Guests visiting Brisbane’s gallery of no ordinary art lovers; until recently they had never seen paintings in his life. Little training — and they have their own artistic taste. They prefer the crystal structures of Picasso or Monet’s soft-focus, lazily walking through the rooms. When it comes to the brain, people think that they have no equal. But are we really smarter than other animals?
Somewhat surprisingly, the talents of artists in General, have attracted guests, given that their brains are smaller than a pinhead: those critics are presented by bees trained to look for surprises in one way or another the work of artists.
In fact, the ability to recognize the art style was merely the latest in a long list of achievements. Bees can count to four, reading complex characters to learn from observations and to communicate a secret code (the famous waggle dance). In nature, they estimate the distance to different colors, plan complex routes in order to gather nectar for the least effort. In the hive of their individual responsibilities may include cleaning, removal of dead bees and even air conditioning, since they collect the water to irrigate her cell during hot weather.
The human brain is 100,000 times more neurons than the brain of a bee, but the beginnings of many of our most valuable examples of behavior can be observed in the teeming hive of activity. What is the meaning then of this gray matter, which is in turtle? It gives us compared to other animals?
Big brain: a waste of space?
About one-fifth of the food you consume is used to power electric talks between the 100 billion little grey cells. If the big brain doesn’t give us any advantage, this may seem a huge loss.
And there are some obvious advantages. Big brains make us more efficient in what we do. If the bees are looking for a particular scene, for example, they will deal with each object one after the other, while larger animals can handle all at once. In other words, we multitask.
Big brain also increases the number of what we can remember: bees can keep a few of the associations connected with that signals the presence of food, and then start to get confused, even though the pigeon may learn to recognize more than 1,800 pictures, and this is nothing compared to human knowledge. For comparison: some people remember the sequence of thousands of digits after the decimal point in PI.
We remember a lot. What else?
Darwin described these differences as “difference in degree, not in type” — and this conclusion may disappoint many of you. If you look at human civilization and what we have achieved, of course, we must have special capabilities and skills, which are lacking in other animals?
Culture, technology, altruism and other traits are presented as a sign of human greatness — but the longer you look, the shorter becomes the list.
Macaques, for example, has long been known for his ability to break nuts with stones, and new Caledonian crows can even make hooks out of sticks, which help them to raise food — such are the rudimentary forms of tools. Even invertebrates are trying to do something similar. Some octopuses, for example, collect coconut shells and drag it along the seabed, to later use as a shelter.
And chimpanzees in Zambia, meanwhile, caught wearing a tuft of grass in the ear — apparently she thought it was beautiful. Very soon, many other chimpanzees in her group began to catch it. Scientists interpreterpath it as a form of cultural expression.
Many creatures also seem to have an innate sense of justice and they can even empathize with others. It shows a range of emotions that were once considered unique to humans. Take, for example, the humpback whale, who recently saved the life of a seal, protecting it from the attack of the killer whales — obviously we are not the only animals that are able to behave unselfishly.
What is conscious thought?
Perhaps the answer lies in “self-awareness”, the ability of beings to recognize themselves as a person. From all of our diverse qualities that make us unique, the self-awareness to measure the most difficult. To check for it, at least in rudimentary form, in one experiment, animal were daubed with stain and placed in front of a mirror. If the animal noticed the mark and tried to remove it, we can assume that it understands its reflection, and therefore has some understanding of yourself.
People do not develop this ability until they’re 18 months, but some animals seem to possess a consciousness of this type. Among them bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, magpies, dolphins and orcas.
Turns out we’re nothing special?
Not in a hurry. Some mental abilities may be our own. To understand them better just by the example of family conversation at the dinner table.
First, it is surprising that we can talk. Regardless of what you thought and experienced during the day, you can always find the words to Express their experience, to tell about him to others.
No other creature can communicate with a degree of freedom. Dance of the bees, for example, can transmit the location of the flower garden to the other bees and even to warn about the presence of dangerous insect, but he can’t Express all that I feel the bees, just a few facts about the immediate circumstances. The language of the people, by contrast, is very open. We have an infinite number of combinations of words, which we can pass on anything from laws of physics to the most intimate feelings. But if words are not enough, we simply invent.
Even more remarkably, much of our conversation takes place not only in the present but affect the future and the past, and this is another sign that we can consider unique to humans. We have found that it can remember more facts than most animals. This “semantic” memory. But Thomas Suddendorf from the University of Queensland notes that we also are “episodic” memories — we can mentally recreate the events of the past and show them in numerous details. You may recall that Paris is the capital of France, and it is possible to recreate images and sounds of the first visit to the Louvre.
Importantly, the ability to remember the past also allows us to imagine the future, since we are using the experience to predict. You can submit the following weekend, remembering all the past trips out of town, plan places to visit and make food menu.
No other species has such complex memories and can’t plan long chains of actions in the future. Even bees with their complex lifestyle in the hive, apparently, only respond to existing circumstances; they don’t expect anything more than a flight from flower to flower. Don’t remember what it’s like to be a larva.
Together with the language, the mental “time travel” enables us to share their experiences and hopes with other people, to build networks of common knowledge and to evolve with each generation. Science, architecture, technology, literature would be impossible without it.
We are wrong to appreciate the human brain
Ilya Hel