Animal intelligence: how brainy are they? Scientist are learning how animals talk, think, and feel. (Life Science: Animal Behavior * Intelligence).

A policeman in Vancouver, Canada, feels a duck tugging at his pants. She yanks repeatedly, then waddles to a sewer drain. Following her, the officer finds her trapped ducklings below the street.

In Scotland, safari-park wardens answer their phones to hear the heavy breathing of Chippy the chimpanzee. The chimp had pressed the right buttons to dial preprogrammed numbers on a cell phone he'd swiped from a keeper.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that animals are smart. But do animals really think? And if so, are their thoughts similar to ours? Scientists have long tried to figure out the intricate workings of human intelligence, but the process of how a thought is chemically produced in the brain still remains a mystery. Researchers do know that humans rank high on the "smart meter" because of our abilities to use complex language and express abstract ideas. Now ethologists (animal behavior scientists) look for clear signs of intelligence in other animals, starting with three top categories:

* emotions: Chimps react to dramatic TV scenes starring other chimps, which suggests they recognize and express emotions.

* self-recognition: Bottlenose dolphins and chimpanzees recognize themselves in mirrors, which suggests they're aware of themselves as individuals. So far, only primates (humans and apes) and dolphins display this ability.

* language: New research shows that prairie dogs use descriptive chirps to inform their colonies about predators and intruders--a human's size, for example, the colors he wears, how fast he's moving, even whether he's carrying a gun.

Not long ago, many scientists ranked humans as the smartest animals and all other creatures inferior. Others relied on anthropomorphism, or testing animals purely by human attributes. Today's studies show that animals solve problems, make decisions, and show emotions--not unlike humans. "We share the planet with thinking animals," says Harvard ethologist Marc Hauser.

But Hauser is quick to point out that humans and other animals possess different skills. "If we designed an experiment with humans and bats, like close your eyes and tell me what's in the room, humans would fail and bats would pass," he says. "This doesn't mean humans are stupid. It means we don't use echolocation [bouncing sound off objects]."

EMOTIONAL CHIMPS

Humans and chimpanzees may share 98 percent of the same genes, but do we share complex emotions? Lisa Parr studies chimpanzees at the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University in Atlanta. Her mission: to see if they understand emotions--as they watch TV. If chimps do "think about others emotionally and recognize an emotional state," Parr may be the first to find out.

With research tools that resemble a video game, complete with a joystick, Parr recently. tested chimps by showing them video clips of other chimps getting injections from the vet, or glimpses of treats like fruit juice. The test-chimps put each scene in a category using a joystick to toggle a picture button on a computer monitor. "A vet scene is negative, and they match it to a negative facial expression like a scream face," explains Parr. "A positive scene is matched to a positive expression like a play face." The chimps put nearly every scene in the right category, which means they understood what they saw on TV. They also reacted with their own charges and playful gestures--as if they were part of the show.

In a second study, Parr monitored the chimps' brain activity while they watched 10-minute scenes of play and aggression. She used thermometers placed in the chimps' ears to measure brain temperature. Like a human watching horror flicks, a chimp's right hemisphere, or right side of the brain, heats up during scary scenes. During happy, playful moments, the left hemisphere gets warm.

These studies show that chimps most likely understand others' emotions and feel strong emotions themselves as well.

MIRROR, MIRROR

Self-recognition is a clear sign of intelligence, but until researchers thought most animals couldn't recognize their own reflection. Now Diana Reiss of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has shown that bottlenose dolphins do know themselves.

Reiss and fellow scientist Lori Marino heard that dolphins at WCS's Osborn Marine Laboratory at New York Aquarium seemed to gaze at themselves along the shiny tank walls. So the researchers decided to investigate further. They used odorless markers to draw lines on the bodies of Presley and Tab, two of WCS's captive bottlenose dolphins. Some markers were black, others merely filled with water; and some dolphins received no marks at all. The point was to see if the dolphins who felt markers on their bodies would check themselves in mirrors.

If the dolphins felt the marker, they "made a beeline to the mirror," says Reiss. "They were very motivated to look." The dolphins inspected the markings closely, using the mirror to examine body parts they can't otherwise see. One dolphin did 12 underwater flips to expose the underside of his fin, where he felt the fake marker.

Conclusion: Dolphins are the first animals other than primates to show the ability to recognize themselves. In primates, self-awareness is processed in the forebrain, the brain's large front lobe. "But dolphins don't have forebrains," Reiss says. Far more research is needed to determine how many animals process intelligence in their brains.

PRAIRIE SPEAK

Another telltale sign of intelligence is the ability to communicate. Prairie dogs warn their colony of approaching danger with a language of chirps that includes more than 100 "words," according to Northern Arizona University researcher Con Slobodchikoff, who discovered this prairie-dog language. The critters even use "adjective" and "verb" chirps to communicate information as complex as "large black dog moving slowly."

Perched on an observation tower near a prairie-dog colony, Slobodchikoff uses a powerful microphone, tape recorder, and video camera to capture prairie dog sights and sounds. A computer program then turns the sounds into digital information that is translated into sonograms, or sound charts, which let Slobodchikoff see patterns in the otherwise indecipherable noise.

By ear, Slobodchikoff can understand some chirps, like "hawk" or "dog." But he relies on the computer to translate whole sentences. "We're finding there are different calls for non-predators, such as deer and elk," he explains. "That suggests prairie dogs describe more of their world than just the predators who could attack them."

THINK ABOUT IT

Ethologists suspect many species have consciousness. Consciousness is what things feel like from the inside," says University of Arizona philosophy professor David Chalmers. If that's true, do you think it should affect the way people treat animals?

HANDS-ON SCIENCE

Intelligence Test

Can animals count? Quiz them to find out.

YOU NEED:

2 boxes * 2 to 5 pieces of food (dog or cat treats, peanuts, or fruit) * a test animal (pet dog or cat, or even a park squirrel or bird)

TO DO:

1. Place the two boxes side by side on the floor or ground near the test animal.

2. Place three pieces of food in one box and one piece in the other box.

3. Step back from the boxes and watch the animal to see which box it favors.

4. Repeat the steps, but change the amount of food in each box.

CONCLUSIONS:

If the test subject chooses the box with more food in it, researcher Marc Hauser says, that animal has the ability to judge quantities.

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Cross-Curricular Connection

Language Arts: Choose an animal species, then find out as much as you can about the animal's behavior. Write a first-person short story from the animal's point of view.

Did You Know?

* British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was among the first scientists to try to investigate the animal mind. In his book The Descent of Man, he questioned whether "high mental powers, such as the formation of general concepts, self-consciousness, etc., were absolutely peculiar to man...." Darwin speculated that human and non-human minds aren't all that different, depending on the species.

* According to ethologist Marc Hauser, all animals have the mental tools for three distinct tasks: recognizing objects, evaluating quantity, and navigation.

National Science Education Standards 

Grades 5-8: structure and function in living systems * regulation and behavior * understandings about scientific inquiry

Grades 9-12: behavior of organisms * understandings about scientific inquiry

Resources

For more on Marc Hauser's Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory: www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/

Lisa Parr's research on chimpanzees reacting emotionally to televised events: www.emory.edu/LIVING_LINKS/i/people/parr.html

CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING

Name: --

Directions: Define the following vocabulary words. Then describe how they relate to the animal-behavior research in the story.

1. Sonograms

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2. Left hemisphere and right hemisphere

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3. Forebrain