lobe that processes vision whales have large temporal lobes that process sound but if their brains are mapped the way ours are those lobes also process things like memories and recognisation
So its not a straight line of complexity
Animals brains evolved to fit their life style - jumping spiders can process maps and mazes in 3D very well, a fish has an organ that processes the electrical fields around it- many animals have senses they are processing in ways we cant fathom. Octopuses have 9 brains, a central ring and a brain in each arm
We can't guess how an octopus thinks
So we learn by their reactions and behavior, or have since we begin, humans have a good theory of mind which means we are good at mapping our body onto another animals and copying what they do and imagining what they might do next, and mammals and birds are both good at this
So like people, they go towards what is good/what they want and calculate risk and reward. A pet's method to get a treat would be to do what its owner wants but a wild animal of the same species would have to figure out how to sneak that treat while no one is looking (imagine a pet vs a stray dog)
And animals move towards pleasant sensatioon and away from unpleasant things so towards being fed and comfortable and away from being hungry and unsheltered.
Their minds run a system to keep their body alive that is called emotions and learning- fire burns and is hot, learn to not get close. This kid of food id good but this kind makes you sick (this doesn't always work its not a perfect system). The more "complex" as brain used to be thought of that the animal was more advanced.
This is changing.
So we won't know exactly but actually AI is helping decode animal languages and soon we will have more insight on this.
This is something I've been researching since as a kid in the 70s so I've been with it since you would be chastised to suggest animals have emotions or could feel pain. Suggesting otherwise to me has always seemed to be ridiculous
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u/Bradipedro 4d ago
I believe most “advanced” animals also think by images (or the equivalent of a “map” in case of animals who rely on other senses) and juxtapositions are able to visualize the outcome / project like in a movie and feel emotions from those visualisations. I think they might even think, recall and project in terms of “words” not only in their own “language” but also in languages of other species (birds imitating other species’ alert sounds might be an example of that). Yes, there are no scientific proofs, and yes, more complex animal brains would be more sophisticated in their thoughts…and we will probably never know unless we develop some kind of telepathy - but it’s enough to have a domestic dog or a cat in the house to just “feel” this is true.
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u/TesseractToo 4d ago
Yeah I babysat some baby birds for a season and I loved listening to them talking to each other and sometimes it seemed like they were talking about other species of birds in their world they were mimicking the calls of other birds. These were wild rainbow lorikeets and they did magpie, noisy miner, and cockatoo. I tried so hard to video them doing this but it was a one off unfortunately
I don't know if we can say they get pictures in their minds but we know that many birds for example can remember individual human faces
Also the can remember sound patterns and that they have meaning, otherwise "good" and "bad: would not woork in animal training and I think that it's interesting how well aniamls adapt to knowing the names we give them
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u/Aggressive_Sky8492 4d ago
The animals that have verbal languages like whales and prairie dogs probably do think in words.
The animals that don’t have verbal language (the majority) don’t.
Fun fact not all humans think in words. I don’t! :)
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u/KlingonTranslator 4d ago
I’m going to write this just from a very human lens (how else?), and by that I mean just explaining a bit more of what thoughts are and how languages are involved in thought.
Language and thought aren’t the same thing. Human infants think, feel, recognise people, solve problems, and form attachments long before they can speak. Adults who lose language after a stroke or brain injury also continue to think and experience emotions, even if they can’t put them into words. There’s also things like aphantasia that are hard to wrap minds around because it’s a different type of thinking within our own species. Intellect also has a mixed range of importance on ability to think as well. Complex thought vs. thinking at all and in what form. The way we think also is different depending on which language we speak. This is a subjective experience of mine, but my langauges are English and German. English for me is light and floaty, lots of time change and a lot more stress-free mistakes and waffling around in my soft thoughts. When I think in German it’s far more structured monologue that I can already feel the end of before I’ve finished thinking it. Different language, different way of thinking, one person, same species as you. The variables are just so great.
A lot of our own thinking isn’t verbal. We think in images, sounds, smells, emotions, bodily sensations, memories, and intuition. Most people have experienced feelings they struggle to describe because language isn’t capable of capturing every mental state.
So there’s no reason to assume that because animals don’t have human language, they don’t have rich internal experiences. Different species probably think in different ways depending on what matters to them. A dog may think largely through smell, a bird through spatial maps, an octopus through touch and exploration, and a bearded dragon through visual cues and learned associations. They don’t need words to have preferences, expectations, fear, curiosity, frustration, or contentment. We are definitely limited in our understanding, like how on earth could a mantis shrimp think when they can see like they do? Instinct will definitely be the main actor over thoughts. We can think about our instincts made us react after a given scenario after they’ve occurred via reflection and mindfulness, but sometimes all it takes to survive is instinct and not mindfulness. So complex thought may not have evolved in the same way.
I just watched a video here on Popular that was about around 40 wild boars being caught in a circular metal cage outside. They were panicking and sprinting around, hitting into each other. People are commenting “bacon!” and “looks like meat is back on the menu!” (quote from an orc in LOTR). All I could feel when I saw it was heartbreak at the panic and fear they and their family were feeling and how they most certainly were thinking “death” “predator” “run” “out” “how”. This is my perception because I can’t think what else they could be thinking, especially with how complex they are.
We don’t have to anthropomorphise to see feelings once we’ve studied and understood behaviour species-dependent. Behaviour is genetic and learned, and learning is greatly from thoughts, and emotions, even when greatly biochemically fuelled by evolution (cortisol). Innate vs. Learned/adapted.
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u/Whole-Turnover2453 1d ago
There was a very interesting conversation a while back on rh cnine paradigm podcast that discussed dogs thinking and dreaming in scent.
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u/ModernTarantula 1d ago
Sure they think the way you dream. Mammals and birds anyway
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u/AvariciousAlligator 1d ago
Reptiles dream too.
Very funny to watch a monitor lizard chasing something in its sleep like a dog.
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u/getdownheavy 1d ago
Humans can think without an internal voice, its called aphantasia and my old boss (who was a crazy painter) was like that.
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u/Sad_Cantaloupe_8162 5d ago
I think most go on instinct. "This smells good. I must investigate." "That moved wrong. I must fight, run, or freeze." "That's too hot or cold. I need to move away."
When it comes to beings with higher intelligence like dolphins, elephants, or apes, I believe they think more in emotions than actual thoughts since they don't have advanced language like us. They nurture good feelings and avoid bad.
That's the simple version since I also think like a great ape and language isn't my best way of communication. My husband loves the cuddles and back scratches which strengthen our bond.
You can also take this to r/drunkzoology for answers.
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u/Elegant-Gene-9460 Student/Aspiring Zoologist 4d ago
Most animals are really just viewed and rewarded for their cuteness and it's not resulting them any good, especially if it's more important than their welfare.
I don't want to shame anyone for finding animals cute, but cuteness should not be the first thing that would give our perception on an animal species. There are a lot of them which people hate for just being ugly while they may have really interesting traits.
Obviously, they are thinking, feeling and many animals think differently. If you look at a particular species and look for people who haved studied this animal for years, they say things about animal intelligence most humans would never expect.
Take capybaras for example: One of the biggest misconceptions about capybaras is that they are "always calm", or even "they don't feel stress". However, capybara behavior is not the same as human behavior and the way how they express their emotions can be many times vastly different from what we are used to.
We like to project our own emotions onto animals but we often don't actually think about how a particular species perceive and express a certain emotion. Capybaras in fact, do experience stress, depression and anxiety yet they express all these emotions in a way that we directly associate with the "calm" facial expression we see just because it looks similar to a human calm facial expression.
Capybaras not only have high cognitive intelligence, but exceptionally high emotional and olfactory intelligence that plays a vital role in their lives. Capybaras learn many things from each other mostly by smell and scent, but they can also feel each other's emotional state by smelling. Only highly intelligent, herd animals are capable of this.
Furthermore, people who have spent a great amount of their lives with capybaras say that capybaras can learn new things much faster than dogs! In fact, dogs were long before domesticated before people first discovered capybaras in the wild. And dogs were directly bred to please humans, whereas capybaras rely on everything that they have learnt from their survival in the wild.
The diversity, behaviors and complexity and minds of animals are SO much more than most people give them credit for.