It has been said that if life were found on Mars, even bacteria or similar organisms, that this would eclips all other scientific discoveries of the century. Even Natural Selection, Kin Selection, and the two Theories of Relativity, for all their profundidty would be occulted by proof positive of life on Mars. The reason is that many people feel that the existence of extraterrestrial life would erode if not seriously challenge traditional religeous beliefs. This is suspected because the existence of extraterrestrial life would challenge the unique status of Earth as a favorite domain of the Creator around which the Universe figuratively, if not litterally, revolves. Just as a heliocentric solar system model challenged traditional belief, so would the discovery of life on other worlds. The discovery of intelligent life on other worlds would be even more disturbing. However the discovery of infrahuman intelligence on Earth would be almost as disturbing, and just as profound. Certainly knowledge of examples of impressive animal intelligence already exists. Sign-language using apes, code understanding dolphins, dancing bees, ants learning how to learn, and clever gestalt finishing Van cats are all extremely impressive. The dancing bees appear to be capible of using an abstraction. Gestalt finishing cats appear to have the precursor and homologue of human insight, if not insight itself. However, one wouldn't discuss The Theory of Relativity with any of these animals. Nevertheless it is Earth shaking whenever we find what we thought was a higher mental capacity in other species, what is more insects.
Many examples of what seemed was higher mental function in an insect was later explained away in other ways. How much of this is still open to debate, it is hard to say, but in the epilogue I will discuss several ways one might try to explan away the behavior described in this essay, but I think they are to no avail, and I will invite the reader to offer feedback on either side.
Of course, there is a vested interest in incredulity toward evidence for infra-human intelligence, namely it becomes morally repugnant to kill members of a species once its sentience is established. Another moral aspect of this kind of discovery is: if the species that has been reported to be more intelligent than formerly expected, can once again be religated to less intelligent, by explaining away the new observations, than that same "explaining away" could be leveled against similar behavior in humans and erode away our view of ourselves.
I hope that this essay will make us more kind to animals, including ourselves, not less kind to them.
EPILOGUE
A green grocer with a horse and cart, feared his beast would be euthanized in short order, due to old age, and rendered into glue and dogfood. To prepare the horse for a more satisfactory retirement he proceeded to teach him a skill which would be less physically taxing, and which woul support him and possibly both of them for many years to come. He showed the animal flash cards with arithmatic problems on them and rewarded him when he tapped out the correct answer on the ground with his hoof. The horse learned quickly, and the man and horse act was a big success before large audiences. The Horse billed as "Clever Hans" (Kluger Hans in German) never failed. The people thought it was a gag, but loved it anyway. Then the man died. The stable hands concerned for Hans's future, and possibly their own, decided to test the unlikely hypothesis that it wasn't a gag after all. They showed Hans the cards and much to their surprise he unerringly tapped. The act continued to run.
The Kaiser, concerned that belief in a sentient horse would threaten the streamlined efficiency of the transportation industry, offered a two million mark reward to anyone able to provide an alternative explanation for Hans's numerical skill.
First of all it was noticed that in the presence of only very young children Hans couldn't operate. With slightly older children it appeared he could add. With still older ones it appeared he could subtract and multiply. With older still it appeared he could divide. In the presence of a mathematician it appeared he could even extract square roots, but lost the skill if the mathematician walked out, or was blindfolded. At length it was acertained that Hans was in fact watching for a slight eyebrow movement that inadvertantly occurred when he had tapped for what would be the final time in what would be the correct answer. The eyebrow movement, was an unconscious expression of fear on the part of the human observer that he might tap one more time and spoil it. No one intentionally tried to decieve anyone. Hans just picked up on information that was around him all of the time.
As a result of this historical event, we call such alternative explanations, "Clever Hans explanations".
Here follow some examples:
(1.) Hans Himself
(2.) Breeze Feeling Rats
(3.) Swamp Glider Wasps
(4.) Tool Using Wasp
(5.) Gestalt Finishing Van Cat
(6.) The Yellow Jacket of this essay.
(1.) Hans Himself.
See above.
(2.) Breeze Feeling Rats
The Lashley Jumping Apparatus has a gap between a platform and a wall with 3 swinging doors in it, which are hinged from the top. A hooded rat is trained to jump through one of the doors to a room with a bowl of food.
Two of the doors are locked. Pictures on the doors are meant to inform the rat which of the 3 doors is unlocked. If the rat hits a locked door, he bangs hi nose and falls some distence into a safety net, but it is an unpleasant experience.
The test was to see if a rat could learn which of the 3 pictures was different from the other two , which were identical to each other.
The rats performed admirably, but it was eventually found that they felt a breeze blowing through the crack around the door that informaed them of the position of the lock's latch.
(3.) Swamp Glider Wasps
Spider wasps of the species Anoplius depressipes float paralysed water spiders, as big as themselves, across large expanses of water by perching on them while buzzing their wings, like a swamp boat with an aerial propeller, and guide the prey into their holes in the banks where they are stored and eaten by the wasps' larvae. Reasoning was once suspected, until it was learned that related wasp species, and this one, often drag their prey over expanses of flat ground. The floating behavior can be then thought of as the same behavior.
(4.) Tool Using Wasp
Similarly, digger wasps of the genus Ammophilla store paralysed caterpillars in an urn-shaped hole in the ground. They camauflage their holes during their absences by tamping them with a tool, a pebble held in the jaws. This was thought to be reason until it was found that related wasps start the plug with a pebble-shaped clod before filling it in with finer material. The insertion is repeatedly attempted, if the clod is too big, until it fragments. This is regarded as a precursor for tamping.
But what of the first arrow heads, which were found by the first human hunters, with the right shape by accident or only had to be slightly hewn?
(5.) Gestalt Finishing Van Cat
The Van Cat is a subspecies of the common cat which occurs as pets and to a disappearing degree in the wild in Turkey, Armenia, Iraq, and Kuwait (The adopting of individuals by American Airmen at the base in Van, Turkey in the 1950's and the tendencies for the Van color pattern to be dominant, and for the Van toms to preferentially mate with cats of this color patter, which in this case would be their decendents, lead to the founding of ferral populations of mostly Van cats in the USA.). It is characterized by large size, a white body, with ususally orange on; the head, all of a perfunctory spot or two on the side or back, and most or all of the tail. The orange pats are typically tiger tabby striped in a slightly different shade of orange. Other colors (e. g. grey tabby, black, calico, slightly different shades of white tabby stripes) sometimes replace the orange. They are also noted for certain behavioral traits. Among these quirks are a tendency to play around or in water, a love of water, a desire to show off intelligence, and enjoying games with humans involving fetching thrown objects. Other wild and semi-wild felids indulge in similar play with human handlers, whilst European house cats hide their smarts. European kitties work door knobs, water taps, dresser drawars (to steal socks as toy kittens, but only when they believe they are not being watched. This may have contributed to the notion of cats as "sneaky". The hiding of intelligence, may be a result of the Inquisition, when it was believed in Europe that cats were minions of the devil, and killed by the inquisitors. Perhaps people in doubt about this belief would turn on their cats if they commited particularlly clever acts.
In playing with a Van Cat I passed the beam from a pen light backwards through a telescope. Thus I had a narrow beam that made a spot that stayed more or less the same size at any distanc from the source. The cat chased the spot as if it were a mouse. I had made an artificial mouse hole by arranging a wrinkle in the rug that went up to its edge. When the mouse reached the hole I turned the light off. The cat probed the hole with his paw and trotted in a circle around the hole, panting, as typical hunting behavior in Felis sylvestris. I felt guilty at either havint fooled him so well, or tired him out. I did not know that Van Cats pant easily. When I lost interest in the game so did the cat and he slinked away. Twenty four hours later the cat entered the room and meowed. Then he went to the "mouse hole" and sniffed it and meowed. Next he went to the telescope and sniffed it, meowed, and batted it with his paw. I remained passive, feeling unable to oblidge him since I couldn't remember where the flashlight was. The cat then went out and came back with the flashlight in his mought.
This remarkable story seems to indicate Human-like insight. Dr. Steven Young a research psychologist at the University of London's Imperial College, has a simpler explanation. He says when an animal has had a pleasant experience (including relief from an unpleasant one, as when a cat is met by a rescuer at the side of an injured person or cat), and some of the stimuli from the Gestalt assiciated with that past experience recurr (but the pleasant part is still mnissing), then the animal will try to "complete the Gestalt" by assembling the missing items in the same plac as the present ones (Thus a cat might bring a flashlight, or a cat, dog, or horse might bring a rescuer.).
But could not human insight be explained away the same way?
(6.) The Yellow Jacket of this essay.
Maybe (Almost anything's possible even if unlikely, so let's consider the nul hypothesis.) the wasp landed on my face, at the entrance to the "terrapin", because she was stressed just like she was when she was flying around the light bulb. If landing on my cheek preceeded relief in the first stressed-out situation, why not try it again in the 2nd? This would be somewhat akin to the "Gestalt Completing" explanation. But then what of Northumbrian Maidens? Northumbrian Maidens, and other people too, will revert to echoing conversational fragments left over from a bygone time upon meeting a person unseen since that time, to aid recognition, or just for fun. It is a very charming and flattering gesture. I would soooner accept a wasp can do it too, rather than accept that humans really don't.
It is possible that the wasp was simply recruiting me much as she would recruit a nestmate. When you are on the recieving end, kin recognition heuristics don't have to be quite so accurate. Probably to a yellow jacket, anything that has brain waves and gives sugar solution is a nestmate.
My emphasis on brain waves is based on the observation that when near a person these wasps spend alot of time near the person's head and quickly change their attitude appropriately depending on when the person is switching from negative to posative thinking or vise versa. I have seen similar detection of mood shifts by dogs, cats, rats, Sowey sheep, honey bees, tree hornets, carpenter bees (detecting both conspecific's and human's mood shifts through a barrier), and humans. In the case of the human, she had to put her head near that of her partner in order to read mood shifts.
THE QUESTION OF BRAIN SIZE
A wasp's brain contian a few tens of millions of cells. Our brains each contain sever billion, cells. As we age cells die and are not replaces. One of the reasons we live as long as we do is that the sheer size of our brains gives us enought redundancy to survive the loos of 120,000 cells a day. A wasp can keep this up too, but only for 6 weeds, we can keep it up for 6 score years. That doesn't make us any smarter than a wasp ipso facto.
Of course, there is the whole problem of saying you are further frm being a robot than some creature because you are served by a bigger computer!
