[BRIEF NOTE] We're not alone

[rfmcdonald]

Or, at least, we're not as unique in our quality of intelligence as we thought.

First come the monkeys, rhesus macaques apparently, who apparently recognize their own reflections in mirrors, thus passing a key test for consciousness.

In the lab of University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Luis Populin, five rhesus macaques seem to recognize their own reflections in a mirror. Monkeys weren’t supposed to do this.

“We thought these subjects didn’t have this ability. The indications are that if you fail the mark test, you’re not self-aware. This opens up a whole field of possibilities,” Populin said.

[. . .]


So-called mirror self-recognition is thought to indicate self-awareness, which is required to understand selfhood in others, and ultimately to be empathic. Researchers measure this with the “mark test.” They paint or ink a mark on unconscious animals, then see if they use mirrors to discover the marks.

It was once thought that only humans could pass the mark test. Then chimpanzees did, followed by dolphins and elephants. These successes challenged the notions that humans were alone on one side of a cognitive divide. Many researchers think the notion of a divide is itself mistaken. Instead, they propose a gradual spectrum of cognitive powers, a spectrum crudely measured by mirrors.

Indeed, macaques — including those in Populin’s study — have repeatedly failed the mark test. But after Rajala called attention to their strange behaviors, the researchers paid closer attention. The highly social monkeys only rarely tried to interact with the reflections. They used mirrors to study otherwise-hidden parts of their bodies, such as their genitals and the implants in their heads. Mark tests not withstanding, they seemed quite self-aware.

Next come dolphins, where groups of mixed species change the way they communicate (speak?) with each other.

Bottlenose and Guyana dolphins, two distantly related species, often come together to socialize in waters off the coast of Costa Rica, and although each species normally makes distinct, different sounds, they change the way they communicate when together and begin using an intermediate language, the BBC reported Thursday.

Biologist Laura May-Collado of the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan made the discovery while studying dolphins swimming in Costa Rica's Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge off the country's southern Caribbean coast.

When bottlenose dolphins swim together, they emit longer, lower frequency calls that are modulated, she said. In contrast, Guyana dolphins usually communicate using higher frequency whistles that have their own particular structure.

But the two species often swim together in one group and when they do they produce quite different calls, May-Collado has discovered.

Calls emitted during these multi-species encounters are of an intermediate frequency and duration, a style that is somewhere between those of the two separate species.

Finally, there's the evidence that Neanderthals--our ancestors, too, if from a divergent gene pool--were a compassionate lot.

The archaeologists studied archaeological evidence and used this to propose a four stage model for the development of human compassion. It begins six million years ago when the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees experienced the first awakenings of an empathy for others and motivation to 'help' them, perhaps with a gesture of comfort or moving a branch to allow them to pass.

The second stage from 1.8 million years ago sees compassion in Homo erectus beginning to be regulated as an emotion integrated with rational thought. Care of sick individuals represented an extensive compassionate investment while the emergence of special treatment of the dead suggested grief at the loss of a loved one and a desire to soothe others feelings.

In Europe between around 500,000 and 40,000 years ago, early humans such as Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals developed deep-seated commitments to the welfare of others illustrated by a long adolescence and a dependence on hunting together. There is also archaeological evidence of the routine care of the injured or infirm over extended periods. These include the remains of a child with a congenital brain abnormality who was not abandoned but lived until five or six years old and those of a Neanderthal with a withered arm, deformed feet and blindness in one eye who must have been cared for, perhaps for as long as twenty years.

With these three news items, I'm tempted to believe that the natural direction of evolution is towards complex behaviours and eventually intelligence.