summary and response

Inside the Minds of Animals 1
 2


By Jeffrey Kluger, 2011. 3
 Time: 100 New Scientific Discoveries, pp. 92-95. 4
 Time Home Entertainment, Des Moines , Iowa. 5


6
 Before reading the passage, please do the following: 7


• Go to the file called “pre-reading activity “ and anwer the questions. For 8
 this activity, there is no right or wrong answer. The activity is designed to 9
 get you to think about the topic, and to use information you may already 10
 have to help you understand the reading. 11


• When you have completed the “pre-reading” activity, you may return to 12
 this document to read the grammar note and the vocabulary explanations 13
 before you read the passage. 14


15
 Please read the grammar note and the vocabulary or expressions information 16
 carefully before reading the passage. 17
 18
 Grammar Note: In this article, you will find the author uses a punctuation form known as dashes—a longer form than a hyphen, although it is typed as two hyphens without spaces around them, and most often used as a pair (unless it is near the end of a sentence like this one!) Dashes have great value for readers—if you recognize their purposes: use of dashes examples a. used for dramatic emphasis My father—the most important person

in the world to me—taught me right from wrong.

used for more information, sometimes an appositive

My brother—a dentist with a thriving practice—lives in Washington.

often used to define or further explain something that came before

A sibling—a brother or sister—can be helpful in one’s life.

Writers of English in other countries have started to use this convention instead of commas in many cases.

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 20


Some expressions you may not immediately recognize Expression or Vocabulary item Meaning Des Moines: an American city in the state of Iowa balefully: sadly

chattel: property dodge: way to avoid thinking about something chauvinism: believing one is most superior to all others ascribe: apply sliding scale: measures changes from low to high mammalian: having to do with mammals 21


____________________________________________ 22
 23
 READING 24
 Read the following article, thinking about the previous ideas, that is, what you 25
 already know about this topic, how the use of dashes may hold meaning for you, 26
 and which expressions may be new or confusing for you: 27


28
 29


Inside the Minds of Animals 30
 31


By Jeffrey Kluger, 2011. 32
 Time: 100 New Scientific Discoveries, pp. 92-95. 33
 Time Home Entertainment, Des Moines , Iowa. 34


35
 36
 If you visit the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, give some thought in advance to 37
 what you’d like to say to Kanzi. Like most bonobos, a close but more peaceable 38
 cousin of the chimpanzee, Kanzi has a very loud and serviceable voice, although 39
 it’s not especially good for forming words. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t 40
 talkative. 41
 42
 For much of his day Kanzi keeps a sort of glossary close at hand – three 43
 laminated, placemat-like sheets filled with hundreds of colorful symbols that 44
 represent all 384 words he’s been taught by his minders or picked up on his own. 45
 He can build thoughts and sentences, even conjugate, all by pointing. The sheets 46
 include not just easy nouns and verbs like ball and Jell-O and run and tickle but 47
 also concept words like from and later and to and before. The not-for-profit Trust 48
 is home to seven bonobos, including Kanzi’s baby son, Teco, born in June 2010, 49
 all of which are being raised from birth with language as a constant feature of 50
 their days. On one recent morning Kanzi used his glossary sheet to indicate that 51
 he wanted to play with his ball. He waited patiently while someone went to find it. 52
 When the ball was finally brought to him, an attendant asked, “Are you ready to 53
 play?” Kanzi looked up balefully. “Past ready,” he pecked. 54
 55
 Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and 56
 our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our 57
 household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. 58
 And, of course, we cook and eat them. Our dodge – a not unreasonable one – 59
 has always been that animals are ours to do with as we please simply because 60


they don’t suffer the way we do. They don’t think, they don’t worry. They may 61
 pair-bond, but they don’t love. “The reason animals do not speak as we do is not 62
 that they lack the organs,” René Descartes once said, “but that they have no 63
 thoughts.” 64
 65
 Yet one by one the berms we’ve built between ourselves and beasts are being 66
 washed away. Humans are the only animals that use tools, we used to say. But 67
 what about the birds and apes we now know do as well? Humans are the only 68
 ones empathic and generous, then. But what about the elephants that mourn 69
 their dead and the rats that react to the pain of another rat? As for humans being 70
 the only beasts with language? Kanzi himself could tell you that’s not true. 71
 72
 There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence – 73
 not the least being that we can’t even agree whether nonhuman species are 74
 conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like 75
 to think that dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a 76
 fly? Is anything going on there at all? There’s more than species chauvinism in 77
 that question. 78
 79
 “Below a certain threshold, it’s quite possible there’s no subjective experience,” 80
 says cognitive psychologist Dedre Gentner of Northwestern University. “I don’t 81
 know that you need to ascribe anything more to the behavior of a cockroach than 82
 a set of local reflexes that make it run away from bad things and toward good 83
 things.” 84
 Where the line should be drawn is impossible to say. Still, most scientists agree 85
 that awareness is probably controlled by a sort of cognitive rheostat, with 86
 consciousness burning brightest in humans and other high animals and fading to 87
 a flicker – and finally blackness – in very low ones. 88
 89
 Among animals aware of their existence, intellect falls on a sliding scale as well, 90
 one often seen as a function of brain size. Here humans like to think they’re 91
 kings. The human brain is a big one – about three pounds. But the dolphin brain 92
 weighs up to 3.75 pounds, and the killer whale carries a monster-size 12.3 pound 93
 brain. Still, we’re smaller than dolphins and much smaller than whales, so 94
 correcting for body size, we’re back in first, right? Nope. The brain of the 95
 Etruscan shrew weighs just 0.0035 ounce, yet relative to its tiny body, its brain is 96
 bigger than ours. 97
 98
 While the size of the brain certainly has some relation to smarts, much more can 99
 be learned from its structure. Higher thinking takes place in the cerebral cortex, 100
 the most evolved region of the brain and one many animals lack. Mammals are 101
 members of the cerebral-cortex club, and as a rule, the bigger and more complex 102
 that brain region is, the more intelligent the animal. But it’s not the only route to 103
 creative thinking. Consider tool use. Humans are magicians with tools, apes 104
 dabble in them, and otters have mastered the task of smashing mollusks with 105
 rocks to get the meat inside. But if creativity lives in the cerebral cortex, why are 106


corvids, the class of birds that includes crows and jays, better tool users than 107
 nearly all other nonhuman species? 108
 109
 Crows, for example, have proved themselves adept at bending wire to create a 110
 hook so that they can fish a basket of food from the bottom of a plastic tube. How 111
 the birds perform such stunts without a cerebral cortex probably has something 112
 to do with a brain region they do share with mammals: the basal ganglia, more 113
 primitive structures involved in learning. Mammalian basal ganglia are made up 114
 of a number of parts, while those in birds are streamlined down to one. Earlier 115
 this year a collaborative team at MIT and Hebrew University of Jerusalem found 116
 that while the specialized cells in each section of mammalian basal ganglia do 117
 equally specialized work, the undifferentiated ones in birds’ brains multitask, 118
 doing all those jobs at once. 119
 120
 It’s easy enough to study the brain and behavior of an animal, but subtler 121
 cognitive abilities are harder to map. One of the most important skills human 122
 children must learn is something called the theory of mind: the idea that not all 123
 knowledge is universal knowledge. A toddler who watches a babysitter hide a toy 124
 in a room will assume that anyone who walks in afterward knows where the toy is 125
 too. 126
 127
 The theory of mind – knowing that what’s in my head is different from what’s in 128
 yours – is central to communication and self-awareness, and it’s the rare animal 129
 that exhibits it, though some do. Dogs understand innately what pointing means: 130
 that someone has information to share and that your attention is being drawn to it 131
 so that you can learn too. That seems simple, but only because we’re born with 132
 the ability and, by the way, have fingers with which to do the pointing. 133
 134
 Great apes, despite their impressive intellect and five-fingered hands, do not 135
 seem to come factory-loaded for pointing. But they may just lack the opportunity 136
 to practice it. A baby ape rarely lets go of its mother, clinging to her abdomen as 137
 she knuckle-walks from place to place. But Kanzi, who was raised in captivity, 138
 was often carried in human arms, and that left his hands free for communication. 139
 By the time he was 9 months old, he was already pointing at things. 140
 141
 Pointing isn’t the only sign of a species that grasps the theory of mind. Blue jays 142
 – another corvid – cache food for later retrieval and are mindful of whether other 143
 animals are around to witness where they’ve hidden a stash. If the jays have 144
 indeed been watched, they’ll wait until the other animal leaves and then move the 145
 food. Some animals also grasp abstractions such as sameness and difference – 146
 shown in tests in which they distinguish between a picture in which two objects 147
 match and another in which they don’t. 148
 149
 If animals can reason – even if it’s in a way we’d consider crude – the 150
 unavoidable question becomes, Can they feel? Do they experience empathy or 151
 compassion? It’s well established that elephants seem to grieve, lingering over a 152


herd mate’s body with what looks like sorrow. They show similar interest – even 153
 apparent respect – when they encounter elephant bones. Empathy for living 154
 members of the same species is not unheard of either. When rats are in pain and 155
 wriggling, other rats that are watching will wriggle in parallel, suggesting that they 156
 are suffering by proxy. 157
 158
 There will never be any question that humans are overwhelmingly the planet’s 159
 smartest species, but that does not mean that other species aren’t remarkable in 160
 their own way. Ultimately, the same biological knob that adjusts animal 161
 consciousness up or down ought to govern how we value the way those species 162
 experience their lives. Kanzi’s glossary is full of words like noodles and sugar 163
 and candy and night, but scattered among them are also good and happy and be 164
 and tomorrow. If it’s true that all those words have meaning to him, then the life 165
 he lives – and by extension, those of other animals – may be rich and worthy 166
 ones indeed. 167


168
 End of reading 169


170


Now that you have read the passage, go to the file (in Blackboard) entitled 171
 “Comprehension Check Activity” and answer the questions. You may refer back 172
 to the article to answer the questions. The questions have points to allow you to 173
 see how well you have understood the reading.
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